How the Trump administration is utilizing social media content material to control : NPR

A helicopter flies low throughout the water at evening earlier than closely armed figures rappel to the bottom, take their positions and break down a door. It isn’t a trailer for a film, a online game or a recap of a Pentagon operation.

As an alternative, it is a video from the Division of Homeland Safety showcasing Border Patrol brokers at work. Regardless of the combative visuals, it’s captioned with the Bible verse, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be known as sons of God.”

In President Trump’s second time period, content material is governing and governing is content material. Movies like these — in addition to from pleasant influencers — are how the administration justifies its more and more aggressive immigration insurance policies.

The messaging blitz to regulate the narrative has most not too long ago been on show in Minnesota, the place a surge of brokers and the deadly taking pictures final week of 37-year-old Renee Macklin Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent has put the White Home’s on-line statements and real-life actions within the highlight.

After one other ICE-involved taking pictures in Minneapolis Wednesday night, movies confirmed federal brokers utilizing flash-bang grenades, pepper balls and chemical irritants in opposition to protestors. Nearly instantly, pro-Trump influencers used clips of the incident to name for the president to invoke the Rebellion Act and deploy the army.

By Thursday morning, Trump had threatened to do exactly that except the “corrupt politicians of Minnesota” stopped “the skilled agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who’re solely attempting to do their job.” The White Home posted an picture of armed federal brokers, some carrying masks, with the caption, “STAND WITH ICE.”

It isn’t simply Minnesota the place the Trump administration is utilizing social media to drive its insurance policies and converse to focused audiences.

Within the first weeks of 2026, a army raid to grab Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro generated a flood of viral pictures and clips. Official images of Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth and others confirmed that they had been additionally monitoring search outcomes for Venezuela on the social media platform X.

The Labor Division shared a graphic tagged with a preferred QAnon conspiracy slogan urging Individuals to “Belief the Plan” whereas an ICE recruitment publish on Instagram proclaims “WE’LL HAVE OUR HOME AGAIN,” attaching a tune of the identical identify popularized by white supremacists.

On-line and from the White Home briefing room, Vice President JD Vance chastised the media and critics, whereas the official White Home X account copied well-liked meme codecs to often assert that the USA will take over Greenland.

“The technique seems extra like steady campaigning, extra so than the managed and toned down communication we usually would affiliate with a governing administration,” stated Yini Zhang, a College at Buffalo professor who research political communications on social media. “Quantity is a characteristic, as a result of they will publish very ceaselessly and so they can form agenda and framing in actual time.”

The administration’s posts are sometimes designed to impress a response, troll opponents and ceaselessly paint Democrats, immigrants and the media as threats.

“It is combative, it is extremely provocative, but it surely’s additionally centered on a really specific sort of combat between actual Individuals — which maps on to MAGA — after which this imagined liberal different,” stated Whitney Phillips, a professor on the College of Oregon who research how data impacts folks. She added, “It’s framed as a full-on cosmic drama between final good and supreme evil.”

In an announcement to NPR, White Home assistant press secretary Liz Huston stated “the White Home has an genuine type and unmatched communications technique as a result of it is led by the best communicator within the historical past of American politics – President Donald J. Trump.”

From viral video to funding cuts in three weeks

The Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in Minnesota, which has been labeled the biggest DHS operation in historical past, was itself propelled by viral social media content material created by its allies, particularly a video created by 23-year-old YouTuber Nick Shirley that alleged widespread fraud at a number of Somali-run daycare facilities.

Shirley visited a lot of daycares unannounced with a digital camera and an entourage and claimed the daycare facilities should not really be serving youngsters as a result of he discovered locked doorways or employees declined to reply questions and he couldn’t see if there have been youngsters inside. His particular claims are thus far unsubstantiated — state investigators discovered daycares featured within the movie working as anticipated.

Different large fraud schemes in state social service applications are properly documented. In a federal case that started throughout the Biden administration, at the least 78 folks, lots of them of Somali descent, have been criminally charged associated to a $250 million scheme involving a COVID-era vitamin program.

Vance rapidly praised Shirley’s video and this week, as Shirley launched a second one, the White Home posted, “The movies from Nick Shirley have shed large mild on the scenario in Minnesota.”

In current weeks, the Trump administration has introduced unprecedented efforts to withhold federal funding for Minnesota and different Democratic-led states, although courts have thus far blocked most of these makes an attempt. Trump additionally threatened Tuesday to halt funds to “sanctuary cities or states having sanctuary cities” subsequent month.

The administration additionally introduced the top of Short-term Protected Standing for Somali nationals on Tuesday and included a meme referencing a Somali pirate from a Tom Hanks film. Trump then posted on his personal social media web site, defending ICE and warning there was extra to return: “FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”

The Homeland Safety X account this week shared a “reminder” from White Home deputy chief of employees for coverage Stephen Miller that ICE officers “have federal immunity within the conduct of your duties,” indicating the administration has no intention of attempting to decrease the temperature.

However authorized students have identified that federal brokers would not have absolute immunity and may be prosecuted for crimes, with some exceptions.

