Trump administration finds a way to make LinkedIn even less useful

The word “trolling” comes almost directly from White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, who posted about the update on X today. “That’s the whole point, dummy,” he responded to a user pointing out the fact that Trump’s face was now on employees’ profiles regardless of what administration they actually worked for. “Trolololololol,” Cheung continued, presumably in reference to the ancient Mr. Trololo meme.

The move doesn’t violate any of LinkedIn’s policies, per Axios, but that hasn’t stopped staffers from swiftly finding a workaround. The outlet reports that several former officials have changed their affiliation from the White House to the Executive Office of the President (EOP), which—at least as of this writing—still uses the official seal and logo.

This is a pretty minor grievance in the grand scheme of things, but it still shows just how dedicated this administration is to combining the public image of the White House with Trump’s personal brand. “People act like this team has no comms playbook and they actually do. They’re incredibly digitally savvy to think of this first,” Adam Rosenberg, a communications and political consultant interviewed by Axios, said of the update. “It’s also clearly meant to bait Democrats into using the ‘he thinks he’s a King’ argument in media.” Savvy or not, it’s still a pretty major waste of elected officials’ time. As a former Biden staffer opined to the outlet, “If they spent half the time they spend trolling on lowering costs for Americans, they’d be onto something.”