There are so many more ways to communicate one’s thoughts and feelings today than there were, say, 30 years ago. There’s texting, Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter, not to mention letting loose a photo on the internet, or emoji, or using inexpensive image projectors. Those final three were all used to send a pretty powerful message to President Trump, turning his own awful words against him.
Earlier this week, during a White House meeting with members of Congress about immigration reform, a proposal was floated to offer more visas to people from protected nations and underrepresented parts of the world, namely Haiti and Africa. Trump thought that was terrible and gross, and he reportedly remarked, “Why are we having all these people from sh*thole counties come here?” Way to disparage entire counties and their populations in an at least vaguely racist way, Trump.
Millions were outraged, and the African Union, a group of United Nations ambassadors from that continent, have demanded a retraction and apology from the president. Until then (or instead of that happening, because, come on, Trump isn’t going to apologize), a clever protester named Robin Bell did something pointed and unique: He took the terrible word Trump said about African nations—sh*thole—and had it projected in gigantic letters onto the Trump International Hotel, located in Washington, D.C. Along with “THIS PLACE IS A SH*THOLE,” Bell included a whole bunch of smiling poop emoji to really drive the message home.
💩💩💩 Sh*thole Projection on Trump Hotel #Resist 💩💩💩 pic.twitter.com/5Y8xH54J5K
— Robin Bell (@bellvisuals) January 14, 2018
The final piece of the communications plan, the internet, then kicked in, because of course this thing went viral. People on social media loved it.