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Garbage stunt confirms Trump is America's meme king

Taking out the trash. Credit: Getty

October 31, 2024 - 8:00pm

With American election fever now at a deafening pitch, there’s something dizzying about stepping from one filter bubble to another and seeing how differently the same event can be treated. Yesterday, for instance, Donald Trump staged a photoshoot in a branded garbage collection truck, in response to Joe Biden calling his supporters “garbage”. This in turn was in response to a stand-up comic at Trump’s recent New York City rally describing Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”.

The Independent reported the garbage truck stunt as a “total fail”. The New York Times employed the “editorialising by proxy” strategy beloved of officially-still-objective newsrooms such as the BBC, in which they don’t so much report the stunt as report the reactions of people who didn’t like the stunt, so as to criticise it while preserving the appearance of merely reporting the news. Meanwhile, Trump-backing billionaire Elon Musk deemed it “genius-level trolling”, and the New York Post called it “a big, beautiful MAGA garbage truck”.

To say that I’ve been able to follow this story at all, despite having no direct stake in the US election, is an admission that I spend way too much time on the internet. But as such I have come to appreciate the power of a well-judged meme. And on this front Trump has consistently been head and shoulders above his opponents.

The visual of Trump in a hi-vis vest, behind the wheel of a Trump-branded garbage truck (bin lorry, in English), carries potent connotations. Momentarily, the former president became the working man, doing the smelly, arduous but socially indispensable work of collecting everyone’s rubbish. He became the practical man, doing tangible work in the real world. It is difficult to think of another politician capable of such a stunt — not even Trump’s own running mate J.D. Vance.

I’ve argued elsewhere that postmodern politics retrieves “representation” in a more medieval than liberal-democratic sense. And from this perspective, we can read Trump’s “garbage” stunt as representing — in archetype, if not yet in policy — a swathe of the American electorate that in recent decades has been largely abandoned by the Left which once voiced its interests.

Embodying archetypes in this way is a gift, not a learned achievement. Garbage Trump is only the latest in a string of memetically potent Trumpian images and utterances. When he visited a McDonald’s, made some fries and “served” from the drive-thru window, his enemies protested that it was all staged. But it made little difference, because the resulting images were simply too symbolically dense for such details to matter.

This in turn offers a clue as to why Trump consistently outclasses his opponents in meme warfare. He seems to understand at an instinctive level that dominating internet discourse isn’t about whether everyone thinks you’re a good person or not. The images, ideas, and phrases that make it beyond partisan filter bubbles do so not by being persuasively good across the board, but by transcending “good” and “bad” altogether.

There is no reconciling the filter bubbles now. But rather than viewing opposing filter bubbles as locked in a slide toward mutually assured destruction, to my eye the dialectic is more about mutual amplification and interdependence. Think of what happens every time one side or the other peels away to a social media ecosystem where they’re not confronted by their enemies, for example Mastodon or Bluesky. Without opponents, the conversation swiftly becomes boring, and defectors usually sidle back in the end.

In this context, true memetic power doesn’t rest in making everyone like you. Really, the entertainment value of the whole system rests on images and ideas strong enough to cross the containment barrier between filter bubbles, and drive discourse across the political spectrum. And in this game, nobody matches Trump. “Brat” and “joy” were good efforts, but ultimately weak. Meanwhile, it doesn’t matter if you’re lauding the Garbage Trump appearance as a supporter, or condemning it as a hater. Either way, you’re still sharing the image.

This raises many questions about how any of this maps onto the nitty-gritty of power. What role can serious policy debate possibly play in a battle for viral cut-through? What relation does meme power even have to real-world, institutional clout, and does the former ever influence the latter? Does going viral actually achieve anything?

I am not qualified to predict what will happen over the next few days. But whichever way the election goes, the result will be instructive on all these fronts.


Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd.

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AC Harper
AC Harper
4 days ago

I watched the video of the garbage truck and the follow-on rally where Trump told the story of why he was appearing in a hi-vis jacket. https://youtu.be/aowTnlSylRE

It struck me that he told the story in a similar way to how Elvis Presley interacted with an audience. Engaging with the audience, speaking with pauses, sharing his story with them in a relatable way. Getting his points across.
No wonder the Democrats are panicking.

Last edited 4 days ago by AC Harper
Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
4 days ago
Reply to  AC Harper

Have you considered seeking mental health assistance?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 days ago

CS suggesting mentalhealth treatment. Now *that* is funny.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

He/she may think you’re serious.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
4 days ago

The irony is hilarious.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
4 days ago
Reply to  AC Harper

Great link. The guy is hilarious.

Victor James
Victor James
4 days ago

As usual, the leftists can’t hide their genocidal hatred for those who disagree with them. ‘Garbage’…you have to work hard, flipping and convoluting in spasmodic absurdities, to pretend such language is not genocidal.
It’s not enough to troll them back, we have to take them seriously. The body count in the 20th century proves the leftist mind is one of the most genocidal in all of human history.

Last edited 4 days ago by Victor James
Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
4 days ago
Reply to  Victor James

How do you feel about Trump paraphrasing his German hero with the “poisoning the blood of the nation” stuff? You cool with that? Because calling someone garbage is way worse than that, right?!?!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 days ago

Context, numbskull.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

What context? Please explain.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
4 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I don’t know the context of that comment, but I guarantee you CS doesn’t either.

Dumetrius
Dumetrius
2 days ago

Just relax. You sound like you’re having something inserted in you, and it’s not an image I need before bed.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 days ago
Reply to  Victor James

I think you are confused. Trump is embracing the word garbage as his own. That’s why he was in a garbage truck.

Fafa Fafa
Fafa Fafa
4 days ago

Trump is playing these old school media dinosaurs like a Yehudi Menuhin. Their self-important huffing and puffing completely misses the point which just adds to the effect.

