After an AP photo of a note handed to President Donald Trump by Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the impending peace deal in Gaza went viral, Trump was mocked ruthlessly on social media, and in response to it, "the White House meme machine went into overdrive," reports The Daily Beast.
Resorting to its usual playbook, the Trump camp "celebrated a potentially historic Middle East peace deal — by trolling Joe Biden," The Daily Beast says.
The note Rubio handed Trump Wednesday in the Oval Office told him that a social media post had been written in his name so he could claim credit for the deal between Israel and Hamas.
First caught by AP’s chief photographer, Evan Vucci, it read, “We need you to approve a Truth Social post soon so you can announce deal first.”
Social media lit up immediately, with critics calling the president out for the awkward exchange.
"What a childish clowns. The note Marco Rubio handed to Trump was caught on camera and reads: 'We need you to approve a post on Truth Social soon, so you can announce the deal first.' Trump doesn’t write his own posts," wrote Mario Pawlowski on X.
Firing back on Thursday, the White House posted a picture of the moment on its official X account, alongside a photograph of then-President Joe Biden being handed a note during a 2021 meeting that read, “Sir, there is something on your chin.”
The snarky caption, writes The Daily Beast, read: “We are not the same.”
The post shows a picture of Biden in July 2021 reading a card an aide slipped him during a meeting on wildfires. Photographers captured the card’s text at the time, in an embarrassing moment that made headlines of its own.