More importantly: memes may be a fast way to convey a political message to a specific audience who gets the inside joke, but the humor is rarely understood by anyone outside of that group — especially people who might have been sympathetic to the concept of stopping illegal immigration, but are horrified by how the Trump administration is going about it. I think you just refined what we’ve been thinking about at The Verge: the way that my coworkers saw Trump’s abduction of Maduro and their response to the ICE shooting was that this government’s policy is a meme mentality — their speed, virality and the need to get their spin out first before anyone feels any sort of way about it. The voters who are going to turn out in 2026 — yeah, some of them are going to be part of that MAGA base that it embraces the cruelty, but the people that you need to win over are going to be people who have nuanced views on issues like illegal immigration and people who say, Yeah, we need secure borders; yes, we need more enforcement of our immigration laws; but maybe we don’t need to be putting out memes about, you know, a father being taken off in handcuffs.
Author: Tina Nguyen
Published at: 2026-01-13 23:33:54
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