How Memes and Propaganda Enable MAGA’s Squishy Relationship with Truth
“The right’s squishy relationship with truth.” There’s a sentence 25-year-old me never thought I would write. I grew up believing that Republicans were the honorable, pro-life, God-fearing party and Democrats were a bunch of low-down snakes in the grass.
Growing up as an evangelical christian in a town of about 15,000 in Wisconsin (pre-Trump era) telling the truth was something drilled into me on a daily, or at least weekly, basis. We would memorize Bible verses about how Jesus is the “way, the truth, and the life” and “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”
The Bible is full of verses that also detail the harms of deceit. Proverbs 11: 1 - 3 says, “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight. When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom. The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.”
This “false balance” is a scale in the market. Perhaps the trader is selling salt or a spice.
Maintaining a false scale that allows you to overcharge (and cheat) your customer is an abomination to the Lord.
Part of growing up this way is that, for a while, you think everyone believes in truth in the same way you do. The idea of someone using lies and propaganda for greed or other personal gain was not something I ran into a lot in my teen years. The Machiavellian tactic of appearing virtuous while having a fixer (aka pornstar-payoff lawyer Roy Cohn) do your dirty work, just didn’t occur to many of us for a long time.
Matthew 10:16 says, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” When you start off thinking too well of people, it can take a long time to acclimate to people who were taught to get ahead at all costs, which is a very different thing.
The “No Strings Attached” Palace in the Sky, No Right to Due Process, Et Al.
Team Trump has been asking us to swallow some horse-pill-sized lies in pursuit of their various political ends. That’s nothing new and not surprising.
First we’ll look at the lies themselves (a partial list) and then the mechanisms of propping them up.
I’ll list a few just off the top of my head:
Trump’s cabinet is a meritocracy.
If this were a meritocracy, Kash Patel wouldn’t be running the FBI, Pam Bondi wouldn’t be the AG, and we wouldn’t have a professional wrestling executive (with little relevant experience) in charge of education. Pete Hegseth wouldn’t have survived the first signalgate, let alone the second.
Tariffs are not a tax, they are paid for by the tariffed country.
Some people have seen through this lie as tariffs are starting to go into effect. It will be harder to make the case that tariffs are anything but a form of income tax as everyday items become more expensive. Amazon briefly considered adding a “tariff charge” notice on listings so you could see that that $50 pair of shoes actually had a $15 tariff on it and would cost you $65. Trump team freaked out, because Amazon was going to dare to tell the truth.
The $400 million luxury jet from Qatar comes with absolutely no strings attached and no listening gear and no expectation of favor. The state that has given $1.8 billion to Hamas expects nothing in return.
Due process applies only to US citizens.
If immigrants are mostly rapists and murderers, then we can break or suspend a few laws to get them out. The ends justify the means. Which is, of course, racist nonsense.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13.
This, of course, ties in with due process. Without due process, you don’t know. That’s the whole point. If he is a member of MS-13 the case for deportation is warranted. If he is not he is locked away indefinitely in a maximum security hellhole forever under false pretenses. Those are two very different things. Due process is simply how we assure that we get it right.
The suspension of habeas corpus is warranted and necessary.
Secretary of Homeland Security/ICE Barbie Kristi Noem said that habeas corpus was “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their rights.” Incorrect. Habeas corpus is actually the “legal principle that requires the government to provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people,” and “the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea,” per Maggie Hassan.
As someone who has not drunk copious quantities of Trumpade, I’ve been trying to understand why people who grew up with the same rigorous relationship to truth as I did are untroubled by this.
Why Do People Who Value Truth Believe Untrue Things?
There are a few aspects to what it takes to get people to believe these things (and many others). I’ll outline a few, but I want to get quickly to the role of memes and social connection.
It can genuinely be hard to know what is true and what is not
Each new piece of news happens in context. Most viewers don’t know the full context and thus put trust in those delivering the news. If those people are spinning on behalf of Trump (for example) then the stories are actually Real Event x Propagandistic Spin = Trump’s Version of Events.
It would be incorrect to say that FOX is not news. It is news, it’s just news with a heavy filter of Trumpism. (In Newsmax, OAN, Alpha, Breitbart, etc the right wing perspective is played up to a greater degree. It’s mainly a question of how significant is the filtering and skewing of information.)
