Since 2015, Donald Trump has been an apex predator on the internet. His social-media posts have caused geopolitical crises (we’ll invade Greenland!) and stock slumps (Amazon shares down 6 percent in one day!). For years, both Trump’s Republican opponents and Democrats tried to get the better of—or stoop lower than—the president and failed.
In contemporary internet slang, Trump is a Chad, an alpha male who almost always comes out on top in any internet spat and dominates his opponents. Those on the receiving end—the weak, feckless losers of the internet—are termed Virgins. Since late February, though, the Chad in chief has run up against a challenger that has relegated him to Virgin status: the Islamic Republic of Iran. The war that the United States fought against Tehran, now in a shaky two-week cease-fire, has been accompanied by a social-media trolling contest. Much as Iran’s forces exceeded expectations against the world’s most powerful military, Iran’s social-media posters have held their own against, or even upstaged, the world’s loudest voice online.
The most prominent example of Iran’s internet chops is a series of AI-generated Lego-inspired videos, produced by a pro-Iranian group, depicting a hapless Trump in various states of distress over a war that they allege he has been goaded into by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The videos also show Stars and Stripes–draped coffins. Many of the videos depict Trump starting the war to distract from his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted child trafficker. A recent one ends with Trump holding a white flag as he cries and eats a taco (a nod to the refrain that “Trump Always Chickens Out”). Many of these videos have gone viral, accruing tens of thousands of likes and millions of views on platforms including TikTok, Instagram, and X.
Trump, meanwhile, spent the war posting lengthy diatribes on Truth Social, where the user base consists largely of his own superfans, although the posts then circulated worldwide. Those messages were of great consequence for the direction of the war and, ultimately, the cease-fire, but they never made Trump seem relaxed or in control. (Even posting on his own platform gave a shut-in, Howard Hughes vibe.) Trump-administration accounts shared videos of targets in Iran that the military had blown up, which also went viral. One was edited to replicate the environment of the war video game Call of Duty, and another was set to the Macarena.
“The meme magic era Trump rode in on is long gone,” Jake Hanrahan told me. Hanrahan is the founder of Popular Front, an independent news outlet that trawls the depths of the internet and reports from conflict zones. In Hanrahan’s estimation, the White House has lost track of what resonates online. “They’ve put out YouTube horror–esque videos, and that doesn’t work,” Hanrahan said. “They’ve completely misunderstood the internet generation; the second you post cringe content, you’re done.” Iran’s videos aren’t exactly avant-garde (Legos are toys for children, after all) but they get their point across by depicting the dynamic of the U.S. as the “Virgin Israel puppet” against the “Chad, stoic underdog” Iran, Hanrahan said.
The Chad-versus-Virgin meme popped up about a decade ago, right around when Trump was finding his social-media voice as president. The formula can be applied to almost anything. A user asserting the superiority of tennis over pickleball might invoke a muscular Chad with a comically strong jaw, looming over a timid figure grasping a paddle. And of course, the meme could just as easily be adapted to the defense of pickleball.
But the memes, however silly or reductive, often go viral when they successfully distill some underlying reality. Iran’s online trolling of Trump might have resonated with American audiences by tapping into broader frustrations over his conduct of the war, which has driven gas prices higher and Trump’s approval rating lower, as my colleagues Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Russell Berman have reported.
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Trump’s war posts, by contrast, most often went viral for the apparent irrationality of his statements. When he threatened that Iran’s “whole civilization will die tonight” if no deal was reached, several of Trump’s erstwhile allies, including the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former representative turned Trump critic, advocated for the invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, which provides for the removal of an incapacitated president. Instead of making Trump appear bold or in control, the post made him seem maniacal and out of options.
The most popular Iranian videos come from a YouTube channel called Akhbar Enfejari (“Explosive News”), active on X and other platforms, which told The New Yorker that it has no official ties to the Iranian regime. But at least one state-media organization has reposted a video, and The Jerusalem Post reported that the clip appeared to have the watermark of Revayat-e Fath, an Iranian state-run media foundation.
Iranian embassies are posting their own memes. Iran’s embassy in Kenya has made a handful of references to Trump’s links to Epstein from its official government account. What appears to be the Iranian South Africa embassy account has called Trump a “psychopath” and accused him of having “memories with his filthy friends on Epstein Island.” (Trump denies ever having visited the island or having any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.)
The Lego-themed videos from Iran appear to be well crafted for American audiences. They are accompanied by terrible hip-hop songs, most likely produced by artificial intelligence, that are nevertheless oddly catchy. They distill simple messages: that Trump is a “L-O-S-E-R”; that if he sends troops to “slaughter, you’re the only one to blame”; and that “your government is run by pedophiles. They ordered you to die for Israel.”
All of this is very Trumpian. In the spring of last year, the White House posted two memes rendered to look as though they appeared in the animation style of Studio Ghibli—the beloved Japanese-animation company that created The Boy and the Heron and My Neighbor Totoro. One was of an immigrant being detained by ICE, and another showed Trump and J. D. Vance with the caption, “WE DO NOT ASK PERMISSION FROM FAR-LEFT DEMOCRATS before we deport illegal immigrants.” Some of the Iranian Lego videos show Trump crying; the Trump administration’s own videos have featured AI-modified versions of others crying.
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After the cease-fire announcement, the account linked to the Iranian embassy in South Africa posted a picture of the Iranian flag with the caption, “Say hello to the new world superpower.” This, too, echoed Trump-administration tactics. The White House posted the American flag in February 2025 on the day Vance chastised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a White House visit, and did so again four months later during the 12 days of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. Trump also posted the flag after the U.S. military assassinated Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in 2020.
But at some point during his second administration, Trump lost his Chad streak. His ties to Epstein undercut his reputation (with his fans) as a chill truth teller or (with his detractors) as a villain with an uncanny ability to demean his enemies. As he migrated to Truth Social, unencumbered by X’s word limit (he hasn’t posted from @realDonaldTrump on X in over a month), Trump’s posts seemed lengthier, more erratic, and less relaxed. When the war with Iran failed to deliver the quick win the administration was hoping for, Trump came across as wilder and less in control. By the time he decided to threaten the eradication of a civilization in a bid to get oil tankers moving again in the Strait of Hormuz, he completed his descent. Iran is the Chad now.
The post Donald Trump Is No Longer a Chad appeared first on The Atlantic.
