A MAGA official has branded his critics “snowflakes” after marking this year’s holiday season by sharing his apparent fantasy of whaling on a defenseless Saint Nick on the steps of Indiana’s State Capitol building.
State Senator Chris Garten shared the AI-generated images on X on Christmas Day. One of the four pictures features the two-term Republican state senator, decked in a sleeveless suit à la WWE, kicking a bewildered Santa Claus squarely on the chin to send the beloved, age-old children’s folk character sailing backwards through the air.
A second shows the MAGA official launching himself forward with the apparent intention of following up with a flying punch to the jaw. A third shows him further brutalizing the trembling, mythic gift-giver as he writhes in agony on the floor.
The fourth image shows Garten in sunglasses astride one of Santa’s reindeer. Supporters cheer his victory as the animal rears and the state senator raises a swollen, veined arm in the air, wearing what appears to be Kris Kringle’s iconic red and white suit, taken and de-sleeved as a trophy.
It is unclear to what audience exactly Garten felt he was playing to with his post. He shared the photos with a caption raging against Santa’s otherwise chronically underreported support for big government.
“When you find out the North Pole is trying to bring more bureaucratic overreach & unfunded mandates down the chimney disguised as ‘Christmas cheer’,” he wrote. “Not on my watch. We The People run Indiana, not the bureaucrats.”
“Take it back to the North Pole big guy,” he added. “Merry Christmas, Hoosiers.”
Garten’s bid at satire was decidedly lost on users in the comments section. “What on earth would compel a person to post images of them beating up a universally beloved figure?” one person wrote.
“Pretty weird,” another more succinctly put it.
The state senator has since been swift to insist the yuletide clobbering wasn’t entirely his idea.
“Lots of intolerance, sweating, and outrage on display over a few AI pics I had a blast designing with my kids,” he wrote in a subsequent post. “Some of you clowns are just insufferable. Hopefully your negativity stays in the comments and not directed at your families.”
“Merry Christmas, snowflakes,” Garten added, accompanied by another AI-generated photo of himself in a Santa suit, pointing at an oversized snowflake.
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