It’s as if he’s telling himself, “You’ve got this, buddy!”
Don’t they say lock screens are the smartphone era’s window to the soul? Well, they should: We get to choose only one image that will greet us each time we look at our phones, so what we pick should say something. Although no one asked for any more windows into Donald Trump’s soul, a new one has appeared all the same. Are you ready to hear what Trump’s lock screen image is?
As anyone could have predicted but somehow no one seems to have discovered until now, it is a photo of himself. In it, he’s confidently pointing straight ahead at the camera.
For this bit of intel, we can thank a YouTube group called, uh, the Nelk Boys, whom Trump hosted on his plane recently as part of his push to reach young male voters; his phone screen is visible in a photo one of the group members posted to social media. The Daily Mail identified the specific picture Trump chose as a 2019 snap taken by Getty photographer Chip Somodevilla. The outlet also referred to another instance of the same phone background being visible, in an image shared to social media earlier this month by Montana Sen. Eric Schmitt.
There’s a possibility this photo selection was unintentional—a colleague reminded me that sometimes smartphones are set, whether by default or otherwise, to shuffle through different photos as their lock screens. But given that it’s been captured twice, and given whom we’re talking about, I think it’s safe to assume it’s true that Trump has a Trump lock screen. Because of course he does.
Trump isn’t the first famous person whose seemingly accidental lock-screen reveal has led to a flurry of conversation and judgment, by the way. Last year, when paparazzi photos of Kylie Jenner revealed that her lock screen was a close-up photo of her main squeeze, Timothée Chalamet, kissing her, fans both delighted in the glimpse into Jenner’s relationship and criticized what they perceived as her priorities: How dare she choose a snap of her and some guy when she’s the mother of two beautiful children who deserved to be on her lock screen? Fans have similarly tried to read romantic tea leaves via the lock screens of people like Ariana Grande and Travis Kelce. If any publicists are reading this, take this as a sign that your celebrity clients could probably stand to up their lock-screen info sec.
As silly as it may sound to try to glean info on famous people’s love lives from their smartphone resting screens, it’s consistent with how most seem to use their lock screens: as a way to cheer themselves up or declare what matters to them. Common sights include photos of loved ones, especially significant others, kids, and pets; funny pics of celebrities and memes; and whatever random design the phone came with. These choices signify the values of the device’s owner: They like to be reminded of the people and things they love most, or they like to smile, or they simply don’t care about their phone enough to personalize it. All of this goes to show that completely independent of Trump, it’s widely considered odd to make yourself your lock screen. Whenever the topic has come up in places like Reddit, most users have declared it self-centered or just plain weird. (This doesn’t apply to photos that someone’s in with other people, to be clear, just photos of them alone.)
Luckily for Trump, I guess, this opinion isn’t completely universal. In a Vox piece from a few years ago, a woman who had set herself as her lock screen defended the practice: “I get a lot of criticism because people are like, ‘That’s vain, blah blah,’ but it’s a fun photo of me going down a water slide and IDGAF what anyone says.” On TikTok, another woman’s video declared the practice “a flex.” That’s one way of looking at Trump’s photo choice: You know you’re that bitch when you can use a professional photo agency’s White House pics as your personal scrapbook—right, fellas?
Even so, Trump having a Trump lock screen is, as with many things about Trump, almost too on the nose. The main knock on doing it is that it makes it look as if you don’t care about other people, and Trump has demonstrated exactly this quality countless times; it’s kind of his thing at this point. It makes it seem as if you’re a narcissist? Pretty much everyone agrees that Trump is one. Doesn’t he love his wife, children, or grandkids enough to want to look at them? Half the time, this guy seems to forget that one of his daughters exists. He didn’t even bother to read his wife’s recent book, it sounds like. The more you think about it, the less it makes sense he would choose anything else. You don’t slap the name Trump on as many products and businesses as he has only to make your lock screen something other than your own mug. As with everything he does, his phone needs to scream “Trump!,” and nothing does that quite like a photo of Trump being Trump.
I want to mention one last thing about Trump’s selection of this particular photo, an image of him pointing at the camera, meaning that he’s also, most of the time, pointing at himself, the person holding the phone. Its hilarious self-reflexivity calls to mind a hat the Trump campaign recently released, a white baseball cap that features a picture of a smaller MAGA hat on it, a hat within a hat. It’s another reminder of the feedback loops that were ever-present during the Trump presidency: Trump turning on Fox News to watch himself, Trump being influenced by Fox News, Fox News being influenced by Trump. But more than anything, the pointing makes it look as if Trump is giving himself a pep talk. He’s his own Uncle Sam, recruiting himself, looking back achingly to a time when he was still president. With Trump, narcissism is nothing new, but could this also be a rare moment of (still-narcissistic) vulnerability? When have we ever witnessed Trump telling himself, “You’ve got this, buddy”? It’s enough to give you the creeps—and maybe a little hope.
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