Instead of doing literally anything actually good for Americans, United States president Donald Trump's administration is spending time and money making cruel, bad games. The White House website now has an "arcade" page in which people can play Tetris re-skinned to "protect the border from the coming horde" of immigrants, Snake where you play as Immigration and Customs Enforcement kidnapping undocumented people, and an egregious ripoff of Flappy Bird.
Aftermath has reached out to Microsoft, Nintendo, The Tetris Company, and other companies which have had their imagery used for comment. None have responded.
(Update 9/4/26, 1:46pm--Tetris wrote on its official Instagram account that "The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of ‘Build the Wall’. P.P.S. We take copyright infringement very seriously." In a posted note, the company wrote that "At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them.")
"Can't stop winning," the White House posted from its X account. "Build the wall. Deport. Fill a Trump account."
A video accompanying the embarrassing tweet shows the uninspired gameplay of each of these, set to music from Sonic the Hedgehog. Other posts on X promoting the arcade use the Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, and Pac-Man logos. Reached for comment, a White House representative pointed Aftermath to an article on Fox News.
"This administration is laser focused on ways to innovate and tell the story of the President’s many accomplishments in a way that resonates with every American," a White House representative said in a statement. "The President continues to rack up victory after victory on behalf of the American public, while opponents of his agenda are defending their record of raising taxes and empowering criminal illegal aliens. This is an effort to further contrast between a culture of fun and winning and the dark socialist vision Democrats have for America."
Embarrassing! Racist! Cruel! And, honestly, who is this even for? Are there hordes of Trump supporters looking to play poorly implemented video games on the White House website? Why spend time on something so dumb? Presumably, this cost some amount of money and time when there are other, more pressing matters to focus on. Food recalls have increased dramatically. We can't eat anything without the risk of salmonella or the new-ish explosive diarrhea disease. But who can afford groceries anyway, or even drive to the grocery store? Meanwhile, ICE continues to rip people away from their families and treat them inhumanely in custody. This month, The Guardian reported that ICE has withheld cancer treatment for a 76-year-old permanent resident. ICE detained more than 50,000 people in August alone—something the government is bragging about as a record.
But the games! The White House representative did not respond when asked who made these games. There's some speculation that the games may have been vibe-coded. Unfortunately, these games are aligned with the Trump administration's wider strategy of co-opting popular culture to promote itself with cringe propaganda. The White House posted clips of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 interspersed with footage from its Iran attacks. As Riley wrote in March, when this was posted, "it should be shocking—our highest level of government treating a conflict that has left a reported over 1,000 people dead, including more than 100 children, as a joke—but what else do we expect from them at this point?"
Some companies have spoken out about this sort of usage—the White House has posted clips based on anime and other video games, like the Halo franchise—but most have not. Nintendo, after the White House posted a video montage using Pokémon footage and music, said they did not grant permission for usage in this way.
Riley MacLeod
