{"id":20305,"date":"2026-09-04T15:44:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T15:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/?p=20305"},"modified":"2026-09-04T15:44:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T15:44:36","slug":"build-the-wall-game-game-on-history-off-white-house-unveils-maga-arcade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/?p=20305","title":{"rendered":"Build The Wall Game: Game on, history off: White House unveils MAGA arcade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"e9jwa\">\n<div class=\"vdo_embedd\">\n<div class=\"GfdvZ\">\n<section class=\"_bIDB  clearfix id-r-component leadmedia undefined undefined  E9tg9 \" style=\"top:0px\">\n<div class=\"_bIDB\" data-ua-type=\"1\" onclick=\"stpPgtnAndPrvntDefault(event)\">\n<div class=\"ypVvZ\">\n<div class=\"WGttI\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-133768692,imgsize-85778,width-400,height-225,resizemode-4\/trump-arcade.jpg\" alt=\"Game on, history off: White House unveils MAGA arcade\" title=\"A White House website featuring arcade games is photographed on a computer screen (Picture credit: AP)\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"Ta7d_ img_cptn\"><span title=\"A White House website featuring arcade games is photographed on a computer screen (Picture credit: AP)\">A White House website featuring arcade games is photographed on a computer screen (Picture credit: AP)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"strong\" data-ua-type=\"1\" onclick=\"stpPgtnAndPrvntDefault(event)\">TOI correspondant from Washington:<\/span> America has spent 250 years arguing about how it was built. The White House has now settled the matter in the most authoritative medium available to the United States: a video game.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"3\"\/>The Trump administration on Friday unveiled \u201cArcade,\u201d five retro-style games on the official White House website, turning pieces of President Trump\u2019s MAGA agenda into pixelated entertainment. The collection includes games titled \u201cBuild the Wall,\u201d \u201cRio Run,\u201d \u201cSupply Line,\u201d \u201cFlappy Bill\u201d and \u201cTrump Savings Tycoon.\u201d<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"5\"\/>If this sounds like something dreamed up by a teenager who has consumed too much caffeine, that is roughly the aesthetic. <!-- -->The White House promotional material riffs on the loading screens of Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo, even transforming the Sega logo into \u201cMAGA.\u201d The launch slogan was suitably subtle: \u201cCan\u2019t stop winning. Build the wall. Deport. Fill a Trump Account.\u201d<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"10\"\/>But two immigration games are generating fireworks. \u201cBuild the Wall\u201d is essentially Tetris, a Soviet-era game, with immigration policy overtones.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"12\"\/>Players stack wall sections to \u201cprotect the border from the coming hordes.\u201d<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"15\"\/>\u201cRio Run,\u201d modeled on the game Snake, puts a digital character resembling border czar Tom Homan on patrol along the Rio Grande, where the object is to collect illegal aliens. Captured characters trail behind in orange prison uniforms &#8212; in other words, ICE meets Pac-Man.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"17\"\/>Immigration-rights advocates have reacted with fury, saying the games turn human beings and matters involving detention, family separation, deportation, asylum claims &#8212; life-or-death issues for some \u2014 into entertainment. <!-- -->The criticism has also extended to the use of government resources, with the White House accused of misusing taxpayer money to produce political propaganda and of dehumanizing migrants.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"21\"\/>Trump supporters naturally see it differently, arguing that the administration is simply communicating policy in a language younger Americans understand.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"23\"\/>The White House says it is \u201claser focused\u201d on innovative ways of telling the story of Trump&#8217;s accomplishments and contrasting its \u201cculture of fun and winning\u201d with what it calls the Democrats&#8217; \u201cdark socialist vision.\u201d<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"26\"\/>But critics say there is a larger MAGA project lurking beneath the pixels: the rewriting \u2014 or, supporters would say, correcting \u2014 of America&#8217;s historical narrative.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"28\"\/>The MAGA folks have spent years pushing a more patriotic interpretation of the American story. Trump&#8217;s 1776 Commission was explicitly created to promote \u201cpatriotic education,\u201d \u2013 aka known among critics as \u201cwhitewashed history\u201d \u2013 which the current administration revived in 2025.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"31\"\/>This year&#8217;s official 250th-anniversary rhetoric celebrates the Founders, liberty and America&#8217;s exceptionalism, emphasizing the nation&#8217;s triumphs rather than dwelling on its darker chapters.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"33\"\/>Such an approach collides with the tradition represented by the historian Howard Zinn, whose A People&#8217;s History of the United States deliberately shifted attention toward people left out of the conventional triumphal story &#8212; Native Americans, enslaved people, workers, immigrants and the poor.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"36\"\/>Zinn&#8217;s critics regard that account as excessively one-sided; his admirers regard it as a necessary antidote to sanitized history.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"38\"\/>The uncomfortable historical footnote is that America&#8217;s story was never simply Europeans arriving, building, and prospering. Long before Ellis Island opened in 1892, the US already contained immigrants who never saw that gateway. African Americans, overwhelmingly descended from people brought forcibly to America during slavery, were moving from the South toward Northern cities in significant numbers beginning in the 1890s.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"42\"\/>And on the opposite coast, the first recorded Sikh arrivals in California came in 1899, before the great Ellis Island wave had run its course.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"44\"\/>Meanwhile, the people who were already here \u2014 Native Americans, also wrongly called Indians \u2014 disappear altogether from the arcade version of MAGA&#8217;s immigration and national origin story.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"46\"\/>In the White House\u2019s new version of America, history has been simplified, immigration has been gamified, and the uncomfortable parts have apparently been left on the cutting-room floor.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"48\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/world\/us\/game-on-history-off-white-house-unveils-maga-arcade\/articleshow\/133768536.cms\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A White House website featuring arcade games is photographed on a computer screen (Picture credit: AP) TOI correspondant from Washington: America has spent 250 years arguing about how it was built. The White House has now settled the matter in the most authoritative medium available to the United States: a video game.The Trump administration on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-31"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","blogsy-small":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","blogsy-small-tall":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","blogsy-small-square":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","blogsy-small-masonry":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","blogsy-medium":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","blogsy-medium-masonry":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","blogsy-large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg","blogsy-wide":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8709732a479614e7a8aa24d3eb1b239f30dc6d90c61464ed495001e7a469d856?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"A White House website featuring arcade games is photographed on a computer screen (Picture credit: AP) TOI correspondant from Washington: America has spent 250 years arguing about how it was built. The White House has now settled the matter in the most authoritative medium available to the United States: a video game.The Trump administration on [&hellip;]","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36 \u0b2c\u0b3f\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":2,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":4,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg",400,225,false],"medium":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg",300,169,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-arcade.jpg",150,84,false]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/author\/admin"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8709732a479614e7a8aa24d3eb1b239f30dc6d90c61464ed495001e7a469d856?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"<a href=\"#\" class=\"category-link category-link-31\">\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36 \u0b2c\u0b3f\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}