Staged fear Image lies in the White House - how Trump invents chaos to show strength
To justify its migration policy, the White House distributes videos of supposed chaos in major cities and countermeasures. But the images do not show what the government claims.
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- The US government is justifying its harsh deportation policy on social media with video clips purporting to show chaotic conditions in major cities under democratic rule and countermeasures taken by ICE migration police.
- The Washington Post has discovered that some of the scenes were not recorded in the cities or at the time the government claims.
- Asked for comment, a White House spokeswoman declined to comment.
- The videos have a wider reach than reports from major US news organizations.
They are said to show a "battle for the soul of our nation" - and the supposed heroes in it. The US government under President Donald Trump is trying to convince the US population of the necessity of its unyielding deportation policy with video clips circulated on social media.
The scenes are said to take place in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., i.e. in major American cities governed by Democratic mayors. In the case of Los Angeles, Trump also wants to show off California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democratic hopeful for the next presidential election in 2028.
The problem is that the scenes shown in the videos were largely not shot in the cities that the Department of Homeland Security claims. Footage from Los Angeles was mixed with footage from West Palm Beach in Florida - footage from a city on the other side of the country that is also several months old.
Video of chaos in Chicago comes from other cities
While a voiceover talks about the "fight for the soul of the nation" of the ICE migration police in the US capital, the images originate from a coastal border on Nantucket Island, 650 kilometers away from Washington. In short: it is fake news.
This was discovered by the liberal "Washington Post", which is traditionally close to the Democrats, as part of an intensive investigation.
The reporters found several other cases in which the department has used similar misleading methods to portray its deportation operations in a positive light and to portray conditions in major Democratic cities as out of control and no longer tolerable.
For example, a video purporting to show the alleged chaos on the streets of Chicago, Illinois, used clips taken in other states.
White House remains silent on mistakes
One particularly piquant lie: a recording purporting to show the inaction of government employees under previous administrations was made in 2019 - when Donald Trump was first in office.
When confronted by the Washington Post with the results of the research, a White House spokeswoman said: "The Trump administration will continue to highlight the many successes of the president's agenda with compelling content and banger memes on social media." She did not address the content of this content, which the newspaper exposed as lies.
Trump's strategy is working: The social media content disseminated by his ministries reaches more people than reports from major news organizations. Many of his supporters would only become aware of the results of the Washington Post's research if Trump were to take them up himself.
