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President Donald Trump was photographed getting off Air Force One on Friday night. This is not unusual for the leader of the free world, one of the most photographed human beings of the last decade. But because of the way Trump was holding his phone, its lock screen wallpaper was also captured (alongside what appeared to be a text message from ally Roger Stone). In the image Trump can be seen pointing down the camera lens in a pose vaguely reminiscent of Uncle Sam on a World War II recruiting poster. It is in some ways an odd choice — and in others exactly the picture you might expect.
The online commentariat has leaned naturally into armchair psychology, citing this bit of photo curation as yet more evidence of Trump’s narcissism. Trump has, after all, five children and 11 grandchildren, and his current wife is a former model — any of whom might be featured in that slot by the family patriarch.
Perhaps. But we can unpack this picture just a little more.
Demonstrating an uncharacteristic consistency, the background image on the phone appears to be the same lock screen picture from at least 2023, when, Gizmodo notes, it was spotted in a video of Trump in a golf cart. When the lock screen resurfaced in 2024, Gizmodo dug into the background (so to speak) of this particular photo, dating it to July 19, 2019, “from the height of Trump’s family separation policy for migrants, which forcibly separated children from their parents at the border.” So perhaps the president is just sentimental.
Then there’s how Trump’s actually uses his phone.
The Atlantic on Monday published a troubling account of Trump’s phone habits, which extend well beyond his gob-smacking habit of answering calls from unlisted numbers like it’s 1987. “Trump likes to call people. He likes to be called,” The Atlantic reports. “Unknown numbers come with a thrill akin to putting a coin in a gumball machine and waiting to see which flavor rolls out.”
The article doesn’t mention whether the president has been getting random calls from people pretending to be tax specialists. But we do know that Trump has been fooled by a Piers Morgan impersonator in 2020 and before that in 2018 by a comedian pretending to be Sen. Bob Menendez. And the whole debacle gets a little more exciting when you consider that someone out there has been pretending to be White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
The Atlantic goes on to elaborate on the numerous other ways Trump’s phone usage could potentially present security vulnerabilities (The White House’s Steven Cheung declined to “discuss or disclose security measures regarding the President, especially to The Atlantic.”)
This is, no matter what, a septuagenarian who loves his devices. Trump’s over-the-top social media usage is literally setting records. The Washington Post recently tallied his rate of fire at 2,262 posts in the last 132 days. They include his reposting of the deliriously unhinged claim that former President Joe Biden had been executed and was replaced by a doppelgänger (of biological or robotic nature) in 2020.
The White House told the Post that “President Trump is the most transparent president in history and is meeting the American people where they are.” But this would seem to mistake noise for transparency. Indeed, Trump’s enthusiasm for his phone seems to be pushing him further and further online and further and further from more reliable sources of information, like his intelligence briefings.
The Post notes that a whole team of people assists with Trump’s social media production. If one of them can’t pry his phone out of his hand, maybe they can show him how to change his lock screen.