“We’re over here just grinding away on banger memes, dude,” a senior White House official told Politico. “There’s an entertainment factor to what we do.” It is pure Donald Trump and his Maga base, to whom everything is not just a game, but a competition. Politics at home and abroad is about scoring, winning and humiliating the other side. For that competition to be fun, it has to be portrayed in the most low-stakes way possible. And so the war is not about death, destruction, calamitous fallout economically and geopolitically, but about the boom, the score, the fist pump. “Wake up, Daddy’s home,” starts one clip. The Trump administration is like a gamer in a dark basement, downing beers, nursing deep insecurities, hectically self-soothing through flashes of colour and noise on a large screen. Maximum hit, minimum effort.