Government officials in Japan have reportedly asked the Trump administration multiple times to stop using franchises like Pokémon, Nintendo, Naruto, and more in the political slop it posts on social media. According to Mainichi Shimbun this week (via IGN), requests have been made by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as recently as June to try to get the Trump administration to essentially cut that shit out.
The White House social media team has spent the better part of a year doing its best “How do you do, fellow kids?” impression, attempting to appeal to the terminally online, gamer-brained portion of its base by creating memes that reference Japanese IP for its various trash policies.
In September 2025, the Department of Homeland Security released a video of the original Pokémon theme song playing over footage of ICE arrests. In March of this year, the White House X account released a video of missile strikes in Iran interspersed with footage of Wii Sports and later made use of the Pokémon Pokopia text generator to send yet another “make America great again” post.
The Pokémon Company responded to the incidents where its content was used, disavowing their involvement and claiming the Trump administration did not seek permission to use their content. But now it seems the Japanese government has been lobbying behind the scenes, hoping to get Trump and his legion of social media trolls to consider the damage it’s doing to Japanese works.
Unless bigger companies with, say, Nintendo‘s level of resources and clout muster up the legal gumption to do something about it, it seems like the memeing will unfortunately continue.
