Some confuse Star Wars with Star Trek. Then there’s the current U.S. administration, which has confused Star Wars‘ Light Side of the Force with the Dark Side on Star Wars Day. In a post shared by the official White House and POTUS social media accounts, Donald Trump is shown wearing a Jedi cloak with two bald eagles and American flags behind him, with a grimace on his face and a red lightsaber in his hand. The irony of this is only amplified by the text attached to the image.
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It posits that the “Radical Left Lunatics” are pushing for “Sith Lords, Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, & well-known MS-13 Gang Members, back into our Galaxy.”
If there’s anything that’s known about the Star Wars franchise on a macro scale, it’s that the protagonists hold green or blue (or purple) lightsabers and the villains, without exception, hold red lightsabers.
Unpacking the Newest AI Image
There are a few deeply troubling elements here. One is that “well-known MS-13 Gang Member” could certainly be considered a not-so-thinly-veiled reference to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is well-known for his deportation controversy, but has not yet been confirmed as a member of MS-13. Two, it’s hard to take a post that says to the Left “You’re not the Rebellion—you’re the Empire,” seriously when the lone individual visually represented is holding a lightsaber awfully similar to the one held by the two actual leaders of the Empire. The fake bulging muscles also don’t help.
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It’s now tied for first when it comes to the most ludicrous AI-generated images to come from the official White House Instagram account (the other is, of course, the AI-generated image of Trump as the Pope). Well, there’s an argument to be made they’re vying for second after the AI-generated video of the administration’s plan for a gold statue-laden quasi-theme park raised from the wreckage of Gaza.
What are people saying about it? Let’s start with the reaction post released by none other than Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill (who visited the White House last year for Star Wars Day). Hamill was as witty as ever, writing that Trump was “full of SITH” for the post.
Reactions on Instagram
Most of the reactions fall into one of two categories. Some point out the logic gap here – like one user who wrote “Again, red lightsabers are the bad guys” and another who added “Imagine watching Star Wars your whole life and still thinking the guy with the red lightsaber is the good guy.”
The other side of the coin is the natural first reaction that pops up in (most) people’s minds when seeing the image. For instance, one user wrote “This is so f***ing embarrassing,” which was a sentiment mirrored by other users with “I cannot believe this is the actual White House account. Laughingstock of the world. Wow.” and “This is honestly so embarrassing. These White House social media posts will go down in history books to illustrate the most ignorant era in American history.”
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