Trumpisatva

About

Trumpisattva is an exploitable used in a series of memes that imagine interactions between Donald Trump as Buddha, referred to as Trumpisattva, and various people, primarily George Floyd, in which Trump denies their strife to escape Samsara and instead reincarnates them as various animals or objects. Spawned by a viral June 2021 tweet, the format gained limited virality on Twitter and iFunny over the following months.

Origin

On March 9th, 2021, Global Times reported about a Buddha statue of Donald Trump trending on the Chinese online shopping platform Taobao.^[1][2] The statue was being sold on the platform by a Chinese furniture maker, with a 6-inch (16cm) version priced at 999 yuan ($150 USD) and an 18-inch (46cm) version costing 3,999 yuan ($610). On March 10th, The Guardian and Daily Caller made tweets^[3][4] about the statue (photograph shown below).

The image did not see use in memes until June 13th, 2021, when since-suspended Twitter user @NS_Elaphos made a meme imagining an interaction between Buddha Donald Trump (Trumpisattva) and George Floyd. Trumpisattva is a portmanteau of Trump and Bodhisattva, a Buddhist term for a person who is on the path toward awakening. In the meme, which references Buddhism, Trumpisatva denies Floyd his wish to escape Samsara and instead reincarnates him as a pit bull.

Spread

On August 19th, 2021, iFunny^[5] user A_Conservative posted a screenshot of the tweet, with the post gaining over 1,200 smiles in one year. An April 24th, 2022, repost by iFunny^[6] user Sakyamuni then accumulated over 9,000 smiles in two months.

The format did not see spread until September 17th, 2021, when Twitter^[7] user @EdenicJesus posted a meme based on the format that gained over 470 retweets and 2,800 likes in nine months (shown below, left). In the same thread, Twitter^[8] user @0x49fa98 posted another meme depicting an interaction between Trumpisattva and Floyd that gained 20 retweets and over 250 likes in a similar timeframe (shown below, right).

Both posts received further spread in the following months through reposts. For example, on September 17th, iFunny^[9] user ADogtheConfessor reposted @EdenicJesus' meme, with the post gaining over 460 smiles in nine months. On December 22nd, iFunny^[10] user Norm shared @0x49fa98's tweet, with the post garnering over 410 smiles on the app in six months.

In the following months, the format received further spread online, mutating to include Buddha versions of other world leaders and historic figures, including Joe Biden and Joseph Stalin.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References