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Last week served as a stark reminder that, regardless of the severity of the crisis or the loss of life, the Trump administration often resorts to incendiary social media tactics. In response to accusations like abducting a foreign leader, the White House’s retort on X was simply “FAFO.” Similarly, their reaction to an ICE agent’s shooting incident was a Buzzfeed-esque list of “57 Times Sick, Unhinged Democrats Declared War on Law Enforcement.” When ICE agents detained protesters, the administration quipped, “Welcome to the Find Out stage.”

For most observers of today’s political scene, these responses from the Trump administration are harsh and unfeeling. However, seasoned political insiders recognize this barrage of memes as part of a strategic media maneuver termed “rapid response.” This approach involves swiftly crafting the narrative surrounding breaking news, often within minutes, to influence media and public perception before opponents can take the lead.

“Every political office and campaign has a dedicated team to strategically address unforeseen news events,” explained Lis Smith, a prominent Democratic communications strategist from New York City. This practice dates back to the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, when cable networks could quickly convene panels of experts to analyze events. In today’s social media-driven world, the demand for rapid response has skyrocketed. “You can’t control every narrative, so you must manage the chaos entering your domain,” Smith added.

Smith, who played a pivotal role as the director of rapid response for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, was among the early adopters of social media for political communication. Her expertise also extends to working with several New York City mayors and Democratic candidates. She is acclaimed for propelling Pete Buttigieg from a little-known mayor to a serious presidential contender as his communications director. For Smith, social platforms are tools for effective messaging. X, once known as Twitter, remains unmatched for disseminating “text-based rapid response communications like written statements” to a broad audience of “elites and opinion-shapers.” While Bluesky might engage a left-leaning crowd, it lacks the reach beyond that circle. Similarly, Rumble-based efforts rarely escape the confines of right-wing discourse.

Memes can swiftly convey messages to a niche audience familiar with the context, but their humor often alienates those outside that group, including individuals who might support measures like curbing illegal immigration but are appalled by the administration’s methods. These memes mirror a specific mindset. “The use of memes by the administration diminishes the political discourse,” Smith observed. “It strips away the humanity, gravity, and nuance required, replacing it with mere cruelty.”

Before we get to my conversation with Smith, here’s The Verge’s latest on the political tech dystopia:

“A meme that is funny or cruel will probably spread faster than anything with nuance”

This interview has been edited for clarity.

You came up during an era where Twitter, before it was X, was really the only internet media environment for politics. How has the practice of rapid response changed in an environment where there is so much narrative to control over so many types of media? 


It’s gotten a lot harder. In the ’90s, the big change was the 24-hour news cycle with cable news. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the big development was social media, Twitter, and being able to respond in real time online to news developments. But now, there’s no question that it’s harder to get your message out, with how fractured these different social media channels are. Not everyone is on X today the same way they were 10 years ago. But also, your message is less likely to penetrate as effectively on a platform like X than it was 10 years ago, because of how verification, etc., have changed.

So you really need to have an “all of the above” communication strategy, where you’re hitting traditional media with press releases, calls to reporters and news networks, and you’re also hitting social media in real time. That means not just hitting X, but also hitting Threads, hitting Bluesky, TikTok, Instagram, all those apps, because there has never been a time where people’s media consumption habits have been more fractured than right now. 


Do candidates view specific platforms for certain political purposes, or political leanings?

X is still pretty dominant in American politics for getting out rapid response communications, especially text-based rapid response communications like written statements, because it’s still where you’re going to find the most political insiders, political pundits, and reporters. Everything [messaging-wise] trickles out from there. Where you see more fracturing is in terms of where people do short form video: you do see some campaigns using TikTok, others using Instagram more; you do see some favoring of different platforms across partisan lines. But Bluesky on the left is just never going to be as effective of a way of reaching elites and opinion-makers as X is — just as Truth Social or Discord on the right is never going to be the way that you reach elites or opinion-makers.

Let’s go into the content of said messaging. I know that Kamala Harris and Biden tried to lean into memes during their 2024 campaigns, but clearly not as effectively as Trump, and the meme format seems to be really dominant in the Trump administration. Is there a specific way an operative views the meme format as a political messaging tool?

