On July 10, the White House’s official social media accounts posted a mock movie poster depicting President Donald Trump as Superman, soaring through the air in the Man of Steel’s iconic tights and cape. The meme, emblazoned with the slogan, “THE SYMBOL OF HOPE. TRUTH. JUSTICE. THE AMERICAN WAY. SUPERMAN TRUMP,” was intended to capitalize on the buzz around a new Superman film. Instead, it was met with widespread ridicule; one congressman quipped that Trump is “literally Lex Luthor.” But, while easy to write off as a one-time social media gaff, the bizarre incident wasn’t an isolated one. It highlights an emerging pattern of the administration embracing AI-generated propaganda art in official communications.
A Pattern of AI-Generated Fantasies
The “Superman Trump” poster was only the latest in a series of fantastical images pushed by the Trump White House. On May 4 (Star Wars Day), the White House celebrated by sharing an AI-crafted image of a muscle-bound Trump dressed as a Jedi, brandishing a red lightsaber. In the picture, posted with a message mocking the “Radical Left,” Trump poses heroically amid bald eagles and American flags. A few weeks earlier, after the death of Pope Francis, Trump’s accounts shared an AI-generated photo of the president seated on an ornate throne in papal vestments. Trump had jokingly mused that he’d like to be the next pope, and his social media team illustrated the notion for real in a move that Catholic leaders blasted as disrespectful. Back in February, the White House even posted an image of Trump wearing a king’s crown (captioned “LONG LIVE THE KING!”) to celebrate his victory over New York City’s proposed congestion pricing toll.
Taken together, these official posts form a propaganda collage casting Trump as everything from savior of Metropolis to head of the Church. All were AI-generated or digitally altered images, churned out at the push of a button. The President, for his part, has sometimes tried to distance himself, telling reporters “[he] had nothing to do with” the pope image and that “somebody made a picture of [him] … maybe it was AI.” But the content was disseminated by his own verified White House channels. The goal is clear: to flood the internet with memeified heroics, bolstering Trump’s image in a cheap, viral way.
Why Turning the Presidency into a Meme Is Problematic
Critics argue that this embrace of AI fantasy images undermines the dignity of the presidency and erodes trust in official communication. Former Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele lambasted the pope photo, saying it “affirms how unserious and incapable [Trump] is.” Even some Trump supporters were taken aback; one commentator remarked that the White House account had become “just a slop engagement farm” chasing clicks. By trafficking in doctored images of the President as a comic-book hero or religious icon, the administration blurs the line between governance and marketing, inviting comparisons to authoritarian cults of personality. During the 1930s, dictators like Hitler and Stalin tightly controlled art and imagery to project their own ideological myths; disturbingly, Trump’s social media stunts echo a 21st-century version of that playbook.
There is also a deeper danger in normalizing AI-generated false images. While a buff Trump Jedi might seem like harmless fun, the ease of producing realistic fake visuals opens the door to more insidious disinformation. “The ability to easily and inexpensively generate false supporting imagery is new and dangerous for voters,” warns Darrell West, a Brookings Institution scholar. Such content can portray people in a false light and fuel false narratives that mislead the public. In fact, Trump’s allies have already used AI to fabricate scenes of opponents (for example, fake photos of Kamala Harris at a communist rally) to sway opinions. When the White House itself spreads AI-created manipulations, it further normalizes deception and erodes the public’s ability to discern truth. At a time when society is grappling with the “deepfake” phenomenon, the President’s meme campaign sends a troubling signal that facts and images are malleable if they serve a political narrative.
A Better Alternative: Supporting Real Art and Truth
Rather than relying on AI gimmicks to burnish its message, the government could take a more principled and productive approach by investing in authentic artistry and honest communication. There is historical precedent for positive leadership in this realm. During the Great Depression, the U.S. government (under FDR) launched the Works Progress Administration (WPA) arts programs, hiring over 10,000 artists to create public murals, posters, photographs, and more. These federal art projects not only kept artists employed during hard times but also enriched American culture and community life. Importantly, the New Deal administration valued art’s role in democracy—fostering a genuine national identity through creativity—as a democratic counterpoint to the propaganda machines of totalitarian regimes. The artwork produced under the WPA wasn’t about deifying a single leader; it was about reflecting the people’s stories and uplifting citizens with truthful, resonant art.
That lesson feels urgent today. Government leaders should champion human creativity and factual integrity in their messaging, not turn their social media into a circus of AI-manufactured self-portraits. Imagine if, instead of churning out “Superman Trump” memes, the administration commissioned talented young illustrators, designers, or satirists to contribute to public campaigns. Not only would this lend a personal, authentic touch far more meaningful than a generic algorithm’s output, but it would also support working artists at a time when AI threatens many creative jobs. In an era of rampant synthetic media, authenticity has real currency. By choosing real art over artificial imagery, the White House could still be creative and engaging without descending into farce or misleading theatrics. Ultimately, a presidency that respects truth and artistry would do far more to inspire the public than one that plays make-believe on the internet.
Bennett Gillespie is a student at Duke University and a council member of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy. He is also an intern with the Fulcrum.
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A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.