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 work, now we know their eyes don’t work”; and asserted that he is, in fact, 5 feet 10 inches.
Ocasio-Cortez, not to be outdone, then posted on social media the part of Miller’s Fox interview where her original comments were shown.
“I cannot believe they aired this and made him listen to it live,” the Democrat wrote, adding a laughter emoji and concluding: “I am crying.”
Amid all of this, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has continued with his recent trend of aping Trump’s hyperbolic and self-praising style on social media.
A Friday social media post from Newsom’s press office began: “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, GAVIN C. NEWSOM, MANY SAY AMERICA’S MOST LOVED, MOST HANDSOME AND POSSIBLY MOST IMPORTANT GOVERNOR!!”
Newsom, like Ocasio-Cortez, is considered a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
The sustained, disparate efforts to make fun of Trump appear to be buoying Democratic morale even amid serious consternation at the president’s actions. And it is paying political dividends for Newsom, at least, who has risen in some polls of potential 2028 candidates since he began his stream of Trump-impersonating posts.
Some proponents of the absurdist street theater engaged in by protesters believe it can serve an important purpose, especially against a figure like Trump, who they contend is heading down an authoritarian path.
They point to historic examples where satire was used to undercut or at least unsettle menacing political figures.
The trend stretches back at least as far as Charlie Chaplin, who mocked Adolf Hitler in his 1940 satire “The Great Dictator.”
MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, a former White House press secretary under former President Biden, recently reminded her viewers of a satirical Russian puppet show, “Kukly,” that poked fun at Vladimir Putin — apparently with some effect, since it was soon forced off the airwaves under pressure from the Kremlin.
Last year, writing in Rolling Stone magazine, progressive strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio noted with approval the success enjoyed in the Balkans around the turn of the century by a group called Otpor, which sought to undercut Serbian authoritarian leader Slobodan Milošević, in part by mocking him.
Opponents of Trump have been urging their allies to make fun of the president for some time.
Last year, conservative lawyer and Trump critic George Conway told The Atlantic, “The best way to hit the soft underbelly of his psychological disorders is to mock him. He cannot take mockery. It is the thing that makes him craziest, and the mockery diminishes him.”
Conway added, “The reason why his followers follow him [is] they think he is a strong man. And he is not.”
A 2020 New York Times op-ed by Nicholas Kristof bore the headline “To Beat Trump, Mock Him” and featured a photo of the cartoonish Trump blimp flown by protesters at times during his first term.
“I’m frustrated by the lack of traction that earnest critiques of Trump get, and I think it’s useful to learn lessons about how people abroad challenged authoritarians,” Kristof wrote, again citing Russian and Serbian examples, as well as the fury other “strongmen” figures expressed toward cartoonists who mocked them.
Trump, for whom machismo is central to his public persona, would never explicitly admit that he is bothered or hurt by mockery. But he has frequently exhibited a thin-skinned response.
The most obvious pieces of evidence are his frequent rhetorical fusillades against TV hosts who have made fun of him including Stephen Colbert (“VERY BORING”), Jimmy Kimmel (“ZERO talent”), Jon Stewart (“highly overrated”) and Seth Meyers (“no Ratings, Talent or Intelligence.”)
Trump celebrated the announcement that Colbert’s “Late Show” would be canceled by CBS earlier this year, and he lamented Kimmel’s return after he was briefly pulled from the airwaves by a combination of ABC, Nexstar and Sinclair last month. Nexstar is the corporate owner of The Hill.
It’s not just Trump who can react with anger, though. The Portland Freedom Frog became so prominent in part because a federal agent was recorded appearing to spray a chemical at a vent in the costume.
The anti-Trump forces hope those kinds of reaction point to how effective mockery can be.
One way or another, right now satire is a serious business.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
