Over the past few weeks, both the official White House and President Donald Trump’s social media accounts have released unprofessional and disrespectful posts. 

The Trump administration is massively compromising its governmental integrity, particularly in its actions online.

To start, they misappropriated satirical videos generated using artificial intelligence, feeding them into what the original creators called a “propaganda machine.“ They took Valentine’s Day, the day known for celebrating love, and turned it into a hateful, cruel meme of Trump and “border czar” Tom Homan’s faces on a background decorated with pink hearts. Posted on X, the text above them read “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you.”

A horrifying but unsurprising look into the violent views of this administration, this post showed all of this is just a joke to them, but for immigrants and their families, this is their lives at stake. As if the mass deportations and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids disrupting every corner of the country were not enough for immigrants already suffering, they had to mock their struggles even more with a meme.

Just days later, on Feb. 18, the White House posted a video of a deportation flight being boarded on X with the caption: “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” This video featured the sounds of chains and handcuffs being put on immigrants’ wrists and ankles and footage of them walking up the stairs to the aircraft.

To publicly mock these people on social media and make a joke of the millions of people whose lives and families have been uprooted is simply disgusting. The idea that a government account would post autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) anything is ridiculous, but to take such a serious issue and adhere it to a trend is entirely undignified. This continues to show how little immigrants are respected in this country, a country that was built on the backs of immigrants before us.

The day after that, in light of the removal of congestion pricing in New York City, Trump posted on Truth Social: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” The White House X and Instagram accounts took this quote and turned it into an image of Trump with a large crown on his head and the words “LONG LIVE THE KING” in the bottom left corner.

Despite leading a party that preaches patriotism, this is a new low in President Trump’s lack of patriotism and lack of respect for democratic values. As president of the United States, a country founded on democratic ideals as we fought to separate from the British monarchy, referring to himself as a king is not something that can be brushed aside.

This is added to the ever-growing list of blatantly unconstitutional actions done by our current president in less than two months of his second administration. They are disrespecting the very institution of the presidency by disregarding precedents set in our country’s history.

Just this past week, Trump posted a captionless AI video of “Trump Gaza,” depicting his plan for turning the destroyed Gaza strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” after removing all of the native Palestinians. My jaw was practically off of its hinges for the entire length of this video as I watched images of children holding gold balloons of Trump’s head and a nauseating clip of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lying shirtless on a resort beach.

Yet again, Trump made a mockery of the very serious role of the president of the United States while also denigrating another extremely serious issue. Thousands of Palestinians have died in the last year and many more have lost family members and entire neighborhoods, but instead of offering his support to rebuild the place they call home, he is advertising a profitable resort destination in place of their homes.

The government should be using social media as a tool to communicate with the masses about press releases and important government actions, not as a platform for insensitive memes and careless jokes. Many conservatives preach having respect for our country, yet they support an administration that seems to be actively promoting our image as the laughingstock of the world.

This undignified use of social media simply amplifies the fact that this administration feels they do not need to take their governmental roles seriously. Simply put, the reason is that the American people let them. If we do not denounce this behavior, we promote their ability to act this way without consequence. The American people need to stand up against this administration and speak their minds about their abuse of the media and lack of respect for the people of their country and others.

Molly O’Connor, FCRH ’28, is a journalism major from Weymouth, Mass.