Jack White is so irritated with Donald Trump that he’s apparently ready to start a new career in comedy. After Trump held a lengthy White House press briefing Tuesday touting his administration’s first-year achievements, White adopted the Hulk’s caveman syntax to mock the president in an Instagram post: “Me do accomplishments! Trump smart. Good boy deserve Nobel Peace Prize!”
The satirical caption touched on several Trump talking points, including the president’s cognitive tests (“Pass brain test, name giraffe”), his territorial ambitions for Greenland and Canada (“Me President of Venezuela and Canada. Me want Greenland too for fun”), and his supporters (“Very smart people made Trump President. Very smart people keep Trump President”). White ended the post with, “Take nap now. Use fake, I mean real Peace Prizes for pillows. Trump accomplishment. Nighty night.”
The post is the latest salvo in an extended public battle between the former White Stripes frontman and the Trump administration. Last August, White criticized Trump’s redecorating of the Oval Office, calling it “vulgar, gold leafed and gaudy, professional wrestler’s dressing room.” White House communications director Steven Cheung fired back, calling White “a washed-up, has-been loser posting drivel on social media.”
White responded by branding Trump “a danger to not just America but the entire world,” and calling him a “low-life fascist” and “an orange grifter.” The musician noted that it was “funny” that his remarks about décor, rather than his criticisms of the administration’s immigration policies, prompted an official White House response. “How petty and pathetic and thin-skinned could this administration get?” he wrote.
In December, White called the president a “disgusting, vile, egomaniac, loser, child” after Trump posted a callous response to the murder of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, blaming the tragedy on Reiner’s “massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”
Earlier this month, White also blasted Republican Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee for sharing an AI-generated video that falsely depicted the musician telling Trump supporters not to listen to his music. “It’s really sad how embarrassing our leadership has become,” White wrote at the time.
White, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the White Stripes last November, has framed his opposition to Trump as a moral imperative. “And no, I’m not a Democrat either, I’m a human being raised in Detroit,” he wrote last August. “I’m an artist who’s owned his own businesses like his own upholstery shop and recording label since he was 21 years old, who has enough street sense to know when a three-card monte dealer is a cheap grifter and a thief.”
In September 2024, White and his White Stripes bandmate Meg White filed a copyright lawsuit against the Trump campaign for using “Seven Nation Army” in a promotional video without permission. White announced the suit on Instagram with the words: “This machine sues fascists.” The lawsuit was dropped shortly after Trump’s election victory in November 2024.
