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I woke up Sunday morning in London, rolled over, and looked at my phone. I had 76 unread messages, an alarming amount for a Saturday night, even with the time difference. My two group chats were full of memes about former President Donald Trump surviving a shooting at his campaign rally on Saturday in rural Butler, Pennsylvania. It should go without saying that violence is not the answer to anything, including threats to our democracy, and I wouldn’t wish harm on anyone, including Donald J. Trump. (One spectator, a former fire chief named Corey Comperatore, died, and the suspected gunman was killed.)
But in my little corner of the World Wide Web, the attempt on Trump’s life was material for endless jokes. Judging by the tweets I saw, few people were concerned with Trump’s injury (he said his ear was clipped) or even who the culprit was. In 2024, no event or crisis, especially a political one, is safe from instantly being reduced to a meme.
Predictably, speculation and jokes rushed in to fill the void of factual information about the event. Some early chatter even suggested that the shooting was staged. But it was real, and deadly. The moment splashed across every feed and news outlet ( captured on video and in historic fashion by AP photographer Evan Vucci and others) is of Trump, ear bloodied, telling his Secret Service detail to “Wait, wait, wait!” so he could defiantly pump his fist in the air. It was, in true Trump fashion, some WWE shit. And it spawned an image we will see for the rest of our lives.
The internet spontaneously generates the laughs, and the ironic distance, to help get people through almost anything that happens. In some ways, it’s a gift, or at least a momentary distraction. Trump’s path to power has led, among many other critically more important things, to many laughs. His inane babbling, phat ass, and hair alone are enough to keep the jokes coming for years.
Many made hating Trump their personality when he first ran for president, and after he failed to go away after losing to Biden in 2020, that pose—even when it was justified and well-intentioned—started to grate on some others; #resist itself went from rallying cry to punchline. And as always, Trump played the public sentiment exactly right. Rather than going off to produce smart and tasteful movies and podcasts, he just kept talking shit. It’s the only real skill he has, but it’s one that especially resonates in an internet-centered world. I don’t think his post-presidency was even calculated. With an ego that big and several platforms at his fingertips, it was the most natural and modern way for him to stay relevant.
Getting engagement online may be the new retail politics. But Trump isn’t merely the most gifted politician of the internet era: He is a master of the online spectacle, with a preternatural ability to spawn memes. The raised fist is the most iconic meme to date.
I often joke that death is the best thing that can happen to your career if you are in the public eye. For a musician or actor, especially a young and successful one, it preempts years of potential missteps and bad performances. It cements you at the top of your game. Donald Trump survived the attempt on his life, but that single image of his reaction to it, instantly spread across every platform and front page in the world, enshrines him at the peak of his myth-making game. It will also blast him even higher in the polls, which might be the worst thing that could happen to the United States of America.
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