White House wants us to see Trump as Superman. We all know he's the villain. | Opinion
President Donald Trump isn't Superman, no matter what memes Republicans share on social media. It's sad to watch an American president beg for attention.
President Donald Trump, the man whose first run for the presidency was widely viewed as a joke until it wasn’t, wants to make you laugh.On July 11, Trump’s communications team posted a photo of the president edited into the poster from the new “Superman” movie with the all-caps caption, “A SYMBOL OF HOPE. TRUTH. JUSTICE. THE AMERICAN WAY. SUPERMAN TRUMP,” tied up in a patriotic bow with an American flag emoji.
The self-mythologizing is almost laughable. Almost.
It's not the first time the Trump administration has tried to joke with the American public. In recent months, his communications team posted a photo of him dressed as the pope, a video of Gaza as a golden Trump paradise, and countless Truth Social posts that rely on YELLING IN ALL CAPS AT RANDOM and painting Trump as the greatest president to ever do it.
But we shouldn’t laugh. That’s exactly what he wants. We should instead realize how sad it is to watch an American president beg for attention.
Trump wants to be seen as the hero. He's the villain.
Trump presenting himself as Superman is just a distraction from the fact that he's the true villain of this story, the one who is harming entire groups of people in the United States for the fun of it. Similarly, he has done nothing to deserve a comparison to the pope. In fact, the newly selected Pope Leo XIV has already criticized Trump's deportation agenda, the emergence of nationalism, and Trump's strike on Iranian nuclear facilities back in June. Superman would never.
I am against memeifying the presidency, no matter who is in office. I was against “Dark Brandon,” the meme genre produced by chronically online Democratic strategists during Joe Biden’s presidency.
A meme of a presidency does nothing for the American public. It does not tell us what the head of our country is doing to make our society work for us. It does not heal the nation; it simply distracts from what ails us.
But there’s something different about the way Trump tries to joke with the American public. It works better than the Biden ilk of memes, mostly because the MAGA audience is receptive to it. They put his face on T-shirts. They share his posts. They fly his flag as much, if not more, than the American flag. They lean into the absurdity.
It’s not just MAGA, either. There’s a certain subset of leftists who laugh at Trump, as opposed to with him. They make fun of his ridiculous posts and his blatant narcissism. While it manages to mitigate the fear that has come along with a Trump presidency, it also fails to capture the real dangers of the situation we find ourselves in as a country delving headfirst into the Trumpian. It’s a real “laugh to keep from crying” scenario, and I have to wonder if it actually improves our circumstances.
Trump is just distracting us from how much we don't like him
At the end of the day, maybe we all just want to be liked – even the president. Perhaps Trump is memeing himself to get people to think he isn’t that bad. At the very least, it serves as a distraction from the ways he is unpopular with the American public, according to a slew of polls on issues ranging from immigration to tariffs.
In recent days, MAGA has turned on Trump because of the criminal investigation of the files related to the criminal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. He’s facing hundreds of lawsuits for different administrative actions, most recently getting sued over the release of $7 billion in education grants. He is forging ahead with his extreme immigration agenda that aims to arrest 3,000 people a day.
His popularity is slipping, and he currently has an average 44% approval rating. In particular, he is losing the faith of the middle class, who are still struggling with an economy that doesn’t work for them and the potential damage of the appropriations bill and tariffs.
Trump doesn’t want you to pay attention to that, though. He just wants to make you laugh.
Whether he’s Superman, the pope, or just a man in an oversized suit, Trump’s whole schtick is that he’s an eccentric man who happened to become president. A meme can’t acknowledge the truth – that he is a deeply unpopular president who is hellbent on destroying the country. Maybe it's best if we all stop laughing.
Follow Paste BN columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter, @sara__pequeno