In a video distributed yesterday by the White House, Donald Trump points to the portrait made during his first term, then to the signing machine. "This is the autopen... it’s Biden,” he tells a visibly amused Xi Jinping, lightly patting him on the back. The sequence, filmed and broadcast by the White House’s official accounts, is designed to circulate on social media within seconds: short format, punchy slogan, memorable image. It is platform communication, not chancery diplomacy.
The sentence is short, but remarkable for its political functions. First, by reducing his predecessor to a mere automaton, Donald Trump does not merely disparage him. He establishes the idea that, between 2021 and 2025, no one was in charge. If the president was not the president, then the actions of his administration became questionable, the appointments suspect, and the pardons revocable. It is a way of politically annulling a term without having to legally annul every decision – a long, costly, and uncertain process in the courts. Second, this formula fits perfectly with the central narrative of the MAGA movement: the idea that an unelected administrative apparatus – the "deep state” – actually governs the country behind a democratic façade. The autopen is the perfect allegory: a machine that imitates a person’s signature, a faceless power. This narrative also prepares and justifies the major offensives currently taking place concerning electoral integrity, the verification of voters’ citizenship, and the reliability of vote-counting machines, as the midterm elections approach, which represents a high risk for the majority. Finally, the choice of witness is not neutral. Showing the object to Xi Jinping is a way of signaling to one of the world’s most powerful leaders: my predecessor was a fiction, I am the only real interlocutor. Diplomacy becomes a theater of political virility, where the humiliation of the domestic adversary serves as a demonstration of strength abroad.
The echo of this sequence in France is not anecdotal. As the 2027 presidential election approaches, several features of the method find fertile ground. First, the contestation of legitimacy through the denunciation of an inauthentic power. The theme of a disconnected executive, governed through ordinances, consulting firms, and European standards, already structures the discourse of oppositions at both ends of the spectrum. The rhetoric of the "automatic signature” finds a ready-made equivalent: that of the decision-maker who decided nothing. Then, the judicialization of political debate. The idea that an opponent’s actions can be retroactively annulled because the decision-making process is flawed finds variations in France in disputes over ineligibility, the sincerity of ballots, or the regularity of campaigns. Finally, the issue of format. The automatically opening sequence is a twenty-second media object, designed to be shared, decontextualized, and replayed. Yet Paris has made the rapid narrative response on social media precisely an axis of its doctrine against information manipulation. The paradox is harsh: the same grammar – punchline, virility, virality – is used for attack and defense and ends up imposing a regime of public debate in which demonstration always gives way to formula. Campaign teams have understood this. In 2027, elections will depend not only on political platforms, but also on demonstrating an authentic commitment. Hence the proliferation of videos featuring candidates in short sleeves, signatures transmitted live, and attacks against "manipulated” candidates. Trump sets the tone: sincerity is proof of legitimacy.
Behind the joke at the White House, a shift is taking place in electoral political communication on both sides of the Atlantic. Elections are no longer merely a choice of direction, but a test of reality: who is truly behind the signature? In the age of deepfakes, advisers of all kinds, and widespread distrust, showing that the machinery is the most effective way of making people believe that you yourself are not one.
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