A recent surge in federal agents and Trump-friendly social media influencers to Minnesota is part of a White House communication strategy that emphasizes online content to influence policy.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
There is not just a surge of immigration officers in the Twin Cities. There’s also been a growing number of right-wing influencers to document the officers’ arrests and clashes with protesters. Both are part of a White House strategy that has used social media content to justify and promote its increasingly aggressive immigration policies. NPR’s Stephen Fowler has been reporting on the administration’s online presence. Stephen, a lot of the administration’s messaging around what’s happening in Minnesota seems to be online. President Trump posted on his social media site, threatening to use the Insurrection Act, and the White House is posting memes on their account. What’s their strategy here?
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Well, A, for the Trump administration, content is governing and governing is content. The push into Minnesota with a record number of immigration agents is inspired in part by a viral social media video with unproven claims of fraud. More agents means more protests. More protests bring the Trump-friendly influencers to document the scene, and all of these videos are, in turn, used to justify more agents and the government’s response. Beyond ICE agents, the administration has also sought to freeze different types of federal aid to the state and end temporary protected status for Somalis, all of them accompanied by memes and trolling of Democrats. Whitney Phillips, for the University of Oregon, calls it combat sensationalism.
WHITNEY PHILLIPS: It’s combative. It’s highly provocative, but it’s also focused on a very particular kind of fight between real Americans, which maps onto MAGA and then this imagined liberal other.
MARTÍNEZ: Stephen, what other ways are you seeing this online strategy?
FOWLER: Well, in the last two weeks alone, there have been a firehose of examples – the Trump administration using social media to drive policies and to speak to targeted audiences. You’ve got the defense secretary monitoring the situation in Venezuela with tabs of X, the social media platform behind him. You’ve got agencies posting QAnon slogans and songs associated with white supremacists. And the official White House account has repeatedly asserted that the United States is seizing Greenland while using popular meme formats of the day. I asked the White House if they have any concern that this high volume of posts that feels more like a campaign feed might be something that turns people off or leaves out those that are less online. A spokeswoman told me, quote, “the White House has an authentic style and unmatched communication strategy because it’s led by the greatest communicator in the history of American politics, President Donald J. Trump.”
MARTÍNEZ: All right. So what’s been the pushback to this strategy?
FOWLER: Well, in Minnesota, you’ve got people like Governor Tim Walz, who have compared it to reality TV. They say it’s reckless and inflaming tensions after an ICE agent killed Renee Macklin Good last week. In the last year, there’s also been a number of controversies around the administration using AI-generated images to attack opponents, posts with dog whistles to extremist content. It’s also led to a rise of other politicians mimicking this trolling antagonism, like Governor Gavin Newsom and Governor Kathy Hochul. Where does this all go? We don’t know yet. Some of these experts we talk to for the story say a coarsening of politics could push people away from engaging. But on the other hand, they do say viral videos of masked federal agents using aggressive tactics against people could prompt people to tune back into the news and demand change in the administration’s policies around ICE.
MARTÍNEZ: All right, that’s NPR’s Stephen Fowler in Atlanta. Stephen, thanks.
FOWLER: Thank you.
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