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Game of Thrones makes appearance at Trump White House meeting

Talk about a rerun. A controversial poster that first surfaced in a November tweet was visible on a Cabinet Room table.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
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Gael Cooper

The Game of Thrones is playing out for real in Washington DC, where President Donald Trump displayed a controversial Thrones-styled poster of himself at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

The image was first seen back in November, when the president tweeted it out, eliciting protests from HBO . It shows an image of the president overlaid with the familiar Thrones-style font and the words, "SANCTIONS ARE COMING" along with the date Nov. 5.

Why is the poster back? The poster's mention of "sanctions" was thought by many to refer to Iran when it originally surfaced, and The Washington Post noted on Wednesday that the president did mention Iran during the meeting, saying sanctions had worked and "Iran is in trouble."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why the poster was there.

A representative for HBO said the network had no new comment about the poster's reappearance. But back in November, the network issued an official statement saying, "We were not aware of this messaging and would prefer our trademark not be misappropriated for political purposes."

The network's official Twitter account was a bit snarkier, referring to one of the show's fictional languages and asking, "How do you say trademark misuse in Dothraki?"

Game of Thrones, the real thing, returns to HBO in April.