Trump’s weekend of trolling can’t paper over his political problems

September 8, 2026 — 11:44am

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The US just enjoyed its Labour Day long weekend, and Donald Trump, who occupies the world’s most powerful office, spent much of it posting outlandish memes on social media about his own brilliance.

None of that is unusual for this president, who uses his Truth Social account as a stream-of-consciousness microphone to the world, or a repository for self-aggrandising AI slop from the bowels of the internet.

This weekend’s contributions raised a few eyebrows, however, in both their volume and content. On Sunday, he posted about the moon belonging to America, a map of Iran shaped like his own head, and a cartoon of himself beating Canada’s Mark Carney at ice hockey.

He also posted mock-ups of uniforms to be worn by Space Force, a new branch of the US military, modelled on the 1997 film Starship Troopers. The uniforms in that film – which director Paul Verhoeven called “a movie about fascists who aren’t aware of their fascism” – were inspired by the Nazis.

On Monday, Trump published a map depicting the American flag spanning over the US, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He posted several memes describing himself as the greatest US president ever, explicitly outranking George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And he posted seven consecutive memes about renaming New Mexico “New America”, following his orders on the “Gulf of America” and “Lake America”.

One hopes the subscribers paying $US100,000 a month for........

© The Age