“Trump is the man,” said M, who works at the bodega near our Brooklyn offices, when we chatted this morning about the ubiquitous press photo of the former United States president pumping his fist up in the air, just moments after surviving an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, July 13.

My bodega friend, who is not at all a Trump fan, represents a large group of Americans (primarily men) who are mesmerized, fascinated, and fooled by Trump’s Übermensch spectacle of performative strength and defiance. This group represents a cross-section of society, spanning everyone on the spectrum from truck-nuts MAGA meatheads to cultured liberals.

And while cultural critics are busy slobbering over Trump’s near-instinctive proneness to viral image production, lionizing Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci’s photo of a wounded but triumphant Trump as “iconic” and “historic,” and as MSNBC and New York Times pundits call for forgiveness and unity, meme-makers come to burst this disingenuous bubble, exposing the plain truth that while the assassination attempt was real, everything that followed the gunshot was just showbiz.

Is it too soon to remind people that Trump is a protofascist demagogue, convicted felon, bigot, philanderer, abuser, liar, and thief who still denies losing the 2020 election and spurred an insurrection? What would Vincent van Gogh, who knows a thing or two about ear injury, have thought?

While the natural instinct is to find some of these memes “distasteful” and “offensive,” let’s remember we’re talking about Trump here, who’s not known for his empathy toward political rivals, immigrants, women, and more. And as he’s beholden to the gun lobby, like so many other politicians in Washington, some memes send the message: Welcome to the America you helped to create.

The truth is that Trump has the emotional intelligence of a lawnmower, or the heartlessness of Mean Girls‘s Regina George. 

One also has to wonder how Vucci and the other photographers who captured “iconic” images are feeling these days after accidentally helping turn Trump’s struggling campaign into a thermonuclear propaganda bomb.

Their photos of a heroic Trump are being featured on everything from T-shirts to people’s bodies, and they’re helping raise millions for Trump’s presidential campaign.

Singer Lana del Rey caught flack for reportedly posting online that she “wouldn’t have missed.” Now, the vocal Trump critic is part of the meme.

This one needs no explanation:

Claire’s, the mall staple known for cheap accessories, jewelry, and piercing services of questionable quality, has emerged as a backdrop for images of Trump’s bleeding ear in many memes.

At times as divisive as these, we all need a little bit of silly humor:

Meanwhile, many on the left are feeling dispirited, believing it’s the end for the feeble Joe Biden. Unless …

But whether it’s Trump who wins the election or Biden, many would agree that we’re in for four more years of tears.