The tweet that defined a decade of Trump

Ten years ago, Jesse Farrar produced what will probably be the most influential piece of writing of his life. It was a tweet, fired off casually late in the evening of October 1, 2016. He doesn’t even remember what prompted him to do it. “I was probably bored and wanted attention,” Farrar admitted.

Farrar’s post was a tiny script, of sorts, in which a character makes a pronouncement that is then interrupted by an action denoted by asterisks. It read:

It was a throwaway gag, but it was a throwaway gag with the earth-shaking power of prophecy. Much has been written about the Trump era and the norm-upending, scandal-surviving, attention-craving main character at its center. But few pieces of writing so deftly captured how the political and media cycles would play out over the next 10 years, again and again and again.

Consider this: Farrar posted his tweet six days before news of the “Access Hollywood” tape broke. Before the press began waiting to see when Trump’s pious running mate, Mike Pence, would abandon the sordid, disgraced candidate and his obviously doomed campaign. Before — Ah! Well. Nevertheless,

It was the tweet that became a meme that became a mantra, a skeleton key that still unlocks the past decade of American life.

“It’s indisputably one of the most important tweets in American politics about American politics, particularly from a leftist perspective,” said Jake Christie, who has been running a yearslong social media project called the “Museum of Twitter,” wherein he analyzes the site’s most influential posts, including an episode devoted to Farrar’s . “You just see it everywhere.”

That’s because, thanks to both President Donald Trump’s own skills and the institutions around him, the president has been able to wriggle out of a series of jams — investigations and impeachments, charges and convictions — that would have ended the careers of countless other politicians. He lost an election, responded with the most cataclysmic sore-loser performance in American history, then still found his way back to more power than ever before.

And like Farrar’s Twitter character, dangling on that final, hopeful comma, the president’s critics still return to speculating that this next scandal might just be the one that delivers comeuppance.

“Writing his political obituary is a fool’s errand — he endures persecution and eludes prosecution like no other public figure,” Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and White House senior adviser, wrote in the New York Times in 2023 . “That cat has nine lives.”

For Farrar, now 38, unintentionally becoming the Nostradamus of a surreal and often very dumb political era has been a bizarre experience — haunting, even. Each time he’s confronted by his own words in others’ online jokes or in news stories, he’s reminded of who he was when he first wrote them and what the world used to feel like.

If anything, he wishes his little joke hadn’t proved so insightful. “I couldn’t have fathomed that we would have been doing it 10 years on, but we keep waiting for something to happen, and I just think it’s probably not going to,” Farrar said. “The world does keep on spinning like this, and that’s why I think it sucks so bad.”

Despite his indelible contribution to political discourse, Farrar says he mostly experiences politics vicariously. Living with his wife and three kids in the exurbs of Nashville, he’s a leftist in a red state where he has never felt that any party truly represents him.

He’s now the co-host of the “Your Kickstarter Sucks” podcast and the “Go Off Kings” Twitch stream , but in 2016 Farrar was still figuring his life out, earning money as a freelancer by writing for places like Deadspin, The Daily Dot and Vice. Many of the outlets he worked with are now gone and Farrar’s work scrubbed from the internet.

Like many terminally online people, he recalls finding great humor in watching Trump, someone seemingly as addicted to Twitter as he himself was, campaigning for president. If the world of politics had always seemed like one big joke, here was a candidate who seemed to treat it as such.

At this point 10 years ago, Trump and his campaign had already survived 16 months of crises, from the day he launched his White House bid by calling Mexicans “rapists.” There were his disparagements against Sen. John McCain and other prisoners of war , his sexist comments against then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly , his mocking of a New York Times reporter with a disability , his calls for a Muslim ban , his initial resistance to denouncing a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard , his attacks on a federal judge with Mexican heritage , his feud with a Muslim Gold Star family , and his saying that “ Second Amendment people ” might be able to “do” something to stop Hillary Clinton abolishing the right to bear arms or that Russian hackers should “find” Clinton’s emails.