“Anyone who lays a hand on you or tries to cease you or tries to hinder you is committing a felony,” Miller stated on Fox Information. “You might have immunity to carry out your duties and nobody — no metropolis official, no state official, no unlawful alien, no leftist agitator or home insurrectionist — can stop you from fulfilling your authorized obligations and duties.”

A rush to judgment

Video footage from Jan. 7 reveals Renee Macklin Good, a U.S. citizen, was blocking a lane in her SUV on a Minneapolis road when ICE agent Jonathan Ross circled her automobile and two different brokers then ordered her out of her car. One agent tried to open the driving force’s facet door. Good briefly reversed her automobile, turned her steering wheel to the precise which turned her wheels away from Ross, who at that time was close to the entrance left of the automobile, and drove ahead.

Ross fired his gun, fatally taking pictures Good. DHS officers have advised media retailers, together with NPR, that Ross suffered inner bleeding from being struck by the automobile. The company has not responded to NPR’s questions in regards to the extent of the accidents.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz blamed the Trump administration for escalating tensions. “What we’re seeing is the implications of governance designed to generate concern, headlines, and battle,” Walz stated at a press convention after the taking pictures. “It is governing by actuality TV, and at this time that recklessness price somebody their life.”

A number of movies of the taking pictures from completely different angles — together with the video Ross had recorded on his personal cellular phone in a single hand as he fired his gun together with his different — had been shared on-line and integrated right into a sea of content material from administration officers geared toward justifying the taking pictures.

As an alternative of awaiting an investigation to find out the information about Good’s dying, the Trump administration’s quick response left no room for nuance or debate. Inside hours, Trump posted to his social media platform that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer,” including that “it’s arduous to imagine he’s alive.”

Vance known as Good a “deranged leftist,” stated “no one debates” that she aimed her automobile on the officer and put her foot on the accelerator, and scolded journalists on X for “mendacity” in regards to the “harmless” ICE officer.

4 days later, when it was clear that many Individuals and media retailers had interpreted the video proof in another way, a DHS company spokesperson made a video reinforcing the administration’s narrative and attempting to discredit different interpretations. “The nonstop lies and smears from the FAKE NEWS are supposed to tear down our courageous women and men who shield our homeland day-after-day,” learn the caption.

The swiftness of the Trump administration’s very on-line effort to regulate the narrative of the taking pictures has pissed off critics, together with Michael Brodkorb, a former officer of the Minnesota Republican Occasion who says the emphasis on “management by means of social media” just isn’t serving to soothe tensions.

“There was no cause in any way I believe from a public coverage standpoint, from a regulation enforcement standpoint or from an investigative matter, to exit and body what occurred in such blunt, uncooked language — apart from for content material to energise people on social media and to whip them up right into a lather,” Brodkorb stated.

Brodkorb stated the movies that doc earlier than, throughout and after the taking pictures provides folks extra data and perspective about what occurred, however on the similar time a broader on-line battle round Minnesota — like Trump calling folks from Somalia “rubbish” — means there isn’t any humanity within the dialogue.

“We have misplaced the power to creatively and constructively take into consideration issues,” he stated. “Essential pondering is simply gone. It is out the window, and it is turning into an increasing number of troublesome for folks to, in essence, name balls and strikes pretty usually and issues that we’re seeing proper in entrance of our eyes with out being lobbed into one camp or one other.”

The present political setting has switched from being coverage pushed to narrative pushed, the place somebody’s perspective on a problem is set by the celebration they voted for as a substitute of what they may very well be persuaded to imagine, stated Larry Schack, a political strategist who not too long ago revealed an evaluation of the 2024 election with the College of Virginia’s Heart for Politics.

“We discovered that voters have largely deserted issue-by-issue evaluation,” he wrote this week. “As an alternative, they undertake broad partisan narratives that form their understanding of every part, together with — as we’re seeing in actual time — the fundamental information of a taking pictures captured on video.”

Schack advised NPR that a rise of political messaging that reinforces division is “the kind of setting through which democracy over time turns into unsustainable.”

Within the case of the Minnesota taking pictures, Schack stated the quick soar to partisan conclusions meant that proof “does not exist to tell, the proof exists to create and increase and blow out the narratives that assist the predominant view of every facet.”

Trump’s rise to energy has been accelerated by the web

The Trump administration’s governance by means of content material creation technique is in some methods the logical conclusion for a president whose 2016 marketing campaign was formed by headline-grabbing social media posts, is now the proprietor of a social media web site, and whose return to the White Home was propelled partly by the rising affect of right-wing content material creators and podcasters in addition to the algorithms of websites like X.

Whereas the early days of 2026 have been dominated by an particularly intense digital presence from the Trump administration, its perpetually on-line technique has been central to key initiatives from the beginning of his second time period.

The Division of Authorities Effectivity effort that spent a lot of 2025 making an attempt to overtake the federal government was impressed by a longstanding on-line meme and overseen by Elon Musk, the proprietor of the social media platform X.

DOGE’s efforts to cancel federal contracts, hearth federal employees and acquire unprecedented entry to delicate knowledge on tens of millions of Individuals had been themselves fueled by on-line strategies on X and defended in social media content material that relied on overstated and inaccurate claims of fraud.

