At around 8:40 a.m. on January 1, a disgruntled U.S. soldier blew up a rented Cybertruck in front of Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. Seven bystanders were injured in the blast, though nobody was killed except the driver, who died by self-inflicted gunshot wound. The charred rubble and twisted metal left behind invoked both the cars creator, Tesla tycoon Elon Musk, and the hotels owner, returning president-elect Donald Trump. It also telegraphed untold carnage on the horizon from the prospect of this dystopic duo running the government together.The year had just begun and 2025 already delivered its most prescient visual metaphor. Plenty of other striking images have since emerged during the first 100 days of Trumps second term, though, that perfectly capture how this sequel presidency has played out so far.Elon Musk elongates his armFrom top: A neo-Nazi group salutes during a gathering in Orlando, Florida, in 2023; Elon Musk in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025. [Images: Sandi Bachom/Getty Images, Alex Wong/Getty Images]Although the sheer abundance of tech billionaires at Trumps inauguration raised some eyebrows, only one of those billionaires actions that day dropped jaws. During a speech about his then-gestating Department of Government Efficiency, Musk put his hand over his chest, said My heart goes out to you, and then, well, lets just say he made a memorable gesture. Twice.What kind of gesture? Media outlets have dog-eared their thesauruses searching for a euphemism that wont leave any legal exposure or get anyone fired. It was either a stiff-arm, odd-looking, or Roman salute, but it bore more than a passing resemblance to Sieg Heiling. Only Musk knows for sure whether he made the alarming gesture by mistake, on purpose in brazen earnestness, or on purpose but just to troll the left. Either way, he never apologized. Instead, he complained on X that all criticism of his gesture amounted to dirty tricks. No word yet on whether dirty tricks are why several people who mimicked Musks salute lost their jobs.Volodymyr Zelenskyy walks into a buzzsaw[Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images]Trump seems to delight in humiliating people he perceives as disloyal. Think of Mitt Romney looking medical-grade embarrassed to be photographed at dinner with Trump after criticizing him throughout the 2016 election, or Robert Kennedy Jr. being force-fed a Big Mac last fall after badmouthing Trumps diet. Those incidents seem like a mere warmup, though, for the humiliation ritual Trump put Volodymyr Zelenskyy through back in February. The Ukrainian president entered the Oval Office presumably expecting to reach an agreement about trading his countrys rare minerals in exchange for continued support from the U.S. Instead, Zelenskyy found himself ambushed. Trump and VP JD Vance took turns berating him on live TV for not being sufficiently grateful for U.S. support throughout the Russian invasion. (Days earlier, Trump falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war.) Zelenskyys face during the disastrous meeting served as an apt avatar for leaders of other U.S. allies around the world, realizing in real time that a major geopolitical realignment may be currently underway.Trump take egg[Image: MrGeoff/Adobe Stock]Joe Bidens entire presidency was haunted by the specter of grocery store sticker shock. Whether he could have actually done more to assuage it or not, pandemic-driven inflation and supply chain issues kept driving up prices. Consumers were furious. Many were also desperate for relief, which Trump promised to deliver on day one of his second term. Instead, egg prices shot up further after Trump took office, for a variety of reasons. (DOGEs firing of the team assigned to study rampaging bird flu almost certainly didnt help.) Grocery store signage about egg rationing quickly showed up all over social media, forcing even Fox News to acknowledge it. The egg crisis has since receded, but not entirely, and not before birthing a massive meme.Gretchen Whitmer cant hideGretchen Whitmer temporarily shielded herself from the cameras when she was in Trumps Oval Office, per this photo from NYTs @erjleehttps://t.co/TFDPPnci7Q pic.twitter.com/hnLnvuQvlX bryan metzger (@metzgov) April 12, 2025After an election cycle spent warning Americans about the dire consequences of a second Trump term, Democrats in power have had difficulty finding their footing with it underway. Opposition took the form of holding up tiny signs of resistance during a Trump speech to congress, which GOP colleagues promptly snatched away. Although some Dems like Bernie Sanders, AOC, Cory Booker, and Chris Van Hollen have found meaningful forms of fighting back, the partys initial awkwardness out of the gate is crystallized in an April photo of Gretchen Whitmer. When the Michigan governor went to speak with Trump in the days after his Liberation Day tariff blitz, she had not been informed