About

Donald Trump Watching on His iPad refers to a photograph of the former United States president Donald Trump holding a tablet and looking at its screen. In the original photograph, Trump is browsing Frank Sinatra discography on Spotify. In the edits, the image on the screen is replaced, with one viral version being a Skibidi Toilet video.

Origin

On November 24th, 2023, Melania Trump fan page Instagram^[1] account melaniattrumpisaqueen posted a photograph of Donald Trump sitting together with his wife Melania Trump and her father Victor Knavs at a Thanksgiving dinner (author of the photograph unknown). In the photograph, Trump is holding a tablet in his hands, browsing Frank Sinatra's discography on Spotify. Contrary to a popular belief, Donald Trump is not checking his 2023 Spotify Wrapped in the photograph, as it was not release until a week later.

Spread

On November 29th, 2023, X^[2] user @_johnnymaga posted the photograph on X / Twitter, commenting, "Sometimes I forget he's a real person". The post received over 6.9 million views, 840 reposts and 6,7000 likes in one year. Later on November 29th, 2023, X^[3] user @buckadeath quoted the post, commenting, "I have to see his Spotify Wrapped," with the post gaining over 4,800 reposts and 110,000 likes in the same period (shown below). Also that day, tweleb @kirawontmiss made a post implying that Donald Trump was checking his 2023 Spotify Wrapped in the photograph, which received over 20,000 reposts and 436,000 likes on X^[4] in one year.

The viral spread of the photograph on X and Instagram was followed by users posting edits of it, replacing the image on the screen. On November 29th, 2023, Redditor GEX_EATS_KIDS posted the earliest notable edit of the image, putting The Only Frame From The Whale onto the screen. The edit (shown below) garnered over 3,400 upvotes in the /r/moviescirclejerk^[5] subreddit in one year.

On December 5th, 2023, Instagram^[6] user marahmemes3.0 posted an image of Donald Trump watching the Skibidi Toilet series on the tablet as a part of a meme dump (author unknown), which received over 750 likes in ten months. On December 13th, 2023, Facebook^[7] page The Meme Aesthetic posted a similar edit, which gained over 3,200 reactions and 740 shares in ten months and was widely circulated online in the following year (shown below).

The photograph maintained popularity as an exploitable format through late 2023 and into 2024.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References