Featured Image Credit: X/@MargoMartin47
Topics: Donald Trump, Social Media, Politics, Sport
Ben Williams
Topics: Donald Trump, Social Media, Politics, Sport
Donald Trump has ended up at the centre of a fresh social media pile-on after a photo celebrating the University of Georgia’s Bulldogs tennis team started doing the rounds online.
While intended to be a standard celebratory moment in the White House, the photograph taken with the invited championship-winning university didn’t result in smiles all around when it got onto social media.
In the post on X (formerly Twitter), White House staffer Margo Martin wrote as the caption: “Congratulations, Georgia Women’s Tennis!”
Trump also had warm words for the athletes when speaking to reporters earlier that day (as noted by The Independent), saying: “What a great job. That’s not easy, winning in tennis. That’s a tough thing to do. I play tennis a little bit, not quite at that level, not quite, but that’s a great achievement.”
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It did not take long for people online to catch what was wrong with the image.
The women of the Georgia Bulldogs team being celebrated were not actually front and centre. Instead, the women stood behind Trump and a line of suited men in the foreground, with the US president himself slightly elevated in the middle of the shot.
Once people noticed it, they all started saying the same thing.
As spotted by indy100, one person wrote: “You have to laugh.”
Another said: “Me when I definitely respect women’s sports teams: what if we put them behind us so you can barely see them.”
Journalist Aaron Rupar reacted: “I had to triple check that this wasn't from a parody account.”
Even CBS News reporter Kathryn Watson simply asked: “Who approved this photo?”
That was really the issue people could not get past. The whole point of the post was to celebrate the University of Georgia’s championship-winning women’s tennis team, but the players themselves were visually pushed into the background while Trump and several male staff members took up most of the frame.
Others were even more cutting with their reactions, with one person writing: “I can barely see the women... This is embarrassing, and the image is a great visual representation of the Republican Party's attitudes towards women.”
Another joked: “Can you hear the congratulations back there?”
Someone else jokingly added: “Siri, show us misogyny.”
There was also one comment that spread especially quickly, with a user writing: “I thought y’all were all about keeping men out of women’s sports.”
That line was clearly aimed at Trump’s long-running rhetoric around women’s sport, which has often been wrapped up in attacks on transgender athletes. That backlash lands even harder given Trump previously said: “From now on, women’s sports will be only for women.”
One person even shared an edited version of the snap with the women moved to the front, writing: “Fixed it. Put the champions front and center—congrats to Georgia Women’s Tennis.”