The White House X account has won notoriety as a coven of young memesters scandalizing the nation. There have been meme images of leading Democrats decked out in sombreros, and clips featuring footage of Iranian military hardware being blown up interspersed with WiiSports.
Now the antics have been taken a step further. There is currently widespread talk of the United States “unleashing hell” on Iran once markets close this weekend, after its initial 15-point peace offer was rejected. There is even some frenzied speculation that things might go nuclear.
Not the best time then, to release a set of cryptic videos that seem to hint at some approaching cataclysm. One, at four seconds long, showed a pitch-black screen overlayed by TV static. A solitary ding is heard at the end. There was a mood of panic in the comments. “The official The White House page is scaring the entire world into thinking a nuclear war is about to start” said one user. “Blink twice if I need to move my kids into the fallout shelter,” said another. The MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec seemed to steel himself for a coming fight: “Activation signal received.”
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 26, 2026
The second, now deleted video featured what appears to be the shin and feet of Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (chime in, online sleuths). The woman in the video says, “so cool” and then asks, ominously “it’s launching soon, right?”
Launched? Oh dear. Cockburn was stripping out the contents of his fridge to construct a makeshift fallout shelter when he learned that “launched” might simply refer to… the White House’s new Snapchat account (hence the “sound on” Snapchat caption). So that’s what the “ding” was about, then. It was the Snapchat notification sound on an iPhone, not the various beeps and whirrs of a control panel of a nuclear silo.
No doubt the makers of these clips knew what they were doing. Sorry kids, but Cockburn is really not in the mood.
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