The Pokemon Company International has responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration’s use of a Pokemon Pokopia meme to promote the MAGA agenda, denying any affiliation or involvement with the meme’s creation. Pokemon Pokopia is showing early signs of massive success, and its publisher would like to keep it out of the political spotlight.
In the days leading up to the release of Pokemon Pokopia, the first life sim in the monster-catching franchise’s 30-year history, several memes began to appear across multiple social media platforms, mimicking the game’s cover art. However, rather than the title of the game, these memes have displayed a wide variety of different messages, all using the signature, multicolored font and all-lowercase nature of the game’s title. Pokemon fans have used an online template to create these memes, displaying a wide variety of messages, both provocative and mundane, and not all of which relate to Pokopia or the Pokemon franchise in general.
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Pokemon Denies Affiliation With The MAGA Pokopia Meme
On March 5, the same date that the game was launched for Nintendo Switch 2 throughout most of the world, the official Twitter account for the White House also got in on this trend, posting a Pokemon Pokopia meme that uses the cover art and simply reads “make america great again.” The post was met with a lot of online opposition, much of which was issued using similar user-generated memes, and in the aftermath, The Pokemon Company International issued a response to members of the press denying any association with Trumps’ brand of political messaging. “We were not involved in its creation or distribution, and no permission was granted for the use of our intellectual property,” spokesperson Sravanthi Dev said, as quoted by TIME. “Our mission is to bring the world together, and that mission is not affiliated with any political viewpoint or agenda.”
The response is very similar to the one The Pokemon Company International made last September regarding the White House social media team’s use of its intellectual property. In that case, the official White House TikTok account had shared a video featuring the original English-language Pokemon anime theme song and a montage of ICE Agents and heavily armed Department of Homeland Security personnel taking multiple people into custody, relying on the franchise’s “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” slogan. Cut in among that video’s imagery of federal agents blowing up doors and loading handcuffed individuals into vehicles were multiple short clips from the anime itself. Shortly after that video was shared by the White House’s TikTok account, the company issued an official public response, stating, “Our company was not involved in the creation or distribution of this content, and permission was not granted for the use of our intellectual property.”
Neither of those statements is a direct endorsement of condemnation of the political message conveyed by the White House’s social media team, and rather, both appear aimed at maintaining a neutral political stance and protecting the Pokemon brand’s intellectual property. No official legal action by Nintendo or The Pokemon Company has been taken in either case.
Despite any potential controversy caused by the meme, the life-sim game appears to be a major success for Game Freak and Omega Force in its early days. Pokemon Pokopia‘s current ratings from professional reviewers have it tied as the highest-rated Pokemon game of all time on review aggregate site Metacritic, matching Pokemon Y‘s score of 88, based on a pool of 63 critical reviews. Early reports also indicate that the game is selling well, though official figures from its publisher are still pending due to the recency of its launch.
- Released
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March 5, 2026
- ESRB
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Everyone / Users Interact, In-Game Purchases
