The government shutdown is hindering the work of the White House in one of its most vital and time-consuming areas: childish trolling.
Not only are hundreds of thousands of federal workers being furloughed because of a lapse in congressional funding—which the ruling GOP is insisting is the fault of the Democrats—the shutdown also seems to be impeding the White House press team’s ability to fire off edgelord memes and try-hard clapbacks to the media.
“Due to staff shortages resulting from the Democrat Shutdown, the typical 24/7 monitoring of this press inbox may experience delays. We ask for your patience as our staff work to field your requests promptly,” reads an automatic response to the White House press email address.
“As you await a response, please remember this could have been avoided if the Democrats voted for the clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government open. The press office also cannot accommodate waves requests or escorts at this time.”
The Daily Beast itself will notice how much the government shutdown is affecting the White House trolling factory, as it has been subjected numerous times to its Extremely Online responses to requests for comment.
The non-exhaustive list includes: sending an AI-generated image of Gavin Newsom sporting a sombrero and mustache in response to the California governor’s trolling campaign against MAGA figures; using official White House communications to send a meme of a man with a bicycle fixed to his head and the caption “dOeS ThE MeME mAkE sEnSe????????”; and simply replying “Cry more, libs,” in response to criticism that a Department of Homeland Security recruitment drive echoed Nazi rhetoric.
The White House communications team is known to thrown in the odd obscenity, such as saying the Beast “must be f—ing blind or stupid” for suggesting that 79-year-old Donald Trump appeared to struggle to walk in a straight line.
The press team has also repeatedly blasted out boilerplate responses attacking author Michael Wolff, a frequent guest on the Daily Beast’s podcasts, as a “lying sack of s–t” suffering from a “severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
Unfortunately, the shutdown hasn’t brought the White House trolling campaign to a complete standstill.
On Wednesday, a racist AI-generated video featuring House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero and handlebar mustache alongside a deepfake of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claiming “nobody likes Democrats because of woke trans bulls–t”—was played on a loop for hours in the White House’s James S. Brady briefing room.
In a statement to The Washington Post about why the White House put the deranged video, previously shared by Trump, on repeat, White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson said: “The sombreros will continue until the Democrats reopen the government!”
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