Yesterday, the Trump Administration, in all its brain-rotting glory, posted an AI mockup of the president in Master Chief armor as it declared that the man, who has likely never played a moment of Halo in his life, had ended the console war. This whole thing started because retail chain GameStop made a joke about the bitter feud between PlayStation and Xbox players finally ending, thanks to the impending arrival of Halo: Campaign Evolved on PS5. For some reason, the administration jumped in, presumably because someone on staff pays attention to video game news and only views the world through a memetic lens. Now, in what I can only assume is further committing to the bit, the White House has put out a statement declaring not only that Trump has ended a war, but that he is “hugely popular” with gamers.
In a statement issued to journalist and ex-Kotaku editor Alyssa Mercante, the White House said that he is the only leader “fully committed to giving power to the players,” which is a reference to GameStop’s tagline. So, taking this at face value, the Trump administration is claiming credit for Microsoft bringing its longest-running series to PlayStation, and saying that under his presidency, gamers are thriving.
“Yet another war ended under President Trump’s watch—only one leader is fully committed to giving power to the players, and that leader is Donald J. Trump,” the statement reads. “That’s why he’s hugely popular with the American people and American Gamers.”
Putting aside that this is obviously just some White House goon taking the piss out of a situation for the meme, the fact of the matter is, the video game industry has been thrown into a tailspin by the Trump administration. The president’s tariffs have increased console prices across the board, with Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all raising their respective price tags on systems and accessories over the course of 2025. Xbox even did it twice, though it does sound like Microsoft’s internal shifts have contributed to that as well.
Trump has done tangible damage to the video game industry in the past 10 months, and yet, there’s an odd, concerted effort within his administration to brand him as some kind of gamer-friendly leader. This includes dumb shit like these memes, but also the Department of Homeland Security’s use of imagery from video games and anime, such as Halo and Pokémon, to try and recruit people to ICE. Misinformation and fascist rhetoric is the Trump administration’s M.O., however, so they’re counting on people to clap and cheer at stupid posts of the president dressed as a character they like while he simultaneously undermines the very industry they’re a fan of. Anyone who falls for this isn’t paying attention, and if a fascist playing AI-generated dress-up as Master Chief is enough to get you to ignore this on top of all the bigger problems happening because of this idiot’s nationwide ego trip, we are well and truly fucked.