Trump planned on making a photo op out of her visit. To avoid looking like shed come crawling to Trumps bargaining table, Whitmer shielded her face with folderswhich only made the resulting photo exponentially more embarrassing. Its the image of a person who has been thoroughly outmaneuvered by someone who better understands the contours of visual manipulation.Heavy images tweeted lightly[Image: Official White House Twitter/X.com]The White Houses X account has undergone a radical vibe shift under Trump. Instead of serving up official dispatches from the government, most of its posts read like far-right shitposts from 4chan. Though many worthy contenders come to mind, the most egregious example is probably the photo of a woman crying while under arrest by ICE, which the White House social media manager then ran through an AI Studio Ghibli filter, rendering it paradoxically adorable. Regardless of her alleged past convictions, making fun of her pain on an official government channel is shameful behavior. Its an image that announces to the rest of the world: America runs on casual cruelty. The Epstein files stunt was very [redacted]Various right-wing influencers carry binders bearing the seal of the U.S. Justice Department reading The Epstein Files: Phase 1 as they walk out of the West Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C., on February 27, 2025. [Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images]Although the White House has touted this administration as the most transparent in American history, that title hasnt always proved out. When congressional Democrats tried to enter federal government offices in the midst of DOGE shredding their staff, for instance, they found police officers standing in their way. You know, somewhat non-transparently? The moment that best visually captured the opacity of historys most transparent administration, though, was the release of the so-called Epstein files. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi invited 15 far-right influencers to the White House to receive binders supposedly filled with declassified information about deceased human trafficker Jeffrey Epsteinand his suspected ties to powerful people. The binders contained scant new information; nothing approaching the realm of revelatory. If anything, the photo stunt invited further questions about just what might be missing from those binders and why. Not exactly an ideal outcome for an event (and an administration) so vocally proud of its historic transparency.These babies are priced to move[Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images]Considering Tesla stock is down 71% year-over-year this quarter, it seems as if quite a few people are not very happy with Musks gleeful chainsawing of the federal government. In an effort to help his embattled colleague stem the tide, Trump put on a White House-set version of a seasonal car saleTeslathon on the White House lawn. Trump gushed to the assembled press about how sleek and cool he found the phalanx of Teslas on the South Lawn. (Everythings computer! he crowed at one point.) The spectacle ultimately didnt help Musks fading fortunes one iota, but it did bring to life an image long lurking in certain corners of the public imagination: Trump as an overzealous used car salesman.A crimson tide washes over the stock map[Screenshot: Finviz/Internet Archive]Trumps red-light-green-light approach to imposing tariffs on more or less every countrynot all of which are even populatedhas created a lot of compelling images. Most of them, however, are stock brokers with their faces in their hands on some of the recent days when the Dow dropped by 1,000 points or more. The most lasting image from the post-Liberation Day stock free fall, though, is probably a stock market heatmap turning nearly all redalmost as if Americas economic security had bled out.Just say Noem[Photo: Alex Brandon/Getty Images]Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is apparently a fan of cosplay. Shes donned tactical gear several times to tag along on ICE raids, seemingly with the sole purpose of making content. On one of these raids, she even brought along Chaya Raichik, the far-right influencer better known as LibsofTikTok. Noems largest contribution to the visual vocabulary of Trumps second term, though, was her late-March stunt at El Salvadors Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison, where Noem filmed herself standing in front of a crowded cell full of mostly shirtless inmates, and threatened all criminal illegal aliens in the U.S. that they could soon be there, too. Using these men as props is already in poor taste, inviting painful memories of Abu Ghraib. That the administration admitted, just days later, to sending a man to CECOT by mistake made it even worse.Of course, for many viewers, the hardest part of looking back at any of these images from the past 100 days may be the shocking realization that it has only been 100 days.
