The germination of Red White & Blue followed Trump's election in 2016. The world had changed. In an antique store Massey found a collection of volumes presenting compendia of steel-cut etchings made in the middle of the 19th century. Payne's Universum and Galleries of Munich, edited by Charles Edwards between 1845 and 1847, comprise, in Edward's words, "a collection of engravings of views in all countries, portraits of great men, and specimens of works of art, of all ages and of every character." It became to clear to Massey that the images in these leather-bound books were an attempt to create a generalized idea of how art was portrayed at the time: bucolic country scenes, portraits, the painter's studio and the like.

Sensing the parallels between Payne's stereotypical world and that of a Trumpian America, Massey began digitizing and manipulating select images from the collection. Beginning only with the engravings themselves, but then through the subsequent addition of the odd contemporary object (cinematic faces, "open" sign flags, modern weapons etc.), pictures of a distorted reality began to appear. Painting deep hues of red and blue onto select portions of each image abstracted the found narratives, transforming them into contemporary imperial vignettes. The results suggest a social disassociation, arising from the distorted representations that reflect the overarching values of a post-truth world.