The Trump White House mocked California Rep. Jimmy Gomez on its X account on Friday with a picture altered by artificial intelligence that made it look like the man was crying. The post came after Gomez said Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were “targeting the immigrant farm workers who feed America,” following a crackdown on a California weed farm a day prior.
In response, the White House X account posted the AI-warped picture of Gomez’s headshot and added a fake quote, saying, “ThEy’Re JuSt StRaWberRy PiCkErs,” using a format known as the “Mocking Spongebob” meme.
That quote was making a joke of what Gomez claimed on X, where he asked “How many MS-13 gang members are waking up at 3 a.m. to pick strawberries? O’yeah, zero!”
Drew Harwell, a technology reporter for The Washington Post, lamented on Bluesky that the “White House is posting AI-altered photos of members of Congress made to look like they’re crying. No disclosure it’s fake. Half a million views.”
Gomez was not the only California politician to ridicule the Trump Administration and ICE for the pot farm raid. California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted a video of the operation on X and called Trump “scum” for sending “kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields.”
CBS News reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez on Friday reported “federal agents had criminal warrants related to the harboring and employment of immigrants in the U.S. illegally” for the raid. She added that two DHS officials told her 10 child workers were found as part of the raid, and a child labor investigation is now underway.
There are other examples of the Trump Administration using AI-altered images and memes to troll critics. In March, The White House’s X account posted a Ghibli-style meme of a fentanyl trafficker being deported, and on Thursday, its X account posted a picture of President Trump as Superman and a meme of “PANICANS” being upset the stock market was hitting new highs.
