Michael Reacts to the SPICIEST White House Memes
Episode Stats
Words per minute
153.87254
Harmful content
Toxicity
10
sentences flagged
Hate speech
9
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode of ASMR, we revisit some of the most memorable White House memes to be published to date, including some of our favorite from the second term of President Trump's administration. We also hear from the official ex-White House ASMR: illegal alien deportations.
Transcript
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When you let aero truffle bubbles melt, everything takes on a creamy, delicious, chocolatey glow.
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All electric and thoughtfully designed to elevate your modern lifestyle.
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The Volkswagen ID.4 is fun to drive with instant acceleration that makes city streets feel like open roads.
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Plus a refined interior with innovative technology always at your fingertips.
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Everyone's focusing on President Trump's performance on the economy.
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The president has now fired her as secretary of DHS.
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And there's a lot, there's a lot obviously to be excited about and talk about.
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But people have not paid sufficient attention to the White House's supreme use of memes in the second term.
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You gotta remember a lot of, a lot of the people there were kids, teenagers just coming up during the meme wars of 2016.
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Now we're seeing that flower and those, those meme war vets are now in the halls of power.
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So the producers have compiled some of the greatest White House memes to be published to date.
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This is actually from the administration, like DHS and the White House.
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The, uh, I wish I could pull up in front of me.
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It was supposed to be in the video itself where you could see it.
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Very, you know, I, it's funny because I'm, for all my doom scrolling, I don't know, my algo is real niche stuff.
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It's basically like, you know, the Merovingian dynasty, like facts you didn't know and weird ukulele videos.
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Because it's one thing, it's, that's a level of memory that I really like.
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The one level, the, the most obvious level would be, hey, you illegal aliens, you get out of here.
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But it's a, it's a deeper level of meaning and irony to come out and say, hey, great news.
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Illegals, we'll fly you anywhere you want to go as long as it's your country of origin.
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This one's to be expected because the, the postmodern philosopher that everyone's talking about right now in the kind of right wing intellectual circles, even somewhat mainstream circles.
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There are all sorts of reasons why he's the man of the hour and people like to cite him.
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Many people haven't even read his books, but he's an interesting writer.
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If you can make it through very confusing postmodern language.
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But anyway, one of the reasons is he wrote this book called, I think it was the Iraq war didn't happen or the Gulf war didn't happen.
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That's one of his that I actually have not read.
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But the idea being that we now live in a hyper reality that is in many ways divorced from the underlying reality.
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So our experience of war now, be it in Venezuela or Iran, is really no different than the experience of a video game.
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With that meme, there's actually a pretty deep level of meaning in how the American right sees itself and sees the world.
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This is from the official ex-White House ASMR illegal alien deportations flight.
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You know, that that would that would be the basic level meme.
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But no, just chains banging on a metal staircase.
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But by the way, some people are going to say this is gratuitous.
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They're going to say this is, you know, performative and it's red meat to the base or whatever.
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It serves a strategic purpose because a ton of these guys reenter.
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And then under Biden, under Obama, they just reenter.
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I mean, some of these people have been deported like five times.
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So if you want to actually keep them out, you need to make the process of being deported a little less comfortable, let's say.
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And chaining people up and then videoing them being chained up and then posting that to hundreds of millions of people on the Internet in America alone is, that's one way to do it.
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Go to hallow.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S.
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We are deep in Lent, walking steadily toward Holy Week, the cross, and the resurrection.
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Lent is a summons to conversion, to strip away what dulls the soul and return to God with sincerity.
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This time of year demands movement, prayer, fasting, and self-gift.
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Hallow can help you build a daily habit that makes room for God's voice.
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They have meditations on the passion, scripture, reflections, and sacred music.
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Real prayer that draws you out of noise and into encounter.
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Yes, from food, but more often from what's poisoning your interior life.
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Gossip, constant scrolling, cynicism, complaint.
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Spend intentional time in prayer and meditate on his love for you.
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You get three months free at hallow.com slash Knowles.
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All right, this next one's from the official White House Instagram caption,
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Justice the American Way, with 64 million views.
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I'm here to fight for truth and justice in the American way.
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And it's not Reagan-esque in the sense that Reagan was really polished and well, you know,
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But this is Reagan-esque in the sense that when Reagan came in, he made people, for the
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first time in almost a decade, feel good about being Americans, feel like America was a good
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place, stood for good things, that we should be strong, that it is good for us to demonstrate
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All of those things that Biden downplayed, that Obama more or less outright denied, that
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And you think, well, if America's big cultural export, sorry, our big export period is our
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popular culture and is Hollywood and are these narratives, then why aren't we using
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I remember, this was 20 years ago now maybe, when Superman got rid of truth, justice, and
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And it became truth, justice, and that other stuff.
