2016 United States Presidential Election — Tweet screenshot of Chris Christie behind Donald Trump captioned 'Hello darkness my old friend'

2016 United States Presidential Election

2016eventclassic

Published August 15, 2026

The 2016 United States Presidential Election was the November 8, 2016 race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that doubled as one of the most meme-saturated political events in internet history. It birthed viral moments from Chris Christie's blank stare on Super Tuesday to the weaponization of Pepe the Frog as a pro-Trump avatar.

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Overview

The 2016 United States Presidential Election was the 58th quadrennial US presidential race, held on November 8, 2016, between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump4. Trump won the electoral college and took office as the 45th president, but the more lasting online legacy of the campaign is the sheer volume of memes it generated in the year leading up to it.

As an internet event, the 2016 United States Presidential Election is remembered less for policy fights than for a stream of viral moments: Chris Christie's frozen stare behind Trump on Super Tuesday2, the Twitter meltdown that accompanied every debate and primary night3, and the mutation of Pepe the Frog from a chill cartoon character into a political avatar1. Both campaigns spilled directly into meme feeds, and the election became a case study in how political coverage, shitposting, and image macros bled into each other.

The race also marked the moment mainstream news outlets started treating memes as campaign artifacts worth reporting on, including the Clinton campaign publicly denouncing a cartoon frog in September 20161.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2016

The 2016 general election was preceded by two heavily online primary seasons. The Democratic primary was dominated by the fight between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, which spawned its own subculture of Sanders reaction images and "Bernie or Hillary?" comparison memes4. The Republican primary drew even more attention thanks to Donald Trump's frontrunner status and his willingness to feed the outrage cycle daily4.

One of the earliest breakout meme moments of the general election cycle came on Super Tuesday, March 1, 2016, when New Jersey governor Chris Christie stood behind Trump during a press conference at his election-night event and appeared visibly deflated on camera2. Christie had endorsed Trump only days earlier, on February 26, and had already been ordered by Trump to "get on the plane and go home" in a moment caught on camera2. His Super Tuesday facial expression was screenshotted and shared within minutes of the broadcast3.

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How It Spread

Reaction to Christie's Super Tuesday appearance moved fastest on Twitter, where journalists and users pushed jokes like "Is Christie being held hostage by the Trump campaign?" and "If you took this video back in time a year and showed it to Chris Christie, he would strangle you"3. Vox rounded up the best tweets the same night, which locked the "sad Christie" screengrab in as a recurring image throughout the rest of the primary calendar3. The same Vox roundup captured jokes about Marco Rubio's collapse, Trump's hands, and the general vibe of Republican commentators pleading with Fairfax County to save them3.

The frog part of the election meme story picked up over the summer. Pepe the Frog, a character created by artist Matt Furie in 2005 for his comic Boy's Club, was being adopted by pro-Trump accounts on Twitter and 4chan as a mascot1. On September 10, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a modified poster for the film The Expendables titled "The Deplorables," which photoshopped Trump supporters into the cast and included Pepe wearing a Trump wig1. The Clinton campaign publicly denounced the frog on Tuesday, September 27, 2016, and MSNBC's Chris Hayes described the moment as reporters encountering people with "Nazi frog avatars" who were "tweeting about the Jews"1.

The Trump/Christie dynamic kept generating headlines through the primary too. On CNN, Trump gave a widely mocked answer about David Duke and white supremacist support, later blaming a faulty earpiece2. Six New Jersey newspapers used the moment to jointly call on Christie to resign the governorship, writing "What an embarrassment. What an utter disgrace"2.

How to Use This Meme

The 2016 election meme set is less a single template than a bag of recurring images. The Chris Christie Super Tuesday screengrab is typically used as a reaction image for hostage-situation jokes, buyer's remorse, or watching someone you endorsed embarrass you in real time3. The Deplorables poster format is often edited with different faces to signal in-group political affiliation1. Pepe images from the era are still recycled in political shitposts, though the character's meaning shifted heavily depending on who was posting it after 20161.

Frequently Asked Questions