The meme format is more likely to spread quickly. It’s something that a specific audience is going to understand immediately, and it really simplifies a political argument. The problem with that, though, is, one, it’s very audience specific. Not everyone is going to understand a Family Guy meme, not everyone is going to understand a Patriots meme, or whatever the meme du jour is.

Another problem with the meme format is that you lose a lot of context and you lose a lot of humanity in it. So when you see the administration posting sort-of-funny memes about deportations or ICE, you lose a lot of the empathy and compassion that most people have when it comes to the immigration debate. Most people think that illegal immigration is bad and that we should do something about it. But most people also understand that there are real people who are involved in all of these situations and don’t think it’s funny to make light of, say, school pickups getting raided, or families getting separated, or parents crying as they’re being dragged away from their kids.

I was listening to Joe Rogan interviewing Shane Gillis, and they actually touched on this. I would say both Rogan and Shane Gillis are people who were favorable to Trump in the election — Rogan more so than Shane Gillis — but Gillis said, I want our government to take the issue of illegal immigration seriously. I don’t want it to be funny to them. And I think that’s something that really taps into how most people feel about these issues.

If you reduce these very serious issues to cruel, funny memes, you’re going to alienate a lot of people who might be there with you on an issue if you’d approached it with a little bit more maturity and humanity. But the administration is saying, cut out the humanity, cut out the maturity. Those things don’t matter. Because a viral meme — a meme that is funny or cruel — will probably spread faster than anything with nuance. They’re prioritizing speed and virality over nuance and seriousness.

I think you just refined what we’ve been thinking about at The Verge: the way that my coworkers saw Trump’s abduction of Maduro and their response to the ICE shooting was that this government’s policy is a meme mentality — their speed, virality and the need to get their spin out first before anyone feels any sort of way about it.

There’s a short window when people — everyone from reporters to voters to anyone online — are trying to figure out what the hell’s going on and what they think about breaking news. Rapid response is about stepping into that void and shaping it, but there are real problems with how the Trump administration is doing it. Ultimately, yes, they may win some sort of short-term viral meme war. But in the long term, the way that they’re communicating about these issues — whether it’s the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, or deportations in general — they’re gonna lose the political debate. People want action on these issues, but they don’t want wanton cruelty.

Also, if you [the administration[ step in very quickly and put out bad facts, what you do is just compound mistrust in government and mistrust in the administration. And it’s possible that the Trump administration benefits from that because the less people trust official sources, the more it’s good for them. But I think overall, it’s pretty bad that they’re putting out false information that goes mega-viral the way they do it, because ultimately, no one’s going to take anything they say at face value anymore. It’s especially damaging for their relationships with the news media and elites who, in the past, would have clearly taken what any presidential administration said at face value.

Is it too early to think about meme warfare in the midterm election — changing people’s opinions who could be swayed to vote one way or another, getting that messaging to them as quickly as possible, driving them out to the polls?

I don’t think that the meme strategy from this administration is gonna help Republicans in the midterms. And I think if you talk to a lot of Republicans who are up in swing areas or swing states or certain districts, and you presented them with the memes this administration is putting out, I don’t think they would agree with them, and I don’t think that they would say that this is good political strategy. Because to the point I made earlier: the administration’s use of memes really flattens the political debate. It takes the humanity, the seriousness, the nuance that’s needed out of it, and replaces it just with cruelty. The voters who are going to turn out in 2026 — yeah, some of them are going to be part of that MAGA base that it embraces the cruelty, but the people that you need to win over are going to be people who have nuanced views on issues like illegal immigration and people who say, Yeah, we need secure borders; yes, we need more enforcement of our immigration laws; but maybe we don’t need to be putting out memes about, you know, a father being taken off in handcuffs.

That’s where I think the administration’s focus on speed and virality comes at a political cost. Someone’s’s going to have to pay for the tone that they’re taking online, and it’s likely going to be the Republicans who are up in 2026, unless, I don’t know, Democrats somehow overplay their hand on immigration issues.

And a lot of the voters who will determine the midterm elections are older voters. They’re not going to consume the memes firsthand, nor are they going to understand the memes. That’s something being lost in this debate too: even though more people than ever are getting their news through social media, a lot of the people who decide elections, and a lot of the people that Republicans need to win, are not meme consumers. It’s questionable whether it will pay off electorally for them. 


Speaking of memes distilling political arguments: