White House casts Trump as a Zelda hero in 44-second video

The White House posted a 44-second video on November 5 that casts President Donald Trump as the hero of a The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time-style game.

It went up on the official White House X account and Instagram account, the same day Nintendo released its rebuilt Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo Switch 2.

The video is titled "The Legend of Trump: Make America Great Again," WION reported. Its caption, "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this," is the line from the 1986 original in which an old man hands Link his first sword. It landed two days after Republicans lost control of the House and Senate in the midterms, The Independent noted.

What the White House Zelda video shows

The clip opens on a title card built like the 1998 Nintendo 64 game: a blue shield with a red bird emblem, a sword crossed behind it, and "PRESS CONTINUE" at the bottom. A low-poly Trump figure in a dark blue suit, red tie and a red hat reading "STILL YOUR PRESIDENT" runs through a grassy nighttime forest toward a hollow tree, with heart containers, a green stamina bar, an attack button and a floating fairy companion.

On-screen text boxes claim the sharpest drop in prescription drug prices in more than 60 years through Most-Favored-Nations pricing, and zero illegal alien releases for 17 consecutive months. The video then cuts to the Oval Office, where Trump sits at the Resolute Desk signing documents, and ends on a white line drawing of the White House and "PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP," per WION and The Independent.

Video Games Chronicle reported that the video uses music from Ocarina of Time and reproduces the visuals of the Nintendo 64 release. WION described the footage as AI-generated. The Independent said it was "not immediately clear Thursday whether the video recreating The Legend of Zelda was AI-generated," and that some White House videos appear to be AI-generated. Destructoid called it "Zelda AI slop." No White House statement in the coverage confirms how the video was made, and no outlet reports that Nintendo authorized it.

Nintendo had not issued a public response as of November 7. VGC noted the post follows earlier condemnation from The Pokemon Company, which disavowed White House use of Pokemon imagery, and from The Tetris Company, which objected to a White House Tetris clone that was later removed. For creators making game-styled AI video, the clip is a test of how far a recognizable game's look and music can travel in a political post before the rights holder speaks.

Watch the White House video on X or Instagram; Nintendo's Ocarina of Time remake is available now on Nintendo Switch 2.