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Before 2025, you’d have to travel to England to hear the words “Long Live the King.”
That’s because in Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, it is explicitly stated that no one holding office in the United States can be granted a title of nobility.
A President is not King. Period.
As this is directly stated in the Constitution, some surprise is warranted when the official, verified White House Instagram account posts a Time Magazine-cover-inspired illustration of a crown-adorned President Donald Trump with the message “Long Live the King” printed in the bottom left corner. Trump was pictured towering over the frame as the post applauded him for getting rid of “congestion pricing” in New York.
A social media account that represents the U.S. government shouldn’t be posting content outside of its political duties.
The White House account typically posts the latest policy initiatives from its administration, like a new executive order or an important bill that was passed. Trump’s administration has been following this pattern with their posts — with some appalling exceptions.
Spliced in between clips of press conferences and diplomatically-posed handshakes, viewers of the White House Instagram account will also find a reel titled “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.”
Whether a viewer is supportive of deportation or not, this moment shouldn’t be recorded and then reframed as a social media ASMR trend. ASMR is for slime videos, not deportation from the official White House account. It’s not funny, it’s just unprofessional, not to mention disrespectful.
America was built off of the core values of free speech and natural rights. Even so, the government itself shouldn’t be posting technically legal, unprofessional and possibly harmful content from its official accounts. A meme of Trump wearing a crown might be found in an exchange between X users — that’s fine — but it shouldn’t be posted by the White House account.
Just because Americans have the right to free speech doesn’t mean your boss can post a video on their professional Facebook titled “Get Ready With Me To Fire My Employee.”
A White House X post from March 5 boasts that Trump is “Undoing Biden’s Economic Damage,” arguing that “the actions he has taken are already paying off,” without citing a single quote from economist, statistic or even strategy. These posts feel more like an offhand comment made by Uncle Tim at Thanksgiving than a post from the government itself.
Our country’s leaders know that a large majority of teens and young adults find their news on social media because two extra clicks to read a whole article is too much.
Not only are these posts unprofessional, they’re borderline propaganda; the posts use social media to spread beliefs in a way that goes beyond normal politics.
The White House’s gross characterization of our country’s leader as higher-than-law undermines democracy, ignoring that power is granted by the people. Now, the executive branch is testing the limits of its authority through executive orders — largely unchecked by other branches of government — like a monarch, which is being normalized through the White House’s various social media accounts.
One of the White House’s Instagram posts features a quote from Trump’s X account underneath his official portrait: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Actually, He who saves his Country can still violate any Law. A President who once had 88 separate felony charges against him should know this.
Eerily enough, President Trump’s quote, one often attributed to general Napoleon Bonaparte, mirrors one made by Adolf Hitler during his rule: “The authority of the Führer is not limited by laws or statutes.”
Hint: if a Donald Trump quote can be confused with an Adolf Hitler quote, maybe it’s not such a good idea to post it on an official government account.
It’s extremely important to remember that Hitler’s rule began with posters depicting him as an unrealistically perfect leader.
America’s government has built-in checks and balances to prevent a leader like Hitler from rising above the judgment of law and taking too much power. So an account from the same government posting a quote mirroring that of a dictator would have our founding fathers rolling over in their graves.
Free speech might be a right of all social media users. Still, a government agency shouldn’t be taking advantage of its right to post content that’s at best insensitive and at worst blatantly wrong.
The White House social media accounts should only post informational content rather than using their influential platform for biased and ignorant content — and leave the ASMR to the influencers.
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