“Wake up, daddy’s home,” Robert Downey Jr., playing the role of Iron Man, says at the beginning of a video posted to the White House’s X account Friday.
In the post, the clip kicks off a high-energy mashup of scenes from popular movies and TV shows cut together with real-world footage of U.S. military strikes against Iran.
The video was one of six posts Friday on the White House’s social media accounts that liberally pulled snippets from popular films, TV shows, sports events and music — running the gamut from AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” to SpongeBob SquarePants — and paired the clips with footage of Operation Epic Fury.
Among them: a scene featuring Master Chief, the iconic character from the long-running “Halo” video game series. In the short clip, Master Chief says he’s “finishing this fight.”
But over the weekend, actors and others involved in some of the projects shown in the clips condemned the White House’s hype videos.
Steve Downes, the actor who voices Master Chief, in particular, was none too happy about it, and said he did not endorse the use of his voice or agree to be involved.
“I demand that the producers of this disgusting and juvenile war porn remove my voice immediately,” he posted on X on Sunday.
“Tropic Thunder” actor and director Ben Stiller also called for the video to be pulled down. A clip of Tom Cruise from the 2008 film appears in the post.
“Hey White House, please remove the Tropic Thunder clip. We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie,” Stiller wrote in a post on X on Friday.
Hey White House, please remove the Tropic Thunder clip. We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie. https://t.co/dMQqRxxVCa
— Ben Stiller (@BenStiller) March 6, 2026
The Trump administration has often ignored calls from artists to remove their content from its messaging.
After singer Kesha posted on social media last week condemning the use of her song “Blow” in a White House video, White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote in a post on X, “All these ‘singers’ keep falling for this. This just gives us more attention and more view counts to our videos because people want to see what they’re bitching about.”
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