Last Saturday, former President Donald Trump joined his supporters in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he narrowly missed being assassinated. With a slight turn of the head, Trump’s ear was injured when he was shot at, which left him bleeding.
The gunman, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired off shots from an AR-15-style rifle, killing an attendee of the election rally and seriously injuring two others. Moments later, Secret Service agents shot and killed Crooks.
After the near hit, Trump grabbed his right ear and ducked behind the podium. A gaggle of agents clad in suits covered Trump with their bodies to protect him from being hit again. More shots burst through the crowd, causing chaos to break out.
Memes are a contagion for ideas with a potent ability to construct and disseminate political propaganda.
People screamed and crouched down, not knowing where to run. Some pulled out their phones to start recording the scene. As the agents tried to cart Trump down the stairs to safety, he abruptly stopped. He yelled, "Wait, wait, wait!! and proceeded to fist-pump the air several times in a sign of defiance. In response, the crowd began chanting "USA!" over and over again.
AP News photographer Evan Vucci captured the image of Trump, with an American flag blowing in the background, blood splattered across his face. The photo became an instant viral sensation, rapidly spreading across the internet in the form of a meme. Simultaneously, video footage of the scene surfaced, which was shared online to the same effect.
People started editing photos and videos, creating more memes and snowballing impact. Videos of Trump were paired with 50 Cent’s "Many Men," a song about the rapper's own brush with death, comparing Trump to a gangster. Soon enough, 50 Cent performed the song live against the backdrop of an image of Trump’s face superimposed onto his body from the 2003 "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" album cover.
In a video edit of Trump that has racked up over 262,000 likes, one commenter wrote, “Bro has infinite aura now.” According to Bustle, aura points are "all about the vibe or energy you give off." You lose them when people find you cringe and embarrassing and gain them when you are perceived as cool and confident. In his near brush with death, Trump scored innumerable aura points, catapulting him to god-tier levels of online infamy.
Memes are a contagion for ideas with a potent ability to construct and disseminate political propaganda. Capitalizing on his close call, Trump has effectively positioned himself as a powerful political force in the 2024 election. He’s ready to fight for America and even die for his country.
“The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle,” Trump told The New York Post. “I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead.” In the aftermath of major political events, people across the ideological spectrum will speculate on what happened and derive their own conclusions. In turn, countless conspiracy theories have proliferated online and have been shared via memes.
People have questioned why it took so long for the Secret Service agents to intervene, asking if the whole scene was a setup. Perhaps, the assassination attempt was carried out by none other than reigning President Joe Biden himself. Maybe Trump orchestrated the close encounter with death to win the election. Many have suggested that Trump is divinely protected and was saved by the hand of God.
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Tucker Carlson has argued that the assassination attempt is evidence that a “spiritual battle is underway.” He’s even gone so far as to say that this is more than a political divide but the work of forces “whose only goal is chaos, violence, destruction.” If that’s the case, Trump is battling the devil and is the savior of Christian America.
All of this conjecture has oscillated heavily around a single moment, one likely to brew in the imaginations of Americans for many years to come. Even in a state of shock, Trump was media-savvy enough to know this moment was one to leverage, quite literally, for the history books. And this is all made possible through memes.
Former US President Donald Trump attends the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States on July 18, 2024. (Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)Memes are formidable when it comes to simplifying complex political and social commentary into easily digestible tidbits. Their ability to communicate ideology is limitless, as is their exponential potential to grow, mutate, and spread online. They transfer cultural units of information from person to person, often transcending political divides.
While this meme may be his most defining, Trump is no stranger to the art form. On his hit reality TV show "The Apprentice," Trump would yell "You're fired!" at contestants who were abruptly kicked off. The iconic phrase, a meme in and of itself, constructed Trump as a wealthy and powerful businessman who could destroy the dreams of hopeful candidates in an instant.
But memes have made Trump more than just a measure of masculinity and financial prowess in a bustling New York City. In 2016, he became the messiah to assuage the white fear of demographic change in America. This racist rhetoric, which posits that white people are being replaced or overtaken by those who are racialized, has had a substantive impact on politics.
Across the political spectrum, white people have become increasingly conservative about topics including everything from affirmative action and immigration to defense spending and health care reform. Racial resentment has become so prolific that white millennials already voted Trump into office. And this same situation could be playing out once more.
During this first election campaign, Trump became a “mascot of anti-political-correctness” for disaffected young, white men on Reddit and 4chan. These online communities have turned into echo chambers for the most hateful ideas that exist. The alt-right has used memes to vocalize their most extreme opinions, stoke a Trump movement and enact real political change.
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In the meme wars, Trump has emerged as triumphant, time and time again. His political opponents in both the 2016 and 2024 elections have memetically paled in comparison. When facing off with Hillary Clinton, Trump nicknamed her “Crooked Hillary,” constructing her as a corrupt politician and unfit to lead. This year, Trump has deployed the same moniker, calling the current president “Crooked Joe.”
Trump has weaponized memes to create the narrative that he is indomitable. Simultaneously, he has used them to attack Biden at every misstep. Biden’s cognitive capacity has been called into question, with many arguing he is too feeble of an old man to lead a nation. Just recently, Biden accidentally called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "President Putin" while the two stood on stage together. While Trump and Biden are only three years apart in age, the gap in memeable discourse continues to widen.
As the election looms in the relatively near future, Trump’s most memeable moment may spell victory. Regardless of the outcome, Trump knows how to market his moment of peril to the masses. Whether he is the Rat King of the alt-right or a messenger of God, as far as memes go, Trump remains a political force to be reckoned with.
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