In second week of the Iran war, the White House emphasizes ‘fun’ and meme videos

At his political rally in Kentucky, Donald Trump told a curious story about Iranian ships destroyed by the U.S. military in recent days. According to the president’s version of events, he grew angry with his military leaders, asking, “Why the hell did we kill them? Why didn’t we just capture them and use them in our navy?”

Eventually, according to Trump, a U.S. general told him, “Sir, it’s a lot more fun doing it this way.”

The Republican told a nearly identical story to members of the House Republican conference two days earlier, again claiming that military leaders told him it’s “more fun” to sink Iranian ships than to capture them.

The use of the word “fun” was jarring for all of the obvious reasons. Trump was, after all, talking about a U.S. military offensive that has killed some American service members and left many more wounded — in addition to the massive casualties in Iran, including an apparent American missile strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed 175 civilians, most of whom were children.

There are a variety of adjectives that a wartime American leader should use when talking about this avoidable crisis. “Fun” isn’t one of them.

But by all appearances, the White House has come to a very different conclusion. As The New York Times reported:

On Feb. 28, the Trump administration launched war on Iran. The following week, it drafted Iron Man, Walter White and SpongeBob.

These characters, and many more figures from movies, TV, sports, music and video game memes, appeared in a series of short, trolling videos from the White House, on platforms including TikTok and X (formerly known as Twitter), that reduce the war’s carnage and upheaval to flippant, dystopian amusements.

On Wednesday night, the White House released another installment that featured Iranians as bowling pins. It looked like the sort of thing one might expect from an over-caffeinated 12-year-old, but it was instead released with apparent pride by the executive branch of the world’s preeminent superpower.

It was followed a day later by yet another video, this one combining actual footage of combat in Iran with clips from sports video games.

Connor Crehan, an Army veteran of the war in Iraq who co-hosts a Barstool Sports military podcast, argued via social media last week, “War isn’t a video game. The consequences of war are final. I wish we didn’t treat it with such a cavalier approach.”

The president and his team, however, appear eager, almost gleeful, to be cavalier about matters of life and death in ways that are fundamentally at odds with basic human decency.

It’s as if the White House saw the evidence of widespread public opposition to the war and concluded the way to turn things around is through juvenile taunts and jokes an adult should be embarrassed to make.

I don’t know what, if anything, could improve public support for this inexplicable war, but if the president and his team could try acting like grown-ups for a while, it’d be a step in the right direction.

Perhaps the best thing you can say for this particular public-relations effort is that at least it accurately embodies the pointless, slapdash amorality of the military offensive it’s meant to bolster.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”