About

Donald Trump Presidential Portraits or Donald Trump's Official Portraits refers to memes and jokes about President Donald Trump's official inaugural portrait, comparing the difference between his past 2016 photo and his 2025 presidential image. Trump's 2016 portrait shows him smiling, while some internet users thought that the lighting and expression in Trump's 2025 portrait were comparable to his 2024 mugshot. Various internet users also compared it to the Dean Norris Reaction meme, while others compared it to the Smiling and Unsmiling Seong Gi-hun meme. Memes about Vice President J.D. Vance's official portrait also made the rounds online, with people comparing it to the People with Blue Eyes meme, as well as editing it to exaggerate his features.

Origin

President-elect Donald Trump's official inaugural presidential portrait was released on January 15th, 2025, with AFpost sharing the image on X^[1] / Twitter late on January 15th and Fox News^[2] reporting on the portrait on January 16th. The portrait showed an unsmiling Trump looking into the camera with a menacing expression, his eyebrow cocked and his face lit from below.

Fox News also shared Vice President-elect J.D. Vance's portrait on January 16th, showing Vance smiling into the camera with his arms crossed.^[2]

Several internet users compared Trump's official portrait with his older 2016 presidential portrait, with X^[3] user @TerminusVinter comparing the portrait to a notable meme audio of "Fullmetal Alchemist" being said in an upbeat voice and then in a deeper voice between ad breaks during the anime. The post gathered over 170,000 likes in two days.

Also on January 16th, X^[10] user @TBR55_Mistress converted the photos into the Fullmetal Alchemist title screen with the relevant meme audio, receiving over 1.7 million views, 48,000 likes and 7,800 retweets in a day. X^[4] user @untemi0 then posted another Fullmetal Alchemist title screen meme shortly after, gathering over 5,000 likes in a similar timeframe.

Done it! https://t.co/Y0blophpBq pic.twitter.com/bKuCLiEPiZ

— Mistress「 ミストレス 」 (@TBR55_Mistress) January 16, 2025

Spread

On January 16th, 2025, Redditor^[5] /u/jobomaja888 posted an image comparing Donald Trump's official inaugural portrait with his August 2023 mugshot to the subreddit /r/pics,^[4] gathering over 48,000 upvotes on a post captioned, " Trump's official portrait ~ Is he just a caricature of himself now."

Later on January 16th, the Instagram^[6] page @usa_transportation posted a meme comparing Trump's 2016 presidential portrait with his 2025 photo alongside a caption that read, "Me trucking in 2020 / Me trucking in 2025." The post gathered over 1,000 likes in a day.

Also on January 16th, 2025, the X^[7] account @creepydotorg compared Trump's portraits to the Smiling and Unsmiling Seong Gi-hun meme, gathering over 3,000 likes in a day.

J.D. Vance's Inaugural Portrait

Several internet users also reacted to J.D. Vance's official portrait, as seen in a January 16th, 2025, post^[8] by @massivecanine that compared the portrait to the people with blue eyes meme, gathering over 200,000 likes in a day, and a post^[9] by @awshuqs that edited and exaggerated Vance's featuring, gathering over 66,000 likes in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References