Each of these scandals generated countless headlines from an aghast press and commentariat class. Trump wriggled out of all of them.

When Farrar wrote his fateful tweet, with the election just weeks away, Trump was caught up in yet another controversy, this one involving a woman named Alicia Machado . A former Miss Universe who had been namechecked by Hillary Clinton in the first debate, Machado said Trump had called her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” when she had held the beauty pageant crown. He had denied Machado’s claims, but then proceeded to blast her in a series of middle-of-the-night tweets posted the day before Farrar’s.

Right around the time Farrar hit send, yet another scandal arrived: The New York Times published sections of Trump’s tax records , which Trump had refused to release. The documents showed he’d claimed a $916 million loss in 1995 that could have allowed him to avoid any federal income taxes for the next 18 years.

Looking back, Farrar doesn’t claim to have any extra political insights about that particular moment in history. He was simply marveling, like much of the country, that Trump seemed to be getting away with things that would previously have been politically unthinkable.

Some 10 months earlier, during a campaign stop in Iowa , Trump had remarked that his supporters were so loyal to him, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” That joke, which seemed to feel truer with each passing day, prompted Farrar to make his own.

Despite everything that that happened, he didn’t really believe Trump was going to win. “I thought it was a good goof,” he said. “I wish it had been, certainly.”

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the outlets that have referenced Farrar’s tweet, sometimes even in headlines, in the years since he wrote it: The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Atlantic , The New Yorker , New York Magazine , Vox , Jezebel , Slate , HuffPost , The New Republic , BuzzFeed News , USA Today , Billboard and Esquire. Naturally, it also has its own entry on the internet anthology Know Your Meme .

McKay Coppins at The Atlantic called it “one of the all-time great tweets of this era,” while his colleague David A. Graham said it was of the “essential examples” of memes that make up the Trump era. “At some moment, the tweet transformed from a riposte to naive pundits into a shorthand for the strangeness of American politics,” Graham wrote earlier this summer.

“That particular tweet has had a lot of staying power,” said Dave Weigel, a political reporter at Semafor who’s previously referenced the “ history ” of Farrar’s tweet. “It was pretty perceptive because there’s so many liberals who just thought, ‘Well, surely he can’t get away with this,’ but that has atrophied over time.”

Weigel recalls covering the 2016 campaign for the Washington Post and never quite believing that the parade of scandals would ultimately be Trump’s downfall — especially once he won and had the power of the presidency behind him.

Fervor for Trump was so high among his supporters, and Weigel could sense a desire among some increasingly influential people to push back on what he calls “Watergate Brain”: the idea that a candidate, let alone a president, should be forced to face career-ending consequences for wrongdoing. (Vice President JD Vance would agree; in June 2026, he said if the Watergate scandal had occurred today, it would be a 12-hour news story. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Vance said .)

“I think there’s just been an understanding that scandals are not what they used to be,” Weigel said. “Trump survived. Is that unique to him?”

Analysts have spent much of the last decade trying to define what has made Trump such a unique, seemingly Teflon-clad political creature. For one, he studied under the tutelage of Roy Cohn, where the philosophy, as summed up by acolyte Roger Stone, was always “admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack.” And, especially in his second term as president, he’s clearly adopted the “flood the zone with sh*t” strategy of his early adviser Steve Bannon, correctly assuming the media and general public would struggle to keep up with an avalanche of controversy.

But to assume Trump possesses some sort of “special political magic” may itself be a faulty premise, according to Julia Azari, a political scientist at Wisconsin’s Marquette University who has traced the evolution (or devolution) of American political norms.

“He doesn’t lose popularity because of these scandals, but he’s never all that popular either,” said Azari, pointing to polling in which Trump has never really enjoyed a plurality of widespread public support. “I think that we lose a lot of analytical leverage when we write him off as being magical.”

