The Trump administration is extending its social media attacks on Democratic opponents to a new platform. The White House and numerous other government agencies joined Bluesky on Friday.
In its first post, the new White House account uploaded a highlight reel of Trump footage and memes. The message accompanying the post read, “What’s up, Bluesky? We thought you might’ve missed some of our greatest hits, so we put this together for you.”
Other government agencies quickly followed the White House by creating new Bluesky accounts. These included the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Transportation, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of State, and the Department of War. All of them quickly posted messages attacking Democrats over the ongoing government shutdown.
The Department of State wrote, “We heard this is a great place to have an open and honest dialogue, so we’re here to talk about how the Democrat shutdown is undermining our country on the world stage.” Legal experts have suggested that similar statements from government agencies likely violate the Hatch Act.
The messages were generally written in a cheerful, trolling tone. This suggests the administration’s social media teams were anticipating and even hoping for a negative response on a social network widely known as a left-leaning alternative to Elon Musk’s X. Bluesky users delivered on that expectation. Many responses to the initial White House post brought up Trump’s relationship with infamous sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The Onion CEO Ben Collins wrote, “The reason they’re coming after this place is because they can’t control the people on it and it drives them nuts.”
At the same time, many popular Bluesky accounts urged their followers to simply block the new government accounts and move on. Comedian Paul F Tomkins declared that it was “Weirdly fun to block the White House.”
Less than forty-eight hours after joining, the White House has already become one of the most blocked accounts on Bluesky. According to ClearSky, which tracks Bluesky blocking stats, the White House account is blocked by around ninety-one thousand accounts, while being followed by only ten thousand. The only account that has been blocked by more Bluesky users belongs to Vice President JD Vance, who joined back in June.
While the various new government accounts had not quite reached those heights by Sunday morning, they accounted for all of the top five most blocked accounts in the last twenty-four hours. Other right-wing accounts seemed to be boasting about following the Trump administration to Bluesky and getting widely blocked.