Cabinet secretaries and agency heads are regularly cutting direct-to-viewer videos to press home Trump’s “America first” message on X, the company owned by billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk, while White House staffers pillory critics in real time on the platform.
The White House started posting last week on Truth Social, Trump’s own platform where he regularly breaks news with statements. The administration has also posted brash videos to Instagram about migrant deportations — highlighting a core issue Trump campaigned on.
“It’s not engagement for engagement’s sake,” White House deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr told The Hill in an interview. “We’re effectively communicating a message.”
On Valentine’s Day, the White House posted a poem alongside photos of Trump and border czar Tom Homan: “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally and we’ll deport you."
Dorr maintained that the sometimes “irreverent” tone coming from the administration online is connecting with users, particularly people ages 25-34.
And the scale of the digital effort has grown.
X, previously called Twitter, is where the administration has gotten the most traction, Dorr said.
While Musk does not have a formal role in the administration's social media strategy, his command of the platform has helped set the tone for defending the president's agenda and hitting back at critics.
In addition to now posting on Truth Social, the White House recently also expanded to conservative site Rumble.
One platform the White House isn’t actively engaging on just yet: TikTok.
The embattled video-sharing app is wildly popular among American users, particularly young people, but is banned across federal devices. And while Trump’s campaign posted regularly on TikTok, the White House does not have a verified account and is not creating content for the app.
However, that will change if TikTok severs ties with the Chinese government, according to a White House official.
Trump, through executive action, delayed enforcement of the ban on TikTok in the U.S. for 75 days, setting an April 5 deadline to hash out a deal for it to divest from China-based parent company ByteDance.
Many of the digital tactics, including the White House’s “Rapid Response 47” account on X and its direct, sometimes emoji-touting posts, resemble online communications sent during the campaign.
The Biden administration and Biden-Harris campaigns often generated buzz by embracing sometimes ambiguous memes like “Dark Brandon” and “Brat” in social media posts.
Dorr said his driving focus behind each post is “what’s the purpose” and they work to avoid glomming onto trends.
“We’re speaking to people in a language they understand,” Dorr said.
Annelise Russell, a public policy professor at the University of Kentucky, said the political communication climate has shifted significantly since Trump’s first term eight years ago, and the new White House team appears to be navigating platforms more effectively.
“Understanding the digital audience and what’s possible, I think there is a lot of awareness there,” she said.
The pace of the White House’s digital effort has also increased. Trump regularly makes news during on-camera appearances multiple times a day. That’s pushed digital staffers to race to keep up.
Dan Scavino, Trump's deputy chief of staff, frequently shares behind-the-scenes activities to his nearly 2.4 million followers across his personal and official accounts, including hallway views of Trump walking from one engagement to the next.
Last week, Scavino posted a popular meme of Trump pointing and nodding his head. Written across the aide’s version, which came after federal workers were ordered to return to their offices: "Guess who needs to go to work tomorrow?"
The often-confrontational style and tone shared across the White House accounts has been mimicked throughout the administration.
Like Trump, some agency heads have started posting direct-to-camera videos, including Homan, Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
And like the White House accounts, departments in the administration have created their own viral videos.
The U.S. Border Patrol has posted multiple quick-cut clips set to tracks from pop music, including a video last month showing an aerial view of a border vehicle patrolling the Southern border. The post included audio of a Black Eyed Peas song with the lyrics “Right at the borderline, That's where I'm gonna wait, for you, I'll be looking out, night and day.”
The post garnered hundreds of thousands of “likes” since it was published last month.
And while Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles in December reportedly ordered nominees awaiting Senate confirmation to run social media posts by White House counsel, the White House does not have a formal process for signing off on individual agencies’ posts.
Dorr said the White House wants to encourage creativity from staffers across the administration.
“That’s the beauty of this — anybody can do it if they believe in the administration and have the confidence to do it,” he said.
– Reporting by Elizabeth Crisp
