Donald Trump posts the most bizarre social media content of any world leader in the internet age, from AI videos where he’s dropping literal shit on protesters to fake magical beds that cure all disease. But the president’s staunchest defenders want you to believe that we shouldn’t take any of it too seriously.
We saw several examples of that attitude Monday, including in an appeals court ruling that insists President Trump should be allowed to deploy National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted the Trump administration’s motion for a stay in the the case of Oregon v. Trump, with two of the three judges ruling in favor of Trump’s desire to militarize the nation’s cities.
Trump tried to federalize the Oregon National Guard in late September. But U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut of Oregon temporarily blocked Trump from deploying the guardsmen in early October. Among a host of other considerations, Immergut cited Trump’s posts on Truth Social, which described Portland as “war ravaged” and “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” Trump’s assertions weren’t true, of course, and the judge noted the fact that “nothing in the record suggests that anything of this sort was occurring ‘every night’ outside the Portland ICE building.”
Both of the judges who sided with Trump on Monday, Ryan D. Nelson and Bridget S. Bade, are appointees of the president. “The district court erred by placing too much weight on statements the President made on social media,” the judges wrote in their opinion, which is available online. The lone dissent was from a Clinton-appointed judge, Susan P. Graber, as immigration law expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted on Bluesky.
The pro-Trump judges made excuses for Trump’s bizarre posts. “Even if the President may exaggerate the extent of the problem on social media, this does not change that other facts provide a colorable basis to support the statutory requirements,” the Trump-appointed judges wrote.
It’s a weird thing to see in black and white. These judges are talking about the president, after all, not some teenage shitposter. When the most powerful person in the country blasts something out on Truth Social, you’d expect for people to take it seriously. But his defenders are bending over backwards to insist that his online proclamations don’t matter, even if they’re lies.
These judges aren’t the only ones. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, expressed a similar sentiment on Monday during a press conference about the government shutdown. Johnson was asked about Trump’s AI shit-bombing video from over the weekend, and he tried to play it off as effective messaging. It was just “satire,” as Johnson saw it.
“The president uses social media to make a point,” said Johnson. “You can argue he’s probably the most effective person who’s ever used social media for that. He is using satire to make a point.”
Speaker Johnson defends Trump’s AI video of him dumping feces on protesting Americans: “The president uses social media to make a point. You can argue he’s probably the most effective person who’s ever used social media for that. He is using satire to make a point.”
[image or embed]
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) October 20, 2025 at 7:40 AM
The president’s use of social media is unprecedented in so many ways. Trump is constantly spreading lies and misinformation to millions of followers and those lies are then spread through traditional media until they reach billions of people around the globe.
In another era, it would’ve been considered weird for an American president to spread such transparent lies on social media. What makes it even more odd is the fact that Trump owns the platform where he’s posting this garbage. It can be easy to forget that Trump owns Truth Social, the platform where he’s spreading those lies on a daily basis. And he has plenty of other businesses up and running that are making him money, from his crypto ventures right down to his idiotic Trump watches.
Trump’s strange social media presence has become normalized. But so has every other aspect of this administration as it seeks to reshape American life. And it’s clear at this point that MAGA judges are going to keep letting Trump do whatever he wants, all while telling us we’re the weird ones for noticing.
