David Zurawik on Trump Tweeting Rocky Meme: ‘This Is Beyond Propaganda’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:

STELTER: "The meme wars, I know the phrase is funny. This phenomenon is real. This is how online arguments are fought and how prop began da is pushed. The images like this. Trump’s face on Sylvester Stallone’s body. Within hours activists thanked Trump for signing two bills for And then this one and on and on it goes. David is back with me. I think the memes matter. This is how people communicate these days whether he like it or not.
ZURWIK: "Yeah. Brian, especially globally. Remember the meme of Putin on a horse back with the bare chest? Some of us laughed about it. This like that meme, this says strong man. One of the things earlier efs talking act what happens when you have all these conspiracy theories out there. There’s a book called “This is beyond propaganda”. It’s called “This is not propaganda”. People look for a strong man, and this feeds right into that. That’s one part of it. The other part that’s fascinating to me is we’ve become a visual culture. We have social media. This is what the political conversation is reduced to in some ways. Memes."