I feel like lately I can't pull up a social media website without seeing a big stage player trying too hard to troll the Trump administration. It's like an endless procession of rage-bait meant to make Trump, members of his administration, or even rank-and-file conservatives get angry.
As Katie Jerkovich reported on Tuesday, Newsom is desperately trying to rage-bait everyone by posting pictures of Kid Rock and the late Hulk Hogan, halo and wings included, supporting him. The rage-bait is so obvious that it comes off as desperate. Newsom is clearly going to run for POTUS in 2028, but if this is all he has to offer, then I'm not sure of his chances.
Take this recent post from Gavin Newsom's "look-at-me" troll account on X that features J.D. Vance's face superimposed over the Australian breakdancing lady with the copy "J.D. Dance," over it.
A highly anticipated “showdown” https://t.co/dKbAFiTEVl pic.twitter.com/Td8WZsjTsC
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) August 18, 2025
What a zinger.
To be honest, it just kinda makes him look cooler. As I wrote during the heat of the 2024 election, the left's efforts to meme Vance were only making him look fun and culturally relevant. If they keep this up, they're only going to empower him further and pave his path to the Resolute Desk in 2028, which is fine by me.
Read: JD Vance Might Have Just Had His 2028 Run Won for Him
What's more, Vance's ability to embrace the joke only turns the left's attempts at attacks on their head, and this infuriates the left to no end.
But it's not just Vance. The entirety of the administration has taken every joke made about them and turned it into something useful. South Park has been lobbing endless attempts at rage-baiting the Trump administration, and not only have they not gotten angry, they've been using the jokes made about them for their own purposes. Kristi Noem used South Park's image of ICE and herself as recruitment tools.
Even Charlie Kirk took South Park's depiction of him via Eric Cartman and made it his X profile picture.
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South Park's social media feeds are continuous posts from their recent episodes meant to elicit outrage, but the only thing they're getting is seal clapping from leftists and people calling them out for their humor suddenly disappearing during the Biden administration.
As I said before, I don't mind them not tackling Biden. They're not a political show; they're a cultural one, but their current moves are turning them into a political show, which will ultimately kill it entirely. A sad end to a show that I've always said was one of the most important ever made.
The question is, why do this? What are they really trying to accomplish?
I've got a few guesses.
Firstly, I see it as a sort of wild flailing. It's been a very long time since the left has had full control of the culture, and thanks to the Trump era, they've lost a great chunk of it. People started shrugging off the left's influence after too many demonstrations that they're a humorless hive of rich elitists came to the forefront. Even leftist comedians were angry lecturers, or at the very least, fell back on the same jokes that got them laughs in the beginning, but became unfunny the moment they became cultural boundaries for what can and can't be considered funny.
What we're seeing is a desperate attempt at showing people that the left is still funny, and what's more, it can meme! It can even troll with the best of them!
But again, it just comes off as desperation. Even Newsom's attempt to post on X mocking Trump's all-caps style just comes off as a sad rip-off. The general trolling is even kind of a sad shadow of the right's style.
It reminds me of Leo Gallagher, a famous prop comedian who got his fame through observational humor and then smashing a watermelon on stage from time to time. Gallagher was a funny guy, and a lot of his comedy still holds up today. However, one day, his brother Ron decided he wanted to get his name in lights and copied his brother's entire act. Naturally, it wasn't as good because it was Leo's act, geared toward Leo's personality, Leo's comedic timing, and Leo's outlook on the world.
Ron's career would end after being sued by his brother and left unemployed.
But it's a very similar story in the political realm. The left has the tools but forgot how to use them long ago. Comedy is something the left doesn't understand because they started putting hard boundaries up on what is and isn't funny a while back and lost the art. For the left, it was only a "joke" if it was "punching up," and "up" was subject to the identity of the person telling the joke.
In other words, it wasn't comedy; it was propaganda.
What you're seeing from the left now is a cringeworthy attempt at remembering how to be funny so that they can not only use it as a hammer against their opponents, but they can pretend they're the fun-loving, cool guys in the room. They're trying to reclaim cultural relevance, and it isn't working.
Secondly, if they can get the Trump administration and its conservative followers to rage over their posts, then they can say, "See, they're actually the humorless ones in the room! Come hang out over here with the fun people!"
I can safely assume this is a goal of theirs because even though the vast majority of conservatives aren't lashing out in anger, the left is still pretending we are. They post things in the comment section of Newsom's or South Park's posts, talking about how conservatives are so mad. Worse, when we adopt the joke as our own, their only response is that we don't understand they're making fun of us, as if we're the ones who don't understand humor.
This only makes them look even more lost, because we fully understand what's happening, we just get the art of comedy and how it works enough to be able to work around "comedic" attacks.
If America is a party, the left is currently the weird guy who rages one second and tries to be the funny guy the next. His jokes are mean-spirited, but he laughs at his own jokes and looks at you like he's expecting you to find it funny because you're as angry and spiteful as he is.
He thinks he's the life of the party, but really, everyone just wants him to leave.
