This two-image meme focuses around a contrast between former president Barack Obama (2008-2016) and incumbent president Donald J. Trump (2017-). Both are highly debated presidents in United States history, mainly because of the values they portrayed for the United States while in office.
Trump is greatly compared to Obama, since Trump is Obama’s successor. National Emergencies are being used as a juxtaposition and contrast between the ethics of the presidents. Of course, there is bias in this meme, because it’s been crafted by someone on the internet. Though it uses facts, it begins to erode a new tale. Instead of following the stream of thought that Obama did a great job with foreign relations, this meme forges the idea that Trump is in fact correct by using emergencies locally, without consideration to our allies and relations to the rest of the globe.
Not only is there a juxtaposition between presidents, but there is a focus on the fundamental different ideologies of the parties both presidents belong. Obama represented the democratic party and their beliefs of using government resources to support other nations, other nations which are in our best interest. President Trump represents the republican party and its belief of helping the United States first.
This photo focuses on sharing the frivolous declarations of emergencies by Obama, and the proper use of emergencies by Trump. It weighs in favor of Trump, though Obama was politically correct for his emergencies aiding foreign countries.
Fact checking this was rather easy because this meme is essentially a checklist. All I had to do was find a list of National Emergencies. For this, I turned to duckduckgo and used the reference technique ( site:snopes.com site:politifact.com site:factcheck.org) to search three fact checking sites. I searched “National Emergencies” and Snopes gave me an article about every president declaring national emergencies. This wasn’t directly what I was looking for, but led me to what I needed. Going upstream, I was able to find their source in a pdf (https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/NEA%20Declarations.pdf). I navigated through them, checking off every national emergency as I passed through them. Through this, I was able to verify all of the emergency claims as fact. I was also able to see Trump’s emergencies were mainly focused on the United States. However, I wanted to double check this information by looking up a similar list through google. I found this website which lists the exact same emergencies and has an air of truth (https://www.ajc.com/news/national/here-list-the-national-emergencies-declared-the-last-seven-presidents/Fb5dM2Fy17mKyuo8jgMW9K/).
Since this information is public knowledge through the US government, there is really no variation between websites. Everyone seems to have the same information, if not referencing the Brennancenter article directly.
This image was difficult for me understand if it were pro-Trump or not, because the image uses terms like “to aid Lybia”, and “to aid Yemen”, and aid is a gift, an act of mercy to people in need. So, I thought this was praise for Obama, and a mockery of Trump for only caring for the USA and not humanity on a global scale. I thought the “Thank You President Trump” was a sarcastic remark, a F-you to the orange man. But apparently, it was no such thing. My own bias has me backing Obama, which proves the subjectiveness of this meme. It’s not clear enough and can be taken in more than one direction. For this purpose, I believe the meme needs better context. Perhaps, instead of a blue border, a red one should surround the propaganda to match the Republican part, as well as Trump’s bright red tie. I suppose the “MAGA DOODLE” source should have been an indicator of the pro-trump lean, but what if it hadn’t been there? A true designer would need better ques for this sort of thing.
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