When Journalism Meets Comic-Con
Faster than a speeding bullet, the media leaps on Trump-as-Supervillain
Back in the 1980s, if a journalist had tried to publish a piece in a mainstream newspaper calling Ronald Reagan a “wicked scoundrel,” they’d have been laughed out of the newsroom—or at least gently reminded that opinion column isn’t the same thing as open mic night. But today, USA Today can run an op-ed—yes, the same paper that pioneered color-coded pie charts and once boasted the largest circulation of any newspaper in the country—titled: “White House wants us to see Trump as Superman. We all know he's the villain.”
We all know? Was there a poll? Has it been certified or anything?
Apparently, this is definitive. And according to author Sara Pequeño, Trump’s communications team posting a meme of him posing as Superman isn’t just cringe (and I’ll concede, Trump in tights is never a good look), it’s a smokescreen for his descent into pure, cartoonish evil. The author warns that behind every “YELLING IN ALL CAPS AT RANDOM” Truth Social post lies a calculated effort to distract the nation from his extreme unpopularity and the fact that he “is harming entire groups of people in the United States for the fun of it.”
Pequeño is apparently some sort of soul-reader. She can look deeply and directly into a stranger’s psyche and determine the depth of his sociopathy. She can (and did!) conclusively call the president a sadist—someone who derives pleasure from inflicting pain. That’s not “Biden is mentally incompetent” or “Harris can’t cobble together an intelligible sentence, bless her heart;” it’s Donald Trump, Jeffrey Dahmer, same diff.
That’s a strong stance to take.
Forget policies or issues or arguments. Pretend the post in question wasn’t a debatably humorous attempt to capitalize on a pop culture moment. Trump is now one Diet Coke away from nuking the planet just to have the last word with Rosie O’Donnell.
To be fair, the meme was a bit much. But since when does a bad Photoshop job qualify as a national crisis? We’re talking about a politician known for trolling. The meme was labeled “TRUTH... JUSTICE... AND THE AMERICAN WAY,” which is actually Superman’s iconic motto and not something Trump slapped on there for fun (although it does sound like something you’d read on a Walmart T-shirt rack between “Live Laugh Love” and “Namaste in Bed”). But still. A meme is not a manifesto.
The article goes on to scold Trump for previously appearing as the Pope in another meme, which was also bad. Because—as we are gravely informed—the actual Pope, Leo XIV, has criticized Trump’s policies. “Superman would never,” sniffed Pequeño. (I suppose the presidential, Christian thing to do would have been to turn the other cheek—not spite-dash to Canva and whip up a little digital sacrilege. Whoops. Also did anyone else miss the memo that we now fact-check memes against Vatican press briefings?)
The writer would like her readers to know that she is “against memeifying the presidency, no matter who is in office.” (Bipartisan scorn? That’s fair and balanced reporting right there!) She points out her equal disdain for “Dark Brandon” specifically—the spectacularly awful attempt by Dems to create an edgier version of their comatose candidate. You know, to be hip with the kids. (Because nothing says ‘cool and competent’ like ironic laser eyes on a guy who sometimes forgets he's at a podium.)
“Biden's embrace of the Dark Brandon meme shows not only an awareness of the meme and what it represents to many of his followers, but self-awareness of how the meme livens and rejuvenates his public persona,” NPR quoted Aja Romano, a culture reporter for Vox, as saying at the time of the cartoon’s debut.
Did it, though? Are we really pretending Biden got that he was ironically embracing feck Joe Biden “Let’s go, Brandon”? If he did, would his big signature bad-boy catchphrase really be “No more malarkey”?
It’s easy to laugh. But it’s also easy to miss the bigger question here: When did journalism become… this? When did opinion writing stop being thoughtful, provocative commentary—and start sounding like a poetry slam at a vegan coffee co-op?
Criticizing the president is fair game. It always has been. I’m one thousand percent for free speech (it gives me so much to mock!). But we used to draw a distinction between “I disagree with this policy” and “This man is the Antichrist with a combover.” Now, we’re breathlessly warned that Trump’s real crime isn’t what he does—it’s the fact that not enough of us hate him for it (*despite his extreme unpopularity). That he memes “too well.” That his audience is “too receptive.” That even some leftists are laughing.
The horror.
For the record, I’m not endorsing the president’s actions or suggesting the executive residence handled any of this swimmingly. In fact, after the backlash, the official @WhiteHouse account fired back on X: “Nowhere in the Constitution does it say we can’t post banger memes,” alongside an image that read, “OMG, did the White House really post this?” Yes. Yes, they did. And Abraham Lincoln somersaulted in his grave.
ONLY QUASI-RELATED: Please read the rest of that story, which includes writer and director James Gunn’s comment calling Superman—who hails from a faraway fictional planet—an inspiring immigrant story. You can’t make this stuff up.
STUDIO PUBLICITY HEAD: I don’t know. I mean, Superman’s been around forever. How can we make our version… relevant?
GUNN: We could make him nonbinary?
STUDIO PUBLICITY HEAD: Bite your blasphemous tongue. We’re not making Superperson.
GUNN: Fine, what about if we play up the immigrant angle?
STUDIO PUBLICITY HEAD: Superman is from the planet Krypton.
GUNN: Exactly.
STUDIO PUBLICITY HEAD: I like it.
The pouty USA Today piece ends with a plea: Maybe it’s best if we all stop laughing. “That’s exactly what [Trump] wants!” Pequeño huffed earlier… Um, you think? (Also, maybe stop giving *some of us* such delicious fodder and we could at least try to keep the hysterics to a minimum.)
And maybe that’s exactly the problem. When every meme, tweet, and eye-roll emoji becomes life-or-death, when satire is treated as sedition, when headlines take on the overwrought tone of a dystopian YA novel—it’s impossible not to laugh. In fact, it’s practically the only thing you can do.
The reality is, if Trump posting a Man of Steel meme sends the media into DEFCON 1, he doesn’t even need a cape. All he needs is a smartphone, a sense of humor, and a press corps willing to churn out endless free publicity. That’s the ultimate superpower.
But… but… why did you pick that one? LMK in the comments. :)
The more he memes, the more the left loses their minds. I voted for this, among other things.
Trump is always entertaining. He never ceases to come up with new ways to shock people. Even though I often don’t agree with his behavior, he doesn’t seem to filter his thoughts and words, and for that I find him likable. He shakes things up.