Similarly, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie told Christie in his “Museum of Twitter” series that Farrar’s tweet was “defeatist” because it played into the idea of Trump being the only person with any agency — the “main character of the world” — that everyone else is stuck reacting to.

Instead, Bouie believes it’s the people and institutions around Trump — from Republicans to Democrats, Congress to the courts — that have made the last decade possible.

“Other people don’t bother to deal with the fact that you could probably get him to go away for good. They kind of allow him to wriggle his way back in,” Bouie said. “He’s really figured out that persistence is 99% of success. All you have to do is show up and not go away, and people will be like, ‘I guess this guy is supposed to be here.’” (White House staff did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

One skill Trump has shown, though, is a talent for reframing his scandals to convince his supporters that outrage about his behavior is part of broader liberal hostility toward them, according to Whitney Phillips at the University of Oregon who has written books about polarization and “anti-liberal demonology.” Farrar’s tweet, Phillips said, plays off the dynamic of liberals getting up in arms, and people then making fun of liberals for getting up in arms.

Some of this liberal zeal, which Farrar was mocking from a leftist perspective, has been stoked by online actors or cable news talking heads who constantly tease new developments in ongoing Trump-in-trouble narratives to build hope and their own audience numbers. (Remember those Robert Mueller prayer candles ?)

But some of it is also an inevitable byproduct of the media doing their job by investigating potential wrongdoing. “Even if all of the coverage from the very beginning had absolutely been 100% straight news reporting with no editorializing and no giddiness, then it still would have been sucked into this narrative of Trump’s, where any opposition makes you partisan,” Phillips said. “That’s just this amazing trick that he has mastered.”

For Farrar, seeing his own words used to this day in stories that tease whether the end may finally be nigh can be uniquely exhausting. When Graham, The Atlantic writer, used Farrar’s tweet in a July story about the Iran war being the “trap” that has finally dealt a blow to Trump’s sheen of invincibility, Farrar was unmoved. “Where’s the trap? Is he caught yet? Is it over? Nothing happened,” Farrar said.

Even as Republicans distance themselves from an increasingly unpopular Trump ahead of the midterms, and even as Democrats prepare themselves for the potential for sweeping victories that could deliver them power in Congress, Farrar remains gloomy. He has no faith that they or anyone else will suddenly hold the president to account, nor that the president will cease doing whatever he pleases.

Farrar acknowledged Bouie’s criticism that his attitude was defeatist; he is defeatist. And cynical. And jaded. Being the unintentional voice of political pessimism can make a person something of a pessimist.

Over 10 years, he’s been taught to be skeptical that consequences or karma still exist for some. The system, as he sees it, is rigged towards elite impunity, and nothing in the last decade has proved him wrong yet.

“I think if you keep betting on ‘Nothing happens,’ you’re only wrong once, and then it’s like, ‘Well, great. I’m glad I was wrong,” Farrar said. “But until then, I’ve racked up a million victories on ‘Bad things don’t happen to powerful people.’ That’s how the world is organized, you know.”

十年前，杰西·法拉尔写下了他一生中最具影响力的作品。那是一条推文，是他在2016年10月1日深夜随意发出的。他甚至不记得是什么促使他这么做。“我当时可能很无聊，想博取关注，”法拉尔坦言。

法拉尔的帖子是一段简短的脚本，其中人物发表了一番言论，随后被一个用星号标记的动作打断。内容如下：

这原本只是个随口而出的玩笑，却蕴含着足以撼动世界的预言力量。关于特朗普时代以及这位颠覆常规、丑闻缠身、渴望博取眼球的主角，人们已经著述颇丰。然而，鲜有文章能如此精辟地捕捉到未来十年政治和媒体格局的反复演变。

想想看：法拉尔发布这条推文的时间比“走进好莱坞”录音带曝光早了六天。那时媒体还没开始等着看特朗普那位道貌岸然的竞选搭档迈克·彭斯何时会抛弃这位声名狼藉、臭名昭著的候选人和他那注定失败的竞选活动。那时——啊！好吧。不过，

