The White House has responded after drawing ire and backlash over its recent memes, one of which included a fake movie poster depicting President Donald Trump as Superman.
In a post shared across its core social media accounts on Friday night, the White House said: “Nowhere in the Constitution does it say we can’t post banger memes,” alongside a picture of an announcement board that read “OMG, did the White House really post this?” In response, one X user argued that such memes show “how unserious this Administration is.” The White House’s defiant stance was also shared across the official POTUS accounts on X, Instagram, and Facebook.
The White House earlier on Friday posted an AI-altered image of Rep. Jimmy Gomez of California, a Democrat, after he criticized an ICE raid at a marijuana farm. The post featured a doctored image of Gomez crying, labeling him “cryin’ Jimmy.” The upload was condemned by many, with one Instagram user asking: “Why is the official White House page making these kind[s] of comments?”
Meanwhile, on Thursday night, the White House social team prompted reactions far and wide, some of the mocking variety, when it replaced actor David Corenswet with Trump in a meme of the poster for the new movie Superman. Where the original poster says “A James Gunn film” at the top, the Trump team’s alternative reads “A Trump presidency,” followed by the slogan: “Truth. Justice. The American Way.” The accompanying caption referred to “Superman Trump” as the “Symbol of hope.” The mock-up movie poster stood out amid a slew of other posts that focused on high-stakes matters such as the Trump Administration’s border patrol policies and the relief efforts for the devastating Texas floods.
The White House’s foray into movie-related memes came after Superman writer and director Gunn drew ire from conservative voices after declaring that the superhero is, in fact, an immigrant. In an interview with the Times of London, Gunn said: “I mean, Superman is the story of America. An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”
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In the midst of Trump’s immigration crackdown—which has resulted in an uptick of ICE raids across the U.S., but especially in states such as Texas and California, some conservative commentators and platforms took umbrage to Gunn’s framing of Superman, who is originally from the fictional planet of Krypton, as an inspiring immigrant. Prior to the film’s release, Ben Shapiro complained that “Superman is going woke,” while Kellyanne Conway, a former White House counselor who served during Trump’s first term, said on Fox News that people “don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to” or to “have somebody throw their ideology onto us.”
Actor Dean Cain, who played Superman in the hit ‘90s TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, also spoke out against Gunn’s assessment of the character. Cain told TMZ he thought it was “a mistake by James Gunn to say it’s an immigrant thing” and shared his concerns that the comments might impact the success of the movie.
But others in the political realm have been steadfast in their support of Gunn’s framing of the character.
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“I’m a long time Superman fan, and I want to be clear: The Superman story is an immigration story of an outsider who tries to always do the most good,” said Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California. “His arch nemesis is a billionaire. You don’t get to change who he is because you don’t like his story. Comics are political.”
Meanwhile California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his office have also joined the political discourse.
Newsom recently took the Trump Administration to court after the President deployed the National Guard and Marines to quell the immigration-related protests in Los Angeles without a request from the state Governor. Newsom and his office have been outspoken against the ICE raids Trump is overseeing in L.A. and throughout the state. As such, in response to the White House’s meme of Trump as Superman, Newsom’s office replied: “Superman was an undocumented immigrant.”
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