A few days ago the White House announced they were eliminating Obama-era incentivizes for car engines that automatically turn off at red lights. The feature saves gas and reduces the more noxious emissions car engines produced at low RPM, but in some cars (especially non-hybrids) the air conditioning doesn’t work as well with the engine off and it can take half a second to start moving again. There’s a button to manually override the stop function, but it usually defaults back to on so some folks find it annoying.
The Trump EPA now claims the feature is “merely a climate participation trophy with no material benefit.” Given that they’re also repealing the rule declaring greenhouse gas emissions as a danger to public health the auto start-stop credit is small potatoes, and I figured it was the kind of annoyance that looms large in the minds of Andy Rooney-conservatives like Trump — similar to his obsession with shower heads.
But judging from this wordless AI-generated ad the White House posted to X (the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter), eliminating the auto stop-start is actually about bringing back old-fashioned conservative-minded sex appeal. I can only imagine the script some poor PR flack fed to an AI to create this slop went something like this:
Establishing shot of the back of a grey mid-2000s Prius with bumper stickers stopped at a red light. There’s the sound of a click as the engine shuts off.
Interior of car shows two liberals (lesbians, but not the hot kind): fat, with butch haircuts and ear tunnels. One has a nose ring, the other has tattoos and a scarified eyebrow (that’s a thing, right?). Both have blue hair so you know they’re liberals. It’s sweltering in the car and they’re both sweating and uncomfortable.
Shot of the auto start-stop override button. They could push it and end their torment, but they can’t admit that leaving the engine off is just virtue signaling with no material benefit so they suffer in silence. There’s the sound of car coming to a stop in the next lane.
View through passenger window to the next car over, a red sports car. The driver is a girl in her early twenties: blond, feminine, aryan. She’s hot in a girl next door / future Fox News host way. She smiles, drinking coke from a glass bottle as the wind from her AC gently tostles her hair.
Cut back to the blue-haired liberals, looking on wistfully as they reflect on the misery their misguided ideas have brought them.
Cut to the sports car driving off, followed three seconds later by Prius slowing starting across the intersection.
Fade to text “LEAVING AUTO STOP IN THE DUST”, followed by White House logo.
Lest you think I’m reading too much into this, the White House literally posted the video with the headline “Keeping cool while Making America Hot Again”, a call-out to the MAGA-adjacent movement that’s equal parts conservative dating scene and rejection of the “woke” push for acceptance of diverse body types.
Personally I still don’t see the connection between climate policy and sexiness, but I do agree that “Making America Hot Again” is unintentionally the perfect slogan for Trump’s wholesale deregulation of greenhouse gases. Honestly, I couldn’t have put it better myself.