The US Department of Education turned a pro-Donald Trump social media edit into an accidental Adolf Hitler comparison Wednesday, exposing an unusually direct breakdown in content vetting after the department acknowledged that the staffer responsible did not understand the source material.
The department’s official X account posted a 19-second video on August 26 with the caption, “No one does it like us,” followed by a tiger emoji. A third-party archive of the account captured the post at 5pm on Wednesday. The department itself lists @usedgov as its official X account.
The video opened with Gary Oldman portraying British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the 2017 film Darkest Hour.
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“You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth,” Oldman’s Churchill says before the edit immediately switches to footage of Trump.
The problem was what the department left out. In the surrounding scene, members of Churchill’s government are debating whether Britain should pursue negotiations with Nazi Germany. Churchill’s response rejects the idea that Hitler could be treated as a reasonable negotiating partner. The “tiger” in the metaphor is therefore Hitler, making the department’s transition from the line directly into Trump footage read as an unintended comparison between the two.
X users quickly identified the context, and the post received a Community Note explaining that the film’s tiger referred to Hitler.
The department subsequently deleted the video. Forbes reported that the post was taken down shortly after users began pointing out the comparison.
The department later attributed the mistake to an employee.
“The video … was created and posted by an ED staffer who did not understand the context of the video,” a spokesperson told HuffPost, adding that the material was based on a trending TikTok sound. The department said it removed the video from all of its social media platforms.
The department has also not yet publicly identified the employee involved or detailed what approval process, if any, the video went through before publication.
The mistake also follows another social media controversy at the department one week earlier. On August 19, it posted an AI-generated Mario Kart-style image promoting the Freedom 250 Grand Prix that was intended to depict Trump, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Social media users instead repeatedly said the rendering of Duffy resembled Jeffrey Epstein, prompting the department to clarify the character’s identity to the Daily Beast.
