{"id":16500,"date":"2026-01-14T08:05:32","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T08:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/newstime\/inside-the-white-house-shitposting-machine\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T08:05:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T08:05:32","slug":"inside-the-white-house-shitposting-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/newstime\/inside-the-white-house-shitposting-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the White House shitposting machine"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Hello and welcome to <\/em>Regulator, a newsletter for <\/em>Verge subscribers about the technology, broligarchs and brainrot rapidly transforming politics and civic society. Not subscribed to <\/em>The Verge yet? You should! <\/em>It can materially improve your life<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Last week was a grim reminder that no matter what sort of horror is being perpetrated or how many people end up dead, the Trump administration\u2019s knee-jerk response is to shitpost through it. The White House\u2019s response on X to abducting the head of a sovereign nation<\/a>? \u201cFAFO\u201d<\/a>. The response to an ICE agent shooting a woman in broad daylight? A Buzzfeed-style listicle<\/a> of \u201c57 Times Sick, Unhinged Democrats Declared War on Law Enforcement.\u201d ICE agents arresting protesters? \u201cWelcome to the Find Out stage.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To the vast majority of people following current events, the Trump administration\u2019s meme-ing is blunt and cruel. But the jaded political insider will also<\/em> view Trump\u2019s meme fusillade as an element of a media strategy known as \u201crapid response\u201d: the full-time work of quickly shaping the political narrative of a breaking news event, sometimes within minutes, before the news media and your opponents can shape it for you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cEvery political office, every political campaign, has a dedicated operation that helps them respond strategically to events in the news that are out of their control.\u201d Lis Smith, a high-profile Democratic communications strategist based in New York City, told me. It\u2019s a profession that dates back to the beginning of the 24-hour news cycle, when cable shows could quickly assemble a panel of pundits to discuss current events, and the workload has grown exponentially in the age of social media. \u201cYou cannot control all the narratives that are going to be out there, so you need to be able to manage the chaos that\u2019s coming into your world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Smith served as the director of rapid response for Barack Obama\u2019s 2012 presidential campaign, which was one of the first to fully take advantage of social media, and worked in the comms shop for several New York City mayors and Democratic candidates. She\u2019s widely credited for single-handedly elevating Pete Buttigieg<\/a>\u2019s profile, turning him from an obscure mayor to a serious presidential candidate as his director of communications. She views social networks through the lens of their messaging utility: X, formerly known as Twitter, is still the best for getting \u201ctext-based rapid response communications like written statements\u201d in front of a wide range of \u201celites and opinion-shapers.\u201d A Bluesky-based messaging strategy might engage a friendly left-leaning audience, but will never \u201cpenetrate\u201d the world outside, nor will a Rumble-based campaign ever make it out of the right-wing bubble.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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More importantly: memes may be a fast way to convey a political message to a specific audience who gets the inside joke, but the humor is rarely understood by anyone outside of that group \u2014 especially people who might have been sympathetic to the concept of stopping illegal immigration, but are horrified by how the Trump administration is going about it. The memes themselves are simply a reflection of that mindset. \u201cThe administration\u2019s use of memes really flattens the political debate,\u201d said Smith. \u201cIt takes the humanity, the seriousness, and the nuance that\u2019s needed out of it and replaces it just with cruelty.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Before we get to my conversation with Smith, here\u2019s The Verge<\/em>\u2019s latest on the political tech dystopia:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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