"Peyton Vanest was fuming about President Donald Trump when he grabbed his phone and hit record. "Somebody ," he declared, pausing for dramatic effect. "Somebody should, you know?" "If somebody knew what needed to be done, that person should probably just do it ..." the 27-year-old progressive influencer continued, conspicuously not defining "it.""
"Vanest's vague plea - posted 18 days before the third apparent attempt on Trump's life in less than two years - is part of a social media trend thathas twisted the idea of a presidential assassination into a morbid joke. Once an unseemly feature of the web's fringes, deliberately ambiguous chatter about political violence has spread on mainstream platforms over the past year - most often in reference to Trump and Elon Musk, according to a new report from Know Your Meme, which tracks the rise of viral posts."
""Somebody should do it" and its online variants, the authors wrote, is wink-nudge shorthand for suggesting that somebody kill a powerful person. One of the earliest cases to go viral was a TikTok video from a Brooklyn comedian nebulously talking about "all the Elon, Trump stuff." Someone should "throw their life away," he said in the February 2025 post, and "take one for the team.""
"Know Your Meme found that interest in the "Somebody should do it" trendspiked after an armed man's thwarted attack last month at the White House corresponde"
A 27-year-old progressive influencer posted a short video on TikTok and Instagram expressing anger at President Donald Trump while using deliberately vague language about what “somebody” should do. The clip gained large engagement, with commenters treating the meaning as obvious. Similar posts have spread across mainstream platforms, turning political assassination into a morbid joke through wink-nudge phrasing that implies violence without stating it directly. A Know Your Meme report links the trend’s growth to viral references to Trump and Elon Musk and notes that earlier viral examples included a comedian’s ambiguous remarks that were reposted widely, including by Elon Musk. Interest in the trend increased after a thwarted attack near the White House.
Read at The Washington Post
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