Trump’s weekend of trolling can’t paper over his political problems

The US just enjoyed its Labour Day long weekend, and Donald Trump, who occupies the world’s most powerful office, spent much of it posting outlandish memes on social media about his own brilliance.

None of that is unusual for this president, who uses his Truth Social account as a stream-of-consciousness microphone to the world, or a repository for self-aggrandising AI slop from the bowels of the internet.

This weekend’s contributions raised a few eyebrows, however, in both their volume and content. On Sunday, he posted about the moon belonging to America, a map of Iran shaped like his own head, and a cartoon of himself beating Canada’s Mark Carney at ice hockey.

He also posted mock-ups of uniforms to be worn by Space Force, a new branch of the US military, modelled on the 1997 film Starship Troopers. The uniforms in that film – which director Paul Verhoeven called “a movie about fascists who aren’t aware of their fascism” – were inspired by the Nazis.

On Monday, Trump published a map depicting the American flag spanning over the US, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He posted several memes describing himself as the greatest US president ever, explicitly outranking George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And he posted seven consecutive memes about renaming New Mexico “New America”, following his orders on the “Gulf of America” and “Lake America”.

One hopes the subscribers paying $US100,000 a month for early access to Trump’s posts – a ploy over which the president is being sued – are satisfied with their purchases.

Most Americans do not see Trump’s Truth Social posts, and the media generally ignores his stream of memes, unless they are especially offensive.

After all, the White House is pretty clear – publicly and privately – that posts are not policy, and that the president posts them because Trump or his staff find them amusing, and because he enjoys trolling the left.

Still, they can be instructive about the president’s state of mind, his priorities and his concerns.

Many of Trump’s recent memes have referred to the military and economic damage the US has inflicted on Iran – something he believes the mainstream media is not reporting.

The president frequently lashes out at outlets he accuses of running interference for Iran, such as The New York Times and CNN, because they cover the war with the nuance and complexity it warrants.

But his broader frustration is with the war itself – a project Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu helped steer him into – which is now sliding towards quagmire territory. Oil is sitting just shy of $US100 a barrel, and petrol prices are stubbornly high, with eight weeks to go until the midterm elections.

There may not be much shooting going on right now, save for a few tit-for-tat strikes, but it is still costing huge amounts of money, US military assets are still positioned in the Middle East (and not in the Indo-Pacific), and a peace deal – which Trump has already declared “done” multiple times – remains elusive.

It is a frustrating position for Trump, who knows all too well from his first term that a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives will mean a slew of investigations into his administration and almost certainly an impeachment.

The idea of renaming New Mexico “New America” seems to be pulled from the same “break glass in case of emergency” trick bag as the Lake Ontario stunt. But such distractions are losing their lustre. That announcement caused a ripple in Canada, but Americans barely noticed.

Carney was also dismissive, rather than outraged, saying coolly that he would resume trade talks with the Americans when they “stop doing memes … and start being serious”.

Shock and bore

It has been more than 11 years since Trump came down the golden escalator into public life, and his shock tactics – “flood the zone with shit”, as former strategist Steve Bannon put it – aren’t as shocking any more.

Even his famous wordplay nicknames aren’t cutting through. He has spent months trying to make “Dumocrat” work as a substitute for Democrat, along with an oft-repeated story about how most people don’t know how to spell the word “dumb”.

But in one introspective moment, Trump admitted: “I don’t know if it’s going to be as good as ‘Pocahontas’ or ‘fake news’ or some of the others that we’ve come up with.”

The reality is that Trump’s shtick is wearing thin. He is hamstrung by an unpopular war that he doesn’t quite know how to exit, mounting debt, rising prices that he promised to lower, and poor approval ratings.

To be fair, he also has lower crime, falling drug deaths, a booming stock market fuelled by the AI race, steady employment and significant foreign investment coming into the country.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump favoured the idea of just declaring the Iran war over, citing US officials familiar with the discussions. It’s an option that has been canvassed since the beginning.

But Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps get a say in that, and they appear intent on tapping the US along, starting spotfires now and then which demand a response but don’t risk dramatic escalation.

The irony is that these silly Truth Social memes – uploaded by aides such as Natalie Harp – may contribute to Trump’s alienation from allies and his inability to bring the war to a close.

Plenty of serious people pointed to Trump’s post showing the American flag engulfing Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Cuba, and asked what we would do if Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping did something similar in their respective regions.

“It would have been seen as either insane or dangerous – or both,” said Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and a former prime minister of Sweden.

Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said on X: “Everyone should see President Trump’s vision. Explains so much of why no countries are rallying to [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent’s call for global sanctions on Iran. America needs allies, not colonies.”

Trolling might be relatively harmless, but it won’t help solve the real problems the president now faces.

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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.AdvertisementAdvertisement