The always-online focus can be evident within the Trump administration’s staffing. A number of administration officers had giant followings as on-line influencers earlier than becoming a member of authorities, together with Dan Bongino who not too long ago left the FBI and has promised to begin podcasting once more. Final month, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant lawyer normal for civil rights, grumbled on X that her follower depend was not rising. “What sort of content material do my people wish to see extra of to love and share?” she posted.

The results of getting senior authorities officers compulsively posting on-line is a priority for Don Moynihan, a professor at College of Michigan’s Ford College of Public Coverage, who known as the fusion of posting and coverage a “clicktatorship.”

“Spending extreme time on-line results in extra excessive habits in an unrealistic and more and more poisonous setting — simply to maintain the dopamine coming,” Moynihan wrote in his e-newsletter. “These bubbles are far worse for the wealthy and highly effective, who have already got restricted contact with folks not beholden to them. It hardly wants declaring that that is lower than best for a consultant authorities.”

Within the final 12 months, the Trump administration has come to view influencers and partisan journalists as a main viewers it must cater to. It holds particular briefings for them, provides them entry to Cupboard members and invitations them on ICE ride-alongs.

One occasion final 12 months, to debate antifa, the far-left ideology opposing fascism, happened after pro-Trump influencers amplified protests in Portland over ICE and portrayed town as a struggle zone requiring army intervention. The invitees included Nick Shirley. Some influencers urged Trump to designate antifa as a international terrorist group. The next month the State Division issued the designation for 4 European leftist teams. 

“You must take into consideration the political influencers as being fairly aligned and a part of that propaganda machine, partly due to the incentives and the entry that they need to the administration,” stated Renée DiResta, a professor at Georgetown College who research on-line adversarial abuse, affect and propaganda.

“And that, I believe that is not usually how folks have thought of propaganda. They thought of it extra as a high down media, if something, or state media. However this intersection with the creator and the administration is altering what that phrase means and the way that relationship operates.”

A lot of those self same on-line influencers are actually sharing video of clashes between protesters and federal brokers in Minneapolis.

“What drives consideration greater than ever is battle, animosity,” Brodkorb, the Minnesota Republican, stated. “And that is simply not a method to resolve issues, and it will possibly simply inflame a scenario. And what we’re seeing proper now in Minnesota is precisely that.”

Profitable the web – however not public opinion?

The Trump administration’s social media-first technique has performed a job in quite a few different controversies within the final 12 months, usually involving AI-generated pictures and movies to troll political opponents, together with a video that purported to point out Trump piloting a fighter jet and dropping poop on a Democratic commentator and anti-Trump protesters.

The Division of Homeland Safety specifically has come below hearth for repeated posts that reference extremist and neo-Nazi materials, and in current days the Division of Labor and the White Home have additionally posted content material that embrace such canine whistles.

However catering to its most fervent on-line supporters has additionally generally backfired on the administration. Through the 2024 marketing campaign, Trump and his allies embraced conspiracies about Jeffrey Epstein and vowed to launch the entire authorities’s details about Epstein, who died by suicide whereas in jail awaiting trial on costs of sexually abusing and trafficking youngsters. Trump’s marketing campaign advised Democrats had been behind efforts to maintain the reality from the general public.

As soon as in workplace, Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi invited a bunch of pro-Trump influencers to obtain binders that supposedly included half one of many Epstein recordsdata, just for it to be revealed that they included little new materials. Trump then spent a lot of the 12 months attacking his supporters’ requires the paperwork to be launched.

The frustration and outrage amongst some Trump supporters about his dealing with of the Epstein paperwork in the end led to a small riot amongst congressional Republicans, who accredited near-unanimous laws requiring the federal authorities to launch nearly all the data it has about Epstein after Trump relented to the strain.

The White Home posting type has additionally impressed some opponents, most notably California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and extra not too long ago New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, to imitate Trump’s trolling antagonism.

However this coarsening of the political discourse can have grave penalties and result in extra polarization, Zhang of the College at Buffalo warns.

“Extra folks is perhaps repelled by politics and would possibly tune out of politics and political information as a result of they’re simply disgusted with the tough rhetoric and this sort of like countless finger pointing and blaming from either side,” Zhang stated.

On the similar time, current viral movies of masked federal brokers in Minneapolis utilizing aggressive techniques, together with smashing automobile home windows and dragging folks out of them, might immediate some Individuals who had stopped following the information this 12 months to tune again in.

On Wednesday night, Walz urged Minnesotans to make use of their cell telephones to make extra movies of ICE brokers’ abuses.

“Assist us create a database of the atrocities in opposition to Minnesotans — not simply to ascertain a file for posterity, however to financial institution proof for future prosecution,” Walz stated.

Movies that present issues that Individuals should not used to seeing are arduous to disregard, stated Phillips of the College of Oregon.

“The irony would possibly in the end be that if the administration has harnessed for their very own profit the algorithms and trending subjects — that these exact same issues is perhaps what in the end grow to be a part of their undoing when folks see it after which assume, ‘Oh, God,'” Phillips stated.