We live in some late stage of democracy in the West, maybe not the last stage but there is not much is left to dumb down.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
4 days ago
Reply to  Fafa Fafa

“there is not much is left to dumb down”
You certainly have the right candidate to finish the job.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
4 days ago

You cannot honestly not agree that Harris is as dumb as a box of rocks!

Last edited 4 days ago by Lesley van Reenen
UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 days ago

Perhaps the author is also speech writer for the VP. This essay contains a great deal of word salad filler. The bottom line: Wonderful Puerto Rico does, in fact, have a garbage problem. Democrats, in fact, have called Republicans dangerous tyrants since the Reagan era. Now democrats have cranked it up to 11 and as Lee Siegel wrote here just last week, democrats think Trump is worse than Hitler and his followers are garbage.
The level of dog whistling for violence is working. Trump has had 2 murder attempts, one mere inches from success. The stories of biolence against Americans,daring to wear Trump gear are numerous. In 2020 a random teen was murdered by some Biden supporter because he looked like a Trump supporter.
What do the democrats do? Triple down, intensify their poorly veiled threats against Americans. What has Trump done? Stuck to his job of winning this coming Tuesday.

I proudly stand as deplorable garbage with Trump. It is far better than being one of the despicable irrational cowardly haters.

Last edited 4 days ago by UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Sorry, but I don’t remember any random teen being murdered by a Biden supporter because he looked like a trump supporter. What does a Biden supporter look like? I’m just an average woman who shops at Target and goes to my book club meeting. And there are women there who support Trump!! And they look average women who probably shop at Target.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I need to sign my comments with my name, Kimberly, to stop the confusion. I think the other Unheard reader is my polar opposite.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
4 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

You could go further – just to help me – and modify your commenting name.
Having the same name means that I have to do an “irony analysis ” each time to work out what may be being implied …

Last edited 4 days ago by Ian Barton
Brett H
Brett H
4 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I don’t remember any random teen being murdered by a Biden supporter because he looked like a trump supporter. 
Which part of this comment are you objecting to?

Bruce Buteau
Bruce Buteau
3 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

In Arizona by a Democrat politician no less.

Dillon Eliassen
Dillon Eliassen
4 days ago

The Trump memes work because he’s funny, and Trump is in on the joke. He’s shameless, he knows it, we know it, and he knows we know it, and it’s what enables his campaign to be entertaining and funny, and Trump has an undeniable charisma when he’s one on one with someone. Despite laughing only when she’s being evasive, conservatives and independents remember Kamala as the VP of an administration that every week was trying to ban something people liked or trying to pay off the debt of a voting bloc it wanted to please. People can laugh at and laugh with Trump, but people can only laugh at Kamala. This election isn’t about policy, it’s about personality.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
4 days ago

However we know Trump’s policies. What few policies Harris floats are most often in direct contradiction to what she has previously done or said.

denz
denz
4 days ago

CS all you ever do on here is ad hominem responses.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 days ago
Reply to  denz

I guess it’s late stage Champagne Socialism?

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
4 days ago

The nub of the matter is this: Trump is good at politics. Harris isn’t.
This is a guy who can take the closest of shaves with death, an event completely out of his control and – without much conscious thought – produce a picture (the fist pumping the air with blood streaming down his face and Secret Service piling on top of him) and a phrase (“Fight! Fight! Fight!”) that define the moment and are destined for the history books and a million printed t-shirts.
The “unburdened by what has been” merch (it exists) is sort of funny but it will be forgotten by Christmas.

denz
denz
4 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

“Unburdened by what has-been” seems a question, the answers to which, ironically, are the USA and Kamala Harris

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
4 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

She is lost without her teleprompter and her speech writers often repeat word for word what is said in many of her other speeches. They are even playing 6 of them side by side on X to demonstrate.

Catherine Conroy
Catherine Conroy
4 days ago

Trump owned the overblown sorry tale. The idea of riding on a garbage truck was true comic genius.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
4 days ago

Will the French award Trump the well-known “Prix des Gilets Jaunes?

Cristina Bodor
Cristina Bodor
4 days ago

In a sea of stale commentaries regarding this election cycle, Mary brings back the much needed intellect and depth.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
4 days ago

Mary, you’ve returned to the arid sight seeing academic looking on from afar for symbols and linguistic touchstones. Get out of the library and close the big books of post-modernist theory or whatever it’s called these days. Both the McDonald’s and garbage truck stunts were funny. Perhaps you spent too many years grinding away to earn your certificates of expertise to remember a time when you enjoyed a joke. I don’t think you watched the full thing. Addressing the rally, Trump said when he saw how high the step was on the truck he thought “Shit!” He said he was going to slip back into his blue suitcoat until someone said the high-vis vest was slimming. “Okay, I’m gonna wear it.” Go on about memetics and other slumber-inducing jargon as long as you like to your fellow academics, but try to revive a sense of humour I like to think is only dormant not dead to the world.

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
3 days ago

It was a brilliant stunt.

Dave Canuck
Dave Canuck
4 days ago

He forgot to mention that he has plans to support Elon Musk in automated self driving garbage trucks which will eliminate the need for garbage truck drivers. The deplorables love the stunt, but they have no idea what’s coming

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
4 days ago

He’s certainly a clown.
President of the United States? Ah, I think not…

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
4 days ago

Ah… you hope not. But will never understand why.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
4 days ago

No, you will never understand anything.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 days ago

CS is losing his,endearing mask and his teeth are showing. He smells defeat. The cognitive dissonance must be getting to him.

Peter B
Peter B
4 days ago

I know facts aren’t your strong suit, but you must have missed 2017-2020 when he actually was US President !