Photographic memory: Pete Souza trolls Trump with just the right Obama photos

Pete Souza, the official White House photographer during the Obama years, has carved out a new role for himself he seems to be enjoying almost as much as taking photographs: trolling Donald Trump.

Ever since the 45th president took office, Souza has used his impressive archive of White House photography and snarky tone to snipe at him via social media.

On Wednesday, shortly after Trump called his former aide Omarosa “that dog” on Twitter, Souza posted a photo of Barack Obama and Bo, one of his Portuguese water dogs. The photo was captioned: “A real dog waiting for a real President.”

The post was one of Souza’s sharpest and gained over 150,000 likes and widespread coverage, but it was typical of how he uses his Instagram account to remind his followers of the differences between the Obama and Trump administration. While Trump was raging against Merkel during the G7 conference in June, for example, Souza posted a photo of the German chancellor with Obama in the Munich mountains during the 2015 G7 meet-up. He gave the post the caption: “besties”.

That tone is typical of Souza’s posts – he finds a photo from the Obama era that matches up with whatever is in the news, then adds some sass. When Omarosa Manigault Newman revealed that she had secretly recorded conversations in the Situation Room earlier this week, Souza posted a photo of Obama and his security team in one of the room’s conference areas with the caption: “Telephones and other communication devices were not allowed in any of the three rooms. Just saying.”

Over Easter 2018, when there was a spate of firings from the Trump White House, Souza posted a photo of the head of the Easter Bunny outfit behind some unaware children, with the caption, “Apparently the Easter Bunny got fired yesterday and no one even noticed.”

Sometimes the posts get a little more vitriolic. As wildfires raged in California, Souza posted a photo of Obama visiting the aftermath of a blaze in Colorado. He pointed out that Obama actually went to the site rather than “just tweeting nonsense about the water supply being misused”. Trump had blamed the fires on a lack of available water in California, a claim that state firefighters said was entirely false.

Souza sometimes posts multiple times a day, and he has been criticised by some commentators for his lack of subtlety and his over-romanticisation of the Obama era. Yet he shows no signs of stopping: he has just released a book, titled Shade, that contrasts his photos of the Obama presidency with other photographers’ images of the Trump administration.