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The video that autoplays on the new White House website starts with the pulse of helicopter blades. There are flags, salutes and a lone bald eagle gliding across the sky. No one smiles — though President Donald Trump offers a manly thumbs up. In its exultation of American power it might as well be a Michael Bay blockbuster. It even comes with its own tagline: ‘America is BACK’.
If the start of the first Trump term was characterised by administrative chaos and public disdain from the liberal great and good, the second is shaping up to be far more slick. Establishment pushback has dwindled and the vision of leadership Trump wants to portray has been packaged with skill. Online he is part action hero (“I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body”) and part hard-nosed CEO.
Revamping whitehouse.gov and removing all traces of the last occupant is now as much a presidential tradition as redecorating the White House. And it offers better insights than custom carpets and a Diet Coke button. The new site is as dark as a Trump Tower lobby while its layout is streamlined and organised. In his official portrait, the president’s narrowed gaze and raised eyebrow look like a still from his reality show The Apprentice. It’s a long way from the cheerful grin he sported during his first term.
The message being broadcast is that the Trump administration 2.0 has come prepared and ready for a fight. On Facebook, the official White House account claimed in a post that NOTHING WILL STAND IN OUR WAY.
Along with promises of “unleashing” American energy and ending inflation, some of the most telling clues are in what has disappeared. When Joe Biden became president in 2021, the website added the pronoun options “they/them” to its contact form. It also scattered hidden messages in the code designed to appeal to software engineers who might want to work for the government. Francis Arnold, a professor at Caltech and co-chair of the former president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, pointed out one that contained the line: “Hope over fear. Unity over division. Science over fiction. Truth over lies.”
The new website has purged mentions of any pronouns other than he and she. A Spanish language translation has also gone. So have all mentions of climate change — save for Trump’s promise to end the previous administration’s “extremism” and exit the Paris Climate Accord.
Everything is sleek, pared back and imperious. Via the National Archives, which preserves “frozen” versions of previous White House websites, you can see how friendly Bill Clinton’s taupe-coloured, bloggy-looking site was by comparison. Access for ordinary Americans was promoted, with users offered the chance to send the president “electronic mail” (Clinton was the first US president to send emails, though he claims to have sent only two). It also offers an explanation of the website itself for those confused about what they were looking at: “using a service on the Internet called the World Wide Web (WWW), people all over the world can locate documents.”
Travel forward to the George W Bush administration and the site is more austere, fitting for posts on the war on terror. It features an uplifting tribute to the character of the people of America for showing “calm in times of danger”. By the 2010s, Barack Obama’s sunnier version reflects improvements in digital photography and the rise of Instagram aesthetics. It is dominated by a picture of the glossy green White House lawn.
The US was one of the first countries to create government websites and is the only one that can use “gov” as the sole domain name. Still, according to a UN survey it ranks a lowly 19th in the list of best, most useful government sites. Top is Denmark, which welcomes visitors with the line: “Once we were brutal Vikings. Now we are one of the world’s most peaceful societies.” Cycling and gender equality posts take precedence. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen gets a pared back CV and little else.
In the UK, the Number 10 website is similarly modest, displaying a potted history of Sir Keir Starmer, a rather awkward prime ministerial photo and posts about his government’s plans. There are no videos featuring the Red Arrows and no proud British bulldog — more’s the pity. On X, the prime minister’s official account has a series of dry pronouncements. It is markedly less entertaining than the unofficial outpourings of Larry, the Number 10 cat.
The rest of the world should take note of Trump’s showmanship. The lesson from the latest White House website makeover is that visual messages can be just as effective as verbal ones.
elaine.moore@ft.com
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