Authority
Christians are, for better or worse, accustomed to notions of authority. Once a person is seen as a governmental or spiritual authority, they are sometimes given wide latitude. There can be a lot of “the ends justify the means” thinking to excuse moral faults or bad behavior.
I’ve come to think of this as a “bug in the evangelical source code” that can be exploited by people of bad faith, which is largely what I think is occurring with Trump.
Groupthink reinforced by memes
There are a million of these, so I’ll just refer to a couple.
US Constitution Meme
Here’s the copy as written:
The Entire U.S. Constitution Was Written for “AMERICANS ONLY”.
It’s “NOT” The World Constitution, It’s the U.S. Constitution.
Non-citizens and criminals do not possess rights under this document.
I have seen a few people post this. What is the reason? It’s a post-hoc (after the fact) rationalization of the argument against due process and habeas corpus posed by Team Trump.
Why? I think the notion is that:
a) Trump is putting forth the argument,
b) Trump is taking tough steps to “restore American greatness,” and
c) therefore it must be good and/or warrranted.
It’s essentially an appeal to authority.
Firstly, whoever wrote this had about a fourth-grade understanding of English. Periods don’t go outside of quotation marks to end sentences. The capitalization makes me stabby. And the - It’s “NOT” the World Constitution - ugh.
All that aside, under these astute legal arguments, Donald Trump does not possess rights in this country as he is a criminal, so he can be shipped away to CECOT without due process never to be heard from again! Problem solved. Well, actually that’s true of anyone with a petty misdemeanor, as they are technically “criminals.”
And apparently you can drag non-citizens out in the street and beat the shit out of them, since they don’t have rights. Oh wait, but what if they happen to be a citizen? Whoops.
Obviously, this whole thing is absurd on its face. But it was posted by someone who I think is of good conscience and regards himself a christian, a Trumper, and a patriot. And I can hardly expect followers of Trump to automatically be better than this if the person they are following isn’t.
Bill Clinton Helicopter Meme
This is the $17 million helicopter the Saudis gave Bill Clinton to use in their airspace.
They gave it to him as a parting gift when he left office. He still uses it to this day.
Not one single Democrat had anything to say.
This meme got 111,000 likes (and other responses). Here are some of the comments:
It’s (D)ifferent
“At this point, what difference does it make”
Take the plane President Trump!
Double Standards
This was the best comment was as follows:
Here is a fact check for the gullible: No, former President Bill Clinton did not receive a $17 million helicopter from Saudi Arabia upon leaving office. This claim originated from a satirical Facebook page known as "America’s Last Line of Defense," which is affiliated with the parody website The Dunning-Kruger Times. Both platforms are known for publishing fictional content labeled as satire. The meme in question, which circulated widely on social media, was misinterpreted by many as factual, despite its satirical origins.
Furthermore, the image accompanying the meme was traced back to South Bay Helicopter, a private charter company based in San Francisco. There is no connection between this helicopter and either Bill Clinton or the Saudi government.
According to U.S. law, any gifts from foreign governments to American officials are subject to strict regulations. Such gifts are typically documented and, if of significant value, are transferred to the National Archives or other government entities. There is no official record or credible evidence supporting the claim that Clinton received such a gift.
This rumor appears to have resurfaced in response to recent discussions about foreign gifts to U.S. presidents, particularly concerning a proposed donation of a luxury aircraft from Qatar to the Trump administration. However, the claim about Clinton remains unfounded and has been thoroughly debunked by multiple fact-checking organizations.
I saw this posted as an implicit justification for Trump accepting the plane from Qatar with the subtext being that “democrats do this all the time.”
This gets you into the neighborhood of hypocrisy, which can get you to “how bad can it be,” which is adjacent to “well it is saving us money,” which gets you to “he should do it,” which gets you to “it would be unpatriotic not to,” which then gets you full circle to “why do democrats hate America?”
When your leader does something shady it creates cognitive dissonance. Dissonance in music is when notes just don’t sit right together. A root, a third, and a fifth is pleasing to the ear. But move the intervals around (or give the guitar tuners a few random turns) and play again and it can be viscerally painful.
Seeing memes from someone you know who purports to be standing up for truth, standing up for America, or reminding you of your supposed mutual enemy (democrats), helps to resolve the dissonance and settle your conscience.
Too much of this and your conscience expands to accept things that would previously have been beyond the pale. As such, memes are an incredibly powerful tool for shaping behavior (or complicity).
I’ll leave you with a couple of choice memes that I think reflect the current moment:
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