A packed airplane cabin in glossy toy style. Every seatback screen shows a small cartoon Trump at a podium with a red LIVE tag and "885 WATCHING". Nobody is looking: a blue-violet star in a beanie and mask sleeps hugging a grey sack, a huge wrestler snores in his seat clutching a bag of pretzels, and a punk woman with a teal streak reads a book in headphones. An iridescent bubble-headed flight attendant pushes a drinks cart down the aisle. In front, a chickadee in spectacles and headphones holds a bucket of popcorn, a tear of joy on her cheek, staring at the one different screen: "HITCH", a couple dancing on a rooftop at sunset.

Everybody Is Watching

Updated

Trump TV, a full plane, and the one man watching Hitch.

The White House posted a full plane with Trump TV on the screens. The plane was real. The screens were not.

  1. February 12, 2023. Super Bowl Sunday. Brett Hanfling snaps a photo on a plane: the game on almost every screen, and one guy watching Hitch. "A menace to society," he calls him (NZ Herald).

  2. September 21, 2026. The White House starts Trump TV, a nonstop YouTube stream of Trump, days after shutting out CNN, MS NOW and Politico (NPR). About 8,000 tune in. By that night, 2,425 (MS NOW).

  3. September 23. 885 (MS NOW).

  4. October 2. The White House posts a packed plane, Trump TV on every screen: "It's what everybody is watching." No mention that the picture was changed (AFP via Yahoo).

  5. October 6. It's Hanfling's photo with new screens. OpenAI's own checker finds a watermark, and another tool says it was made with GPT Image 2 (AFP via Yahoo, France 24). The White House didn't answer right away.

Backwards down the number line