The Story of a Trump Meme

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Constantly in today’s news, there are ongoing reports on our President, Donald Trump. Some reports seem undoubtedly true and others are up for speculation. It can definitely be hard to determine this. One way that these claims seep through to the public is through the use of memes, such as the one I have presented here. I researched the phrase “political memes” and this one came up as well as a plethora of others. I believe that this meme was created to express the anger and opinions of many people in the US. The creator of this meme made sure to layout some of the flaws of President Trump in a way that could help steer those in favor of the Republican Party to a different view. Our country is at a rare standpoint today where many individuals are feeling lost, saddened, angered while some others are completely fine with the situation. Due to the many different feelings, opinions, and the rare and abrupt personality of our President, citizens and the media are using their voice, or memes, to get their point across.

Getting information from a meme has to be done with some hesitation. The viewer should analyze for any inconsistencies because the meme could contain truth or opinion. In examining the meme of Donald Trump, there were some steps I needed to take. I started my investigation by looking at the meme itself and deciding what “moves” I was going to take. I needed to not only look at the actual photo and words but also look for any clues as to where the meme came from; I needed to “go upstream.” In doing this, I can see that the photo itself has the news network CNN written in the background. I completed an image search and found that the photo was taken from a live CNN Republican Presidential Debate. To verify this, I found a YouTube video of the event and you can clearly see the image was taken during that occasion. One the right-hand side of the image, the words “PROUD LIBERALS” are seen. When Googled, it seems that the name is for a meme generator.

Once I knew that the image was legitimate and where it came from, I could read laterally. I needed to dissect the text within the meme for validity. The first statement in the meme states that Donald Trump has had three wives. This is a fact. According to Wikipedia, Trump was married to Ivana Zelnickova from 1977-1992, Marla Maples from 1993-1999, and Melania Knauss 2005- present. Since this type of information is known to be factual, we can move on to the next claim.

Next, the meme declares that Trump has gone bankrupt four times. I began my search on Wikipedia. Under the title, Lawsuits and Bankruptcies, it explains that the President never actually filed for bankruptcy on a personal level but that his businesses have. “His hotel and casino businesses have been declared bankrupt six times between 1991 and 2009 in order to re-negotiate debt with banks and owners of stock and bonds”(Wikipedia). To double check Trump’s personal bankruptcies, I found clarification through The New York Times that he indeed never filed. I also found information on the six bankruptcies that were filed by his businesses, through the Washington Post. In turn, this means that the meme is not completely true in this aspect. He has not filed, his businesses have, and they have filed six times not four times. These last sources are reputable so we are able to continue on.

Unlike bankruptcies, stating that Donal Trump is a “draft dodger” is a hard statement to prove because it is most likely someone’s opinion. Digging into this, I needed to understand the term first. A draft dodger is a way of describing an individual who was able to steer clear of a draft into the military. According to Politifact, Donald Trump had five deferments from the military. All of his deferements except one were due to the fact that he was attending school. The first two deferments occurred while he was attending Fordham University and the next two during his time at The University of Pennsylvania. Once he graduated, he was open to joining the military but had a medical exam that excused him due to bone spurs according to Politifact (who got the document from The Smoking Gun.) This information can be up for speculation because there is little way of knowing if this medical information is true and the original source isn’t a known source. Later when being interviewed by ABC News, Trump stated a different reason for his deferment. He mentioned that his number was not picked when the military was doing a lottery for the draft. With this information we can see why individuals might think that Trump was trying to dodge the military especially not knowing for sure if he had medical issues. Just like an article from USA Today that claims the deferment was done as a favor from the podiatrist. The only factor that seems true is that he was attending school at the time, which seems like a solid reason to be deferred.  

The next move to make is to research Trump’s “fake university.” There was in fact a Trump University that was later called Trump Wealth Institute according to Wikipedia. This school was more of a seminar, non-credit, entrepreneur type of program. It seems that in the beginning people had the impression that it was more than what it was. According to the NY Daily Times, many students who attended this institute claimed that it was a scam and actually lost a lot of money while attending. Three lawsuits were filed for falsified information.(Wiki) According to the information I found, it seems like this claim is true.

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The next claim, outsourcing jobs to Mexico and China, seems to be a hot topic with Donald Trump. Trump talks a lot about keeping jobs in the United States and bettering our economy but according to the Washington Post, he has said “Outsourcing creates jobs in the long run…sending work outside your company is not always a terrible thing.”(Washington Examiner) According to Politifact, much of the Presidents clothing and personal products are made in China and have labels specifying that. This information seems contradictory especially since his slogan is “Make America Great Again.”. It seems like Trump is creating an image for himself with the message that he’s against outsourcing but then when you really look at the picture it’s possible that he’s not stopping it all together. 

The next to last statement is about the undocumented Polish workers. According to Politifact, Trump hired a contractor to build the Trump Tower in New York and the contractor apparantly hired the undocumented workers. According to Trump, he did not know that the workers were undocumented. The Washington Post presented the point that Trump has had undocumented workers at his golf courses and hotels, therefore; it is very possible that it could be true in this case. 

The final line to dissect is about Donald Trump wanting to use the court system to silence the media. Let’s be real, we can see that Trump is not a fan of the media and he expresses that in his Tweet posted on the NY Daily News website. Also, through CNN I was able to discover some quotes that shared his feelings on the media. Some of his comments were “the press doesn’t really like America…Media is the enemy of the American people…[and that they are] the most dishonest people”(CNN). Through this research, I can see that there is a lot of information that floats around about Donald Trump through the media. In my opinion, if the negative information wasn’t true would he be so inclined to go through the trouble of having the courts silence the information?

The meme presented here is one of many Donald Trump memes. I contains a silly looking facial expression and many words describing him and his life. After fact-checking the image and the information presented, it seems that the information is mostly legitimate. Some of the claims are opinion oriented (draft dodger) and others are misconstrued (bankruptcies) but the majority of the statements holds truth and I was able to find information on each topic. This meme had a large amount of information and involved a lot of research but with reputable sources to clarify, this meme stands high on the scale of truth.