It’s pretty universally known that the president-elect of the United States has not been particularly welcomed by the social media world at large. Twitter, predominantly, has played a key role in exposing Donald Trump for his shortcomings and spreading awareness about how unfit he is to serve as our nation’s next commander in chief. Hashtags have trended, threads have been made, and articles have been written, but none of it proved to be enough to prevent him from being elected into the White House by the electoral college.
Well on Tuesday night, December 27, 2016, the hashtag “#ThanksDonald” began to trend nationwide. The hashtag itself seems to have two different sides. 1) Encourages Twitter users to sarcastically “thank” Donald Trump for being… well… awful. 2) Encourage Twitter users to genuinely thank Donald Trump. Disregarding the second, less truthful side, let’s look at the some highlights from the late Tuesday night trend.
Thanks Donald for helping bring out the worst in people!
I definitely know which people in my neighborhood and which of my relatives are racists now. #ThanksDonald
— Tim Hess (@EsKaLiDiNg) December 28, 2016
Thanks Donald for setting the bar super low for future presidential candidates!
#ThanksDonald for being living proof that to become president-elect you don’t have to have class, kindness, morals and good spelling.
— directioner writer (@writersutopia) December 28, 2016
… and for setting the bar even lower!
#thanksdonald not paying taxes, cheating on your wife, stiffing contactors,
paying legal fees with other’s donations, encouraging violence— Mark Ellis (@MarkEllis14) December 28, 2016
Thanks Donald for teaching the youth to be racist, sexist, ignorant pigs!
#ThanksDonald for allowing millions of people to now believe that bigotry, sexism and racism are completely acceptable
— sai sailaja seshadri (@Saisailu97) December 28, 2016
And this one… well this one basically sums up all of our feelings towards the soon-to-be POTUS.
“Yeah, #ThanksDonald, you’re number 1. – Barack Obama pic.twitter.com/LgmF6naq3W
— Pin Head (@PiercedSkull) December 28, 2016
At this point, there’s nothing we can really do to prevent a Trump presidency. He’s going to be president. It’s no inevitable. But what we can do for the next four years is continue to push hashtags and movements such as #ThanksDonald to remind the U.S. public of how awful Trump is and how desperately we need to get rid of him.