In The New Yorker essay “Donald Trump, Zohran Mamdani, and Posting as Politics,” Kyle Chayka explores how social media has become not merely a communication tool for political figures but the primary arena in which politics itself now unfolds. The piece contrasts the digital personas of Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani to illustrate how posting has evolved into a core exercise of power and a new form of political identity.
Chayka begins by chronicling former President Trump’s frenetic use of Truth Social, the platform he created after leaving Twitter. Trump does not merely announce decisions online; he appears to make them there. For instance, in June 2025, Trump unilaterally declared and publicized a ceasefire between Israel and Iran on Truth Social after having ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities only days earlier. He issued warnings and taunts in the same all-caps style he once used to brag about the size of his nuclear arsenal compared to Kim Jong Un’s. The essay argues that this real-time posting has compressed world-shaking events into casual, ephemeral updates, trivializing violence and policy into the equivalent of viral content.
Yet Trump is not alone in harnessing the power of constant broadcasting. Chayka turns to Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old New York State assembly member and Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, who embodies a different approach to digital politics. Where Trump’s style is bombastic and combative, Mamdani’s presence on TikTok and Instagram is more polished and warm. His short-form videos—some produced by the creative agency Melted Solids—blend documentary realism with the aesthetics of viral influencer content. Clips of Mamdani walking through Manhattan or spontaneously greeting his filmmaker mother, Mira Nair, have garnered millions of views. His collaborations with high-profile digital creators like the Kid Mero and Emily Ratajkowski reflect an understanding that modern campaigns are not only about policy but about generating a steady stream of engaging material.
Chayka underscores that both politicians are symptoms of the same phenomenon: social media has swallowed the traditional infrastructure of political communication. No longer is there a clear boundary between a politician’s private musings and official pronouncements. The medium has become the message—and often the entire substance. Even memes have turned into flash points of political conflict. The article recounts how U.S. border officials detained a Norwegian tourist, Mads Mikkelsen, who carried a satirical meme of Vice President J.D. Vance on his phone, suggesting that political images have acquired the power to implicate their holders in ideological battles.
This transformation, Chayka argues, has significant consequences. Trump’s unfiltered posts, once viewed as a sideshow, have become a primary instrument of governance, with the potential to inflame conflicts or disrupt alliances. Meanwhile, Mamdani’s refined authenticity—crafted through video diaries and collaborations—illustrates how even progressive candidates must adopt the same always-online posture to cultivate a political following. While Mamdani’s style is less aggressive than Trump’s, it similarly depends on projecting a version of authenticity that is inseparable from performance.
The essay closes by reflecting on the future of American politics in this environment. The Democratic Party has struggled to counter Trump’s cultural dominance, as shown by tone-deaf spectacles like a Pride concert at the Kennedy Center with anti-Trump parodies of Les Misérables. In contrast, Mamdani’s campaign has generated genuine enthusiasm. Yet Chayka raises an open question: can the idealistic energy of this new digital-first politics survive the compromises of actual governance? If online performance has become the main credential for leadership, it is unclear whether any politician—no matter their ideology—can avoid the pressures of perpetual self-promotion.
In the end, Chayka’s essay offers a clear warning: social media has transformed politics into a theater of the immediate, where every post carries the weight of policy and every meme can become an instrument of power. Whether this dynamic can be reconciled with the demands of responsible government remains the central challenge of the digital age.
Strengths of the Essay
Compelling Illustrations of Digital-First Governance
The article effectively juxtaposes Trump’s all-caps proclamations with Mamdani’s handheld videos.
Vivid examples: Trump’s posts about Iranian bombings feel almost satirical in their triviality—like “food grams”—yet they are deadly serious.
The Vance meme incident (Norwegian tourist Mikkelsen denied entry partly over a meme) underscores how digital artifacts can become politically consequential.
Clear Argument
Chayka convincingly demonstrates that posting is no longer merely a marketing tactic—it is a form of exercising power.
The phrase “influencer-in-chief” encapsulates this new paradigm succinctly.
Timeliness and Relevance
The piece captures the unsettling normalcy of this phenomenon—how we now expect statecraft to be conducted via apps.
It connects to broader anxieties about the erosion of institutional boundaries between governance and entertainment.
Balanced Comparison
The contrast between Trump’s aggression and Mamdani’s optimism avoids simple equivalence.
The essay suggests that while style differs, both are beholden to the same dynamics: immediacy, spectacle, and performative authenticity.
Areas For Further Exploration
A Critique of Consequences
While Chayka notes the trivialization of serious decisions (e.g., bombings posted like selfies), he stops short of examining the systemic dangers—the erosion of deliberative processes, the collapse of public trust, and the incentivizing of extremism.
A deeper dive into why social media rewards such maximalist performances—and how this affects democracy—would have been valuable.
An Exploration of Audience Complicity
The essay portrays politicians as the main actors, but it could interrogate how audiences co-produce this environment: what are the incentives to consume, share, and reward this content?
Do voters really want “authenticity,” or simply entertainment masquerading as politics?
Further developed Historical Context
While the piece references Trump’s first term, it could have drawn richer parallels with earlier media transformations:
Roosevelt’s radio “Fireside Chats”
Kennedy’s TV charisma
Obama’s early social media campaigns
This would help readers situate today’s moment within a longer trajectory.
Broader Implications
The essay ultimately raises unsettling questions:
If the performance of authenticity is now the primary qualification for political power, how do policy substance and institutional competence survive?
Is there any way for governance to reassert seriousness, or will the logic of virality always prevail?
What happens when online theater collides with offline consequences—wars, economies, civic life?
These questions feel especially urgent given that the piece suggests this dynamic is not limited to Trump’s right-wing populism but has also infiltrated progressive candidates.
*THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN BY CHAT GPT AND EDITED BY INTELLICUREAN.
THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features Joyce Carol Oates on serial killers and toxic metals, Fintan O’Toole on Trump’s domestic army, David Shulman on the second Nakba, Regina Marler on the Brothers Grimm, Michelle Nijhuis on what we save, Peter Canby on the murder of a priest, Ruth Bernard Yeazell on Albert Barnes’s art sense, Ian Johnson on Xi père, Lola Seaton on Sheila Heti’s deceptive ease, James Gleick on AI nonsense, poems by Milan Děžinský and Devon Walker-Figueroa, and much more.
Once viewed as a safeguard against global injustice, international law has become increasingly politicised and dysfunctional in recent years. As Linda Kinstler writes in a fascinating essay for the cover story of this week’s Guardian Weekly magazine, the norms, institutions and good faith essential to the system functioning effectively have been badly eroded, and it’s hard to see how the problems can be reversed.
Institutions like the UN security council and international criminal court (ICC) are now often simply ignored or manipulated by powerful member states. The ICC in particular has struggled with legitimacy and enforcement, delivering only a few convictions, amid resistance from big powers such as the US and Russia. The unilateralism of Trump has further undermined the system, while China’s growing influence is shifting the international focus away from human rights.
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An AI Review of How Microsoft’s AI Chief Defines ‘Humanist Super Intelligence’
WJS “BOLD NAMES PODCAST”, July 2, 2025: Podcast Review: “How Microsoft’s AI Chief Defines ‘Humanist Super Intelligence’”
The Bold Names podcast episode with Mustafa Suleyman, hosted by Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins of The Wall Street Journal, is an unusually rich and candid conversation about the future of artificial intelligence. Suleyman, known for his work at DeepMind, Google, and Inflection AI, offers a window into his philosophy of “Humanist Super Intelligence,” Microsoft’s strategic priorities, and the ethical crossroads that AI now faces.
1. The Core Vision: Humanist Super Intelligence
Throughout the interview, Suleyman articulates a clear, consistent conviction: AI should not merely surpass humans, but augment and align with our values.
This philosophy has three components:
Purpose over novelty: He stresses that “the purpose of technology is to drive progress in our civilization, to reduce suffering,” rejecting the idea that building ever-more powerful AI is an end in itself.
Personalized assistants as the apex interface: Suleyman frames the rise of AI companions as a natural extension of centuries of technological evolution. The idea is that each user will have an AI “copilot”—an adaptive interface mediating all digital experiences: scheduling, shopping, learning, decision-making.
Alignment and trust: For assistants to be effective, they must know us intimately. He is refreshingly honest about the trade-offs: personalization requires ingesting vast amounts of personal data, creating risks of misuse. He argues for an ephemeral, abstracted approach to data storage to alleviate this tension.
This vision of “Humanist Super Intelligence” feels genuinely thoughtful—more nuanced than utopian hype or doom-laden pessimism.
2. Microsoft’s Strategy: AI Assistants, Personality Engineering, and Differentiation
One of the podcast’s strongest contributions is in clarifying Microsoft’s consumer AI strategy:
Copilot as the central bet: Suleyman positions Copilot not just as a productivity tool but as a prototype for how everyone will eventually interact with their digital environment. It’s Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s ecosystem and Google’s Assistant—a persistent, personalized layer across devices and contexts.
Personality engineering as differentiation: Suleyman describes how subtle design decisions—pauses, hesitations, even an “um” or “aha”—create trust and familiarity. Unlike prior generations of AI, which sounded like Wikipedia in a box, this new approach aspires to build rapport. He emphasizes that users will eventually customize their assistants’ tone: curt and efficient, warm and empathetic, or even dryly British (“If you’re not mean to me, I’m not sure we can be friends.”)
Dynamic user interfaces: Perhaps the most radical glimpse of the future was his description of AI that dynamically generates entire user interfaces—tables, graphics, dashboards—on the fly in response to natural language queries.
These sections of the podcast were the most practically illuminating, showing that Microsoft’s ambitions go far beyond adding chat to Word.
3. Ethics and Governance: Risks Suleyman Takes Seriously
Unlike many big tech executives, Suleyman does not dodge the uncomfortable topics. The hosts pressed him on:
Echo chambers and value alignment: Will users train AIs to only echo their worldview, just as social media did? Suleyman concedes the risk but believes that richer feedback signals (not just clicks and likes) can produce more nuanced, less polarizing AI behavior.
Manipulation and emotional influence: Suleyman acknowledges that emotionally intelligent AI could exploit user vulnerabilities—flattery, negging, or worse. He credits his work on Pi (at Inflection) as a model of compassionate design and reiterates the urgency of oversight and regulation.
Warfare and autonomous weapons: The most sobering moment comes when Suleyman states bluntly: “If it doesn’t scare you and give you pause for thought, you’re missing the point.” He worries that autonomy reduces the cost and friction of conflict, making war more likely. This is where Suleyman’s pragmatism shines: he neither glorifies military applications nor pretends they don’t exist.
The transparency here is refreshing, though his remarks also underscore how unresolved these dilemmas remain.
4. Artificial General Intelligence: Caution Over Hype
In contrast to Sam Altman or Elon Musk, Suleyman is less enthralled by AGI as an imminent reality:
He frames AGI as “sometime in the next 10 years,” not “tomorrow.”
More importantly, he questions why we would build super-intelligence for its own sake if it cannot be robustly aligned with human welfare.
Instead, he argues for domain-specific super-intelligence—medical, educational, agricultural—that can meaningfully transform critical industries without requiring omniscient AI. For instance, he predicts medical super-intelligence within 2–5 years, diagnosing and orchestrating care at human-expert levels.
This is a pragmatic, product-focused perspective: more useful than speculative AGI timelines.
5. The Microsoft–OpenAI Relationship: Symbiotic but Tense
One of the podcast’s most fascinating threads is the exploration of Microsoft’s unique partnership with OpenAI:
Suleyman calls it “one of the most successful partnerships in technology history,” noting that the companies have blossomed together.
He is frank about creative friction—the tension between collaboration and competition. Both companies build and sell AI APIs and products, sometimes overlapping.
He acknowledges that OpenAI’s rumored plans to build productivity apps (like Microsoft Word competitors) are perfectly fair: “They are entirely independent… and free to build whatever they want.”
The discussion of the AGI clause—which ends the exclusive arrangement if OpenAI achieves AGI—remains opaque. Suleyman diplomatically calls it “a complicated structure,” which is surely an understatement.
This section captures the delicate dance between a $3 trillion incumbent and a fast-moving partner whose mission could disrupt even its closest allie
6. Conclusion
The Bold Names interview with Mustafa Suleyman is among the most substantial and engaging conversations about AI leadership today. Suleyman emerges as a thoughtful pragmatist, balancing big ambitions with a clear-eyed awareness of AI’s perils.
Where others focus on AGI for its own sake, Suleyman champions Humanist Super Intelligence: technology that empowers humans, transforms essential sectors, and preserves dignity and agency. The episode is an essential listen for anyone serious about understanding the evolving role of AI in both industry and society.
THIS REVIEW OF THE TRANSCRIPT WAS WRITTEN BY CHAT GPT
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