这条推文后来变成了网络迷因，又变成了一句格言，就像一把万能钥匙，至今仍能打开过去十年美国生活的一切。

“毫无疑问，这是美国政治史上最重要的推文之一，尤其从左翼视角来看更是如此，”杰克·克里斯蒂说道。他运营着一个名为“推特博物馆”的社交媒体项目，该项目已持续多年，旨在分析推特上最具影响力的帖子，其中有一期专门讨论了法拉尔的推文。“你到处都能看到它。”

这是因为，凭借唐纳德·特朗普总统自身的能力以及他周围的体制，他得以摆脱一系列困境——调查和弹劾、指控和定罪——而这些困境足以终结无数其他政治人物的政治生涯。他输掉了选举，以美国历史上最惨烈的失败者姿态回应，最终却依然找到了重返权力巅峰的途径，而且权力甚至超过了以往任何时候。

就像法拉尔在推特上塑造的角色一样，悬在最后一个充满希望的逗号上，总统的批评者们仍然在猜测，下一个丑闻或许正是带来报应的那个。

“为他撰写政治讣告是徒劳的——他遭受的迫害和逃脱起诉的次数，是其他任何公众人物都无法比拟的，”特朗普2016年竞选经理兼白宫高级顾问凯莉安·康威在2023年《纽约时报》上写道。“这家伙有九条命。”

对于现年38岁的法拉尔来说，无意间成为这个超现实且常常愚蠢至极的政治时代的“诺查丹玛斯”，是一段离奇的经历——甚至可以说是挥之不去的梦魇。每当他在别人的网络笑话或新闻报道中看到自己说过的话时，他都会想起自己最初写下这些话时的模样，以及当时的世界究竟是什么样子。

他倒希望自己当初开的小玩笑没有那么深刻。“我做梦也没想到十年后我们还在做这件事，但我们一直在等待着什么事情发生，而我觉得它大概永远不会发生了，”法拉尔说。“世界照常运转，这就是为什么我觉得这糟透了。”

尽管法拉尔对政治论述做出了不可磨灭的贡献，但他表示自己对政治的体验大多是间接的。他和妻子以及三个孩子住在纳什维尔郊区，身处一个保守的共和党州，却始终感觉没有任何政党真正代表过他，因此他算得上是一个左翼人士。

他现在是“Your Kickstarter Sucks”播客和“Go Off Kings”Twitch直播的联合主持人，但在2016年，法拉尔还在摸索自己的人生方向，靠为Deadspin、The Daily Dot和Vice等网站撰稿谋生。他合作过的许多媒体如今都已不复存在，法拉尔的作品也从互联网上消失了。

和许多沉迷网络的人一样，他回忆起观看特朗普竞选总统时，觉得十分滑稽。特朗普似乎和他一样沉迷于推特。如果说政治世界一直以来都像个笑话，那么这位候选人似乎就是把政治当成一个笑话来看待。

十年前的这个时候，特朗普和他的竞选团队已经经历了长达16个月的危机，从他宣布竞选总统并称墨西哥人为“强奸犯”的那天起，危机不断。他诋毁参议员约翰·麦凯恩和其他战俘，对当时的福克斯新闻主持人梅根·凯利发表性别歧视言论，嘲讽一位残疾的《纽约时报》记者，呼吁禁止穆斯林入境，最初拒绝谴责一位前三K党头目，攻击一位墨西哥裔联邦法官，与一位穆斯林阵亡将士家属发生争执，以及声称“拥护宪法第二修正案的人”或许能够“做些什么”来阻止希拉里·克林顿废除持枪权，或者让俄罗斯黑客“找到”克林顿的电子邮件。