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Does he still stand for truth, justice, all that stuff?
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A message to terrorists from the White House TikTok.
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Yeah, what makes it work, obviously, is Spongebob.
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It's not enough to just post videos of the bombs going off.
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And it would be refreshing because America has been so weak and loath to show our strength.
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But the Spongebob paradoxically makes it much more menacing.
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Makes it much more menacing than just the bomb.
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You know that great scene in Casino where Joe Pesci is talking to the banker?
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And the banker says, oh, well, you know, haha, well, I want my money because what I'm going to do is go down to the bank.
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And if you don't give me my money, I'm going to crack your skull in with a crowbar.
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And then in 20 years, when I get out of prison, you might be coming out of your coma.
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I'll crack your skull again because I'm stupid.
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It's menacing because it seems irrational and absurd.
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Here illegally, the deportation express this holiday season.
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That raises it from the level of just mere provocation to an actual work of mimetic art.
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Yeah, it's funny. It's funny because it's in your face. It's a pretty easily recognizable
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cultural reference. You wouldn't get it if you're, I don't know, if you're like a
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boomer who only watches cable news or something, you wouldn't get it. But then you wouldn't be
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on these social platforms anyway. But if you're on the platforms, you get this Spotify thing.
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And I like that it's personal. What makes this work, what separates it from cringe
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to actually pretty effective is that they're going after specific journalists is that you
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guys are like you, John or whatever, whoever it was. You're the liar. That's good. It's
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good. It's got, it's edgy. Got edge. Next one. Yeah, the penguin. Penguin's great. The penguin
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stuff was great, especially because it triggered the libs. Actually, there aren't any penguins
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in the Arctic. Did you know the penguins are the Antarctic? You think, yeah, shut up, nerd.
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Nerd. Yeah, you would say that, nerd. Nerds. Guess what? We're going to add more penguins
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to our memes. We're going to give you a swirly. No, but they don't, they're not there. They're
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not, aren't. There aren't actually penguins in Greenland. Did you know that? Yeah, we know.
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We heard your feedback. You can't believe this is the real White House.
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I'm G. I can't, well, I like that they capitalized the G, even in OMG. You don't want to use the
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name of God in vain or, you know, even the initial, but they did lowercase m and capitalized
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G. I kind of appreciate that. Maybe it wasn't intentional, but in any case, okay. I can't
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believe the White House posted this. However, the Dems shutdown means most of our team is furloughed.
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So we have an important announcement. We're doubling down.
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That's great. There was a, during, during the shutdown, when they started posting major
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White House events, but it was with like pictures of a thumb in front of the camera or kind of
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sideways and blurry. It says, sorry, our photographer's furloughed. We don't, we just, all we got is
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our cell phones now. It's good. They get it, man. They get it. It's also because the, you
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know, the median age of the White House staff is like 14. You know, I mean, it's, it's young,
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it's vibrant, energetic, good looking. All right. Which one of the memes do you think
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was the most effective? Which one's your favorite? My favorite one of these,
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the most effective probably are the deportation ones. Really, all of the deportation ones,
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because they check so many boxes. They do send a message to the illegal aliens. Don't forget over
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a million illegal aliens self-deported in the first year. Even as they were being processed,
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they just left because they gave up because they didn't think they were going to be able to stay.
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So send a message to them, send a message to the American people. Don't forget Trump won the
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popular vote running on that issue. And it was funny and it was light. And, you know, one way the Dems
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used the immigration issue, the deportation issue, even though they lose on the issue generally,
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they were able to try to turn it against Republicans by making the Republicans seem scary.
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And, you know, like they were the Gestapo or something. So when you have these light kind
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of funny deportation memes, it undercuts even that. It was very effective. The ones of bombing
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the terrorists and the foreign enemies and all that kind of stuff, they were good. And the most
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effective one was SpongeBob for all the reasons I previously said, because the absurdity is so menacing.
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But, no, I give it to the deportation memes. Really, I mean, the flight away, you know,
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get your vacation now. Or the nastiest one, the one that really resonated with me,
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chains on a metal staircase. Ain't going to be entering the country looking at that. Okay,
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that's it. All right. I liked them. I liked them. See you next time.