The Memo: Anti-Trump opposition leans into mockery to get under his skin |
Opponents of President Trump — from street protesters to elected officeholders — are increasingly turning to a different tactic to try to push back on his agenda: humor and mockery.
But there’s nothing light-hearted about their efforts.
Instead, the satirical or absurdist pushback is aimed at undercutting Trump’s preferred self-image of strength and instead rendering him and his allies as fundamentally ludicrous.
In recent days, Portland’s “Freedom Frog” — a protester dressed in a giant frog costume — has taunted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in the city, drawing enormous social media attention and inspiring other costumed comrades, frogs and otherwise, to join him.
Separately, dancing protesters have mocked ICE and other law enforcement personnel in part by adopting the sexually suggestive slogan “Arrest me, Daddy” and recording their efforts — a tactic that seems to be gaining steam on TikTok in particular.
Among elected officials, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) this week took aim at White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
Ocasio-Cortez said Miller “looks like he’s, like, [4 feet, 10 inches]” and further contended that the Trump aide exhibited “insecure masculinity.”
More pointedly, the New York progressive congresswoman urged her supporters that one of the best ways to combat such figures was to “laugh at them.”
This, in turn, led to a TV segment in which Fox News’s Laura Ingraham invited Miller to respond to Ocasio-Cortez’s taunts.
He complained that Ocasio-Cortez was “a trainwreck”; said of her jibes about his height that “we knew that her brain didn’t........