这些丑闻都引起了媒体和评论界的广泛关注，占据了各大媒体的头条。而特朗普却都巧妙地脱身了。

法拉尔发出那条影响深远的推文时，距离大选仅剩几周，特朗普又卷入了一场风波，这次的主角是一位名叫艾丽西亚·马查多的女子。马查多曾是环球小姐，在首场辩论中被希拉里·克林顿点名提及。她声称，在她获得选美桂冠期间，特朗普曾称她为“猪小姐”和“家政小姐”。特朗普否认了马查多的指控，但在法拉尔发推文的前一天，他又在深夜发布了一系列推文，猛烈抨击马查多。

就在法拉尔按下发送键前后，又一丑闻曝光：《纽约时报》公布了特朗普的部分纳税记录，而特朗普一直拒绝公开这些记录。文件显示，他在1995年申报了9.16亿美元的亏损，这笔亏损本可让他在接下来的18年里免缴联邦所得税。

回首往事，法拉尔并不声称自己对当时的政治局势有任何独到的见解。他只是像当时的大多数美国人一样，感到震惊：特朗普似乎能够逍遥法外，做一些在以前是政治上不可想象的事情。

大约10个月前，在爱荷华州的一次竞选活动中，特朗普曾说过他的支持者对他非常忠诚，“就算我站在第五大道中间开枪杀人，也不会失去任何选民。” 这句玩笑似乎随着时间的推移越来越真实，促使法拉尔也创作了自己的玩笑。

尽管发生了那么多事，他其实并不相信特朗普会赢。“我觉得那纯粹是场闹剧，”他说。“我当然希望真是这样。”

以下列出一些曾引用过法拉尔推文的媒体（有时甚至以标题形式引用），这些媒体在他发布推文后的几年里都曾报道过：纽约时报、华盛顿邮报、大西洋月刊、纽约客、纽约杂志、Vox、Jezebel、Slate、赫芬顿邮报、新共和、BuzzFeed News、今日美国、公告牌和Esquire。当然，互联网梗图网站Know Your Meme也收录了这条推文。

《大西洋月刊》的麦凯·科平斯称其为“本世纪最伟大的推文之一”，而他的同事大卫·A·格雷厄姆则表示，它是构成特朗普时代的“经典梗图”之一。格雷厄姆在今年夏天早些时候写道：“这条推文在某个时刻从对天真评论员的反驳，变成了美国政治怪诞现象的缩影。”

“那条推文的影响力经久不衰，”Semafor的政治记者戴夫·韦格尔说道，他之前曾提及法拉尔这条推文的“历史”。“它很有洞察力，因为当时很多自由派人士都认为，‘他肯定不会就这么逍遥法外’，但随着时间的推移，这种想法已经逐渐消退了。”

韦格尔回忆起他为《华盛顿邮报》报道 2016 年总统竞选时，始终不太相信一连串的丑闻最终会导致特朗普的垮台——尤其是在他赢得大选并掌握总统权力之后。

特朗普的支持者热情高涨，韦格尔能感觉到一些影响力日益增强的人士渴望反击他所谓的“水门思维”：即认为候选人，更不用说总统，不应该因为不当行为而被迫承担断送职业生涯的后果。（副总统JD·万斯对此表示赞同；他在2026年6月表示，如果水门事件发生在今天，将会成为12小时的新闻头条。“认为它会扳倒一位总统的想法简直是疯了，”万斯说道。）

“我认为人们已经逐渐意识到，丑闻与过去大不相同了，”韦格尔说。“特朗普挺过来了。这是他独有的现象吗？”

过去十年间，分析人士一直在试图解释是什么造就了特朗普这样一位独树一帜、似乎刀枪不入的政治人物。首先，他曾师从罗伊·科恩，其政治哲学正如其门徒罗杰·斯通所总结的那样，就是“什么都不承认，什么都不否认，然后发起反击”。尤其是在他的第二个总统任期内，他显然采用了早期顾问史蒂夫·班农的“铺天盖地”策略，并正确地预料到媒体和公众将难以应对如雪崩般涌来的争议。

