# Council to Re-open America On April 13, 2020, Fox News aired a graphic listing President Trump's advisory council for lifting coronavirus lockdowns, and Twitter users spent the rest of the day replacing the officials' headshots with horror villains, cartoon antagonists and video-game character-select screens. The Beaverton swapped in The Babadook and poisonous snakes within hours, kicking off a photoshop template that ran across Twitter through mid-April 2020. ## Origin On April 13, 2020, Fox News ran a segment introducing President Donald Trump's advisory council for ending coronavirus lockdowns, titled the "Council to Re-open America." The on-screen graphic named Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Mark Meadows, Steve Mnuchin, Larry Kudlow, Robert Lighthizer and Wilbur Ross[4]. Hours after the broadcast, Twitter user @NumbersMuncher posted a screenshot with the caption, "If someone asked me to write a parody of who would be on Trump's 'Council to re-open America,' I couldn't have come up with a list this good... Beyond parody," earning over 300 retweets and 1,000 likes[1]. Parody edits began appearing on Twitter the same afternoon. - **Platform:** Fox News broadcast / Twitter (viral spread) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2020 ## Overview Edits keep the Fox News chyron and the 2-by-4 grid of headshots intact while replacing the seven real advisors with cartoon antagonists, horror creatures or wholly unrelated characters. Canadian satire site The Beaverton set the tone with a version listing The Babadook and "Poisonous snakes" among the appointees[2]. A second thread of jokes abandoned the Fox layout entirely and treated the council as a fighting-game roster, overlaying the headline on character-select screens from Mario Kart 64 and Super Smash Bros. Melee[5][6]. The comedy hinged on two specific targets: the real presence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner on a public-health advisory board, which critics called unqualified, and the clean grid design that was trivial to photoshop[1]. Stayhipp catalogued the best entries in a round-up that appeared within days of the Fox segment[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Council to Re-open America? A photoshop meme built around a Fox News graphic of President Trump's April 2020 advisory group for lifting coronavirus lockdowns, in which the real appointees' faces are swapped for fictional villains or video-game characters[2]. ### Where did Council to Re-open America come from? Fox News aired the original graphic on April 13, 2020, and Twitter user @NumbersMuncher's mocking screenshot the same day kicked off a wave of parody edits[1]. ### What does Council to Re-open America mean? The joke frames the real council, which included Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, as so unqualified that pasting The Babadook or Bowser into the lineup is barely an exaggeration[2]. ### How do you use Council to Re-open America? A typical post keeps the Fox News chyron and grid layout, then photoshops seven unrelated characters, often horror figures or video-game rosters like Mario Kart 64, into the headshot slots[5]. ### Is Council to Re-open America still popular? No, activity around the template was concentrated in April 2020 and faded within a week as other pandemic-era jokes replaced it on Twitter[3]. ## References 1. [https://twitter.com/NumbersMuncher/status/1249787511834136576]() 2. [https://twitter.com/TheBeaverton/status/1249807390620483597]() 3. [https://stayhipp.com/internet/memes/council-to-re-open-america-memes/]() 4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/council-to-re-open-america]() 5. [https://twitter.com/chasehaynes89/status/1249792360923443200]() 6. [https://twitter.com/burgerkrang/status/1249940702936674306]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/council-to-re-open-america Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library