The White House website on Thursday launched a series of arcade-style video games promoting President Donald Trump’s agenda.
In “Rio Run,” a spin on the decades-old game Snake, players can gather and deport migrants along the Rio Grande. “Build the Wall,” a Tetris-style game, lets players stack sections of a border wall to “protect the border from the coming horde.” In “Trump Savings Tycoon,” players collect cash and gold bars flying through the air to “fill your kids’ Trump Accounts,” referring to the Administration’s tax-advantaged investment accounts for newborns.
Other games include “Supply Line,” where players sort out school lunch items to “Make America Healthy Again,” and “Flappy Bill,” where players fly a bald eagle carrying legislation over the National Mall in the style of popular mobile game Flappy Bird.
“This is an effort to further contrast between a culture of fun and winning and the dark socialist vision Democrats have for America,” a White House official told Fox News.
TIME has reached out to the White House for comment.
Kaelan Dorr, a deputy assistant to the President and head of digital strategy, referred to the games as “policy you can interact with.”
https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2095615734567100766
The White House’s digital strategy
The video games are the latest effort by the Trump Administration to use the Internet and pop culture to promote its policies.
Across its social media accounts, the White House has posted AI-generated content and political memes, as well as mocked its critics online. The strategy has drawn criticism, with artists like Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo condemning the Administration’s use of their music in videos pushing its agenda.
The “Arcade” has drawn backlash from rights groups, who argue it gamifies mass deportations and trivializes human suffering.
“They’ve been playing games with people’s lives for years, now they’ve made a video game of what they’re doing,” Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-director of the Frontera Federation in Eagle Pass, Texas, told AFP.
Democratic lawmakers argued that the games reflect the White House’s misplaced priorities, especially as the U.S. war against Iran has driven up household inflation and fuel costs for Americans.
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Rep. Ted Lieu of California questioned the White House’s focus on arcade-style games when the national average gasoline price has risen to around $4.14. “November is coming,” he wrote in a post on X, referring to the looming midterms.
“Heating oil is near an all-time high, but hey you can play Border Czar Tom Homan in a video game,” Connecticut state senator Matt Lesser posted on X.
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