但据威斯康星州马凯特大学政治学家朱莉娅·阿扎里（Julia Azari）称，认为特朗普拥有某种“特殊的政治魔力”本身可能就是一个错误的假设。阿扎里追踪了美国政治规范的演变（或退化）。

阿扎里指出，民调显示特朗普从未真正获得过广泛的公众支持，他说：“这些丑闻并没有让他失去人气，但他的人气也从未真正高过。”他补充道：“如果我们把他看作是拥有神奇力量的人，我认为我们会失去很多分析的依据。”

同样，《纽约时报》专栏作家贾梅尔·布伊在克里斯蒂的“推特博物馆”系列文章中表示，法拉尔的推文是“失败主义的”，因为它迎合了这样一种观点：特朗普是唯一拥有自主权的人——“世界主角”——而其他人只能被动地对他做出反应。

相反，布伊认为，正是特朗普周围的人和机构——从共和党人到民主党人，从国会到法院——才使得过去十年成为可能。

“其他人根本懒得去想你或许能让他彻底离开这个事实。他们反而放任他想方设法回来，”布伊说。“他真的明白，坚持不懈就占了成功的99%。你只需要露面不走，人们就会想，‘看来这家伙本来就应该在这里。’” （白宫工作人员未回复对此事的置评请求。）

不过，据俄勒冈大学的惠特尼·菲利普斯（Whitney Phillips）称，特朗普展现出的一项技能是善于重新定义自己的丑闻，以此说服支持者相信，对他的行为感到愤怒，实际上是自由派对他们的普遍敌意的一部分。菲利普斯曾撰写过关于极化和“反自由主义妖魔化”的书籍。她表示，法拉尔的推文正是利用了这种动态：一方面，自由派人士群情激愤；另一方面，人们又会嘲笑自由派人士的这种反应。

法拉尔从左翼视角嘲讽的这种自由主义热情，部分被网络人士或有线电视新闻评论员煽动起来，他们不断炒作特朗普身陷困境的事件，以制造希望并提高自身的收视率。（还记得那些为罗伯特·穆勒祈祷的蜡烛吗？）

但其中一部分也是媒体履行职责、调查潜在不当行为的必然结果。“即便从一开始就所有报道都百分之百是客观的新闻报道，不带任何评论或夸张渲染，最终还是会被卷入特朗普的叙事之中，任何反对意见都会被贴上党派标签，”菲利普斯说。“这正是他炉火纯青的伎俩。”

对法拉尔来说，看到自己的话语至今仍被用在那些暗示末日是否即将到来的文章中，着实令人疲惫不堪。当《大西洋月刊》的撰稿人格雷厄姆在7月份一篇关于伊朗战争是最终击碎特朗普“不可战胜”光环的“陷阱”的文章中引用法拉尔的推文时，法拉尔却无动于衷。“陷阱在哪儿？他落网了吗？结束了吗？什么都没发生。”法拉尔说道。

即便共和党人在中期选举前夕与日益不得人心的特朗普保持距离，即便民主党人正为可能赢得国会控制权的压倒性胜利做准备，法拉尔依然悲观。他不相信他们会或任何人会突然追究总统的责任，也不相信总统会停止为所欲为。

法拉尔承认布伊批评他的态度是失败主义的；他的确是失败主义者。而且愤世嫉俗。而且厌倦了。无意中成为政治悲观主义的代言人，会使一个人变得有些悲观。

十多年来，他一直被灌输一种怀疑态度，即某些人是否会受到惩罚或因果报应。在他看来，这个体制有利于精英阶层逍遥法外，而过去十年发生的一切都未能推翻他的看法。

“我觉得如果你一直押注‘什么都不会发生’，你只会错一次，然后你会想，‘太好了，我很高兴我错了，’”法拉尔说。“但在此之前，我已经无数次押注‘坏事不会发生在有权有势的人身上’而获胜了。你知道，世界就是这样运转的。”