The Trump Halo Memes Aren’t Supposed To Make Sense

There’s a theory that started on Bluesky a month ago from composer Patrick Cosmos that everyone in the US government is 12 now. Cosmos goes on to show how all the dumb shit we’re currently living through, and which boggles the minds of regular people, makes total sense if you imagine it was conjured up by the brain of a pre-teen. I had a little laugh at this theory but didn’t think about it too seriously until this weekend, when several government social media accounts got really into Halo.

How did we get here? On Friday, it was announced that a remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, called Halo: Campaign Evolved, is coming to the PlayStation in 2026. It’s the first time the iconic Xbox series will appear on its top competitor’s platform, as Xbox moves away from the whole “being an Xbox” thing into whatever the heck it’s trying to be now. This is, on the one hand, a big deal given Halo’s place in Xbox’s identity. On the other hand, it feels like a natural evolution as console exclusivity becomes less and less of a thing.

On Saturday, retailer GameStop tweeted a statement declaring the “official cessation of the console wars,” which it writes started with Combat Evolved, but that now “console loyalists are instructed to cease hostilities, disband militias, and enjoy this new era of gaming.” There’s not much to this, though you could say the language is a little cringe given current events; GameStop sells games, this is a joke about selling games, whatever.

But for some reason the literal US government has taken an interest in this thoroughly mid-tier joke. It started with the official White House account retweeting GameStop’s post with an image of Trump done up in Spartan armor with the GameStop slogan “Power to the players.” Why? Looking at a list of the chuds behind the government’s social media accounts, at least one of them is probably a gamer and saw GameStop’s tweet and, I guess given Trump’s efforts to portray himself as a peace president, thought a games retailer declaring a joke truce in a joke war would fit with that image. 

GameStop then retweeted the White House image with an image of its own, showing Trump in a Spartan helmet in front of JD Vance stylized as Cortana. Except for some reason it’s babyface Vance, a meme meant to be insulting to the vice president. Is GameStop knocking Vance? Does it just want to squeeze another meme into its meme to demonstrate that, I don’t know, memes are happening? 

Meanwhile, the official White House rapid response account retweeted GameStop’s ceasefire joke with the declaration that “President Trump presides over the end of the 20-year Console Wars,” including an emoji of a dove (for peace, you see). GameStop retweeted this with another Trump/Halo meme. And then today the Department of Homeland Security–which loves to use pop culture references and other people’s music in its memes, including Pokemon–got in on the action with a graphic of a Halo warthog vehicle with the phrase “Destroy the Flood” and an exhortation to join ICE.   

Microsoft declined to comment. 

What is going on here? Out of all of this, the DHS post is the only one that makes “sense:” it’s desperate and racist (Nathan described it in our Slack as “Great Replacement Theory but make it Flood”) in the way of all DHS’ posts, just the same old loser shit. But it’s all the rest of the posts that are bugging me, none of which are out of character for the people currently steering the American ship into every available iceberg, but feeling to me as uniquely nonsensical. 

Is Trump earnest about taking credit for “ending the console wars?” Is the Rapid Response account for real that this is some kind of Trump accomplishment? I have to doubt it. So did they just see something they imagine gamers find good and think, you know what else we want gamers to think is good–Trump! (this despite having previously blamed video games for mass violence) and so throw something up, assuming people reading their accounts are so stupid that if you put two ostensibly “good” things together their audience will just connect the two? This theory has weight in that we know how stupid everyone involved is, and how stupid they think everyone else is. 

As I ranted about this to my Aftermath colleagues this morning, raising my middle-aged man blood pressure as I frantically mined for meaning in posts that will remain in the historical record long after all of us are dead, Gita reminded me of the “everyone is 12” theory. They compared these posts to the “six seven” meme, also popular with 12-year-olds: incoherent nonsense that exists solely to remind the audience that an in-group exists and you’re not in it. It’s like the “your mom” replies to reporters’ questions, juvenile and combative for no other reason than that the people giving them are allowed to be juvenile and combative now. 

It’s all the dumbest possible exercise of power: You can post whatever you want! You can say “your mom!” at work! You can tear down a chunk of your house! I don’t think it matters to the White House whether Trump is sincerely taking credit for Halo on PlayStation or not, or if there’s any kind of strategy to win over gamers with the claim. It’s just that he can say whatever he wants, and he’s far beyond the requirement of that stuff making any sense. He knows his audience will salivate over his mention of things they recognize, even if those things are meaningless. And it’s funny to rile up people like me who don’t get it, to hint at some secret knowledge or private joke even when there’s literally nothing underneath it. 

Many adults know the particularly embarrassing terror that grips you when you walk by a group of teens on the street and prepare to get roasted. Our whole government feels like that now, except without the ability to take a different route home, and with the roasts not being insults about our outfits but the destruction of our families, communities, social safety nets, and more. This entire administration is one big childish outburst, and nonsense video game memes just drive that point home.