White House: War Isn’t Hell. War Is Effing Awesome. You Are Hell.

Once, war was justified by ho-hum lies about WMDs. Now, it’s Childish Gambino grooves and the Book of Revelation. Get with the program.

Last week, the White House tweeted out a montage of a so-called “killstreak” sequence from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III crossed with drone video of lethal strikes on Iran. The intro to Childish Gambino’s “Bonfire” played over the carnage, a song that includes these lyrics: “Drop it like the Nasdaq / Move white girls like there’s coke up my ass crack.” To be clear, those lyrics aren’t heard in the video. Just the intro. Still.  @WhiteHouse is the account of the executive branch of the United States of America.

This is Operation Epic Fury, as named by Secretary of Warfare III Pete Hegseth. President Trump, long in cognitive peril, has lost control of whatever creaky reference set—Patton, Apocalypse Now, Shark Week—he used to deploy to get MAGA androgens pumping. So the snickering gamers who now run White House comms are left to hype the bloodbath. As The New Republic’s Grace Segers and Tori Otten recently reported, the gamification of violence is this administration’s trademarked move.

Steven Cheung, the White House comms director formerly of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, was proud as punch of the video. When Drew Harwell at The Washington Post explained the snuff video in a tweet, Cheung shot back, “W’s in the chat, boys!” That’s........

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