What’s up with political memes?
I rarely get involved in politics, but political memes invade even my everyday life. These memes are created by all generations, from Boomers to Gen Z, and a lot of them make vast, general claims about politicians as if they are fact. In this blog post, I want to explore a meme that makes purported statements of fact, attempting to determine its origins and contexts and the veracity of its claims.
When I did a Google Search of “political memes from 2019”, I found this gem, which makes at least three claims that can be verified or disproved:
Let’s start with the context and origin of this meme. Contextually, the recurring debate in America over immigration laws and a border wall, a hot topic of argument on political platforms for the past several elections, creates an ideal atmosphere in which this meme can circulate. Senator Chuck Schumer particularly has been a big name in the discourse concerning whether or not to build a border wall between the United States and Mexico. The origin, according to Politifact, is partisan group The Right View Of Washington State. Considering that Trump made essentially the same statement on television early last year, it’s likely that the meme originated from the President’s words.
Now let’s look at the claims this meme makes.
The first claim is that Chuck Schumer supported a 25 billion dollar plan for a border wall in 2014. How true is it?
Turns out, Schumer did support an expensive border deal, but in 2013 instead of 2014. Schumer pushed S.744: Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act to be passed in 2013, which would have allowed for stricter border enforcement, opportunities for illegal immigrants already in the country, and would have attempted to tailor the kinds of people immigrating into the United States. Along with several other big names in politics, such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Schumer also helped vote in The Secure Fence Act of 2006, a bill meant to prompt the creation of a fence on the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as making changes to U.S. immigration policies.
The second claim is that President Trump’s border proposal is worth about 5 billion dollars. This claim appears to be mostly true; according to Politico, 5.7 billion dollars was the desired amount cited by Trump during the 2018 government shutdown, who vocally disapproved of the border deal offered by Democratic politicians:
The last claim is implied by the meme to be in opposition to the first, that despite Schumer’s previous interest in building a wall, he no longer wants to do so now that a Republican is president. Based on my research, this claim appears to be false. This verdict is mainly based on the fact that Schumer offered to support a 25 billion dollar border wall deal in exchange for Trump supporting Schumer’s Dreamer policies, and only rescinded the offer when Trump refused to agree to the terms. The meme’s claim that Schumer no longer supports the wall merely because Trump is a Republican is incorrect, whatever other disputes there may be between the President and Senator.
Here’s an insight into my research process, so you know I’m not making all of this up.
For the most part, I stuck to some common fact-checking sites. Using the DuckDuckGo search engine, I looked for specific, relevant terms on Snopes, FactCheck, and Politifact. Most of the articles that I found were on Politifact; I found the first several by searching “chuck schumer 25 billion border wall”. This brought up articles from FactCheck and Politifact, one of which was actually about the meme, and others about Schumer’s previous involvement in constructing a barrier. I also used the sources from these articles to move upstream and find earlier news articles about Schumer’s border wall history. I struck gold through one of these sources, which led me straight to the Senate proposal from 2013. I also found several more articles to verify my original findings by searching for “trump border wall” and clicking on the Wikipedia page. The Wikipedia footnotes brought me to sources that stated similar facts to the ones I found in my earlier searches, letting me know that I was on the right track.
This is also how I determined the veracity of the claims, based on whether or not a lot of reliable sources all said the same things. When Politifact, FactCheck, The New York Times, and PBS all agreed, I was satisfied. The balance between fact checking sites, news sites, and the information I gleaned from Congressional archives provided a rounded overview of the issue and enough information to verify or disprove the claims made by the meme.
To review, the claim that Schumer previously supported a 25 billion dollar border deal is based in fact, but is not entirely true out of the proper context. The claim that Trump pushes a 5 billion dollar border deal is essentially true, with variants on the exact amount. The claim that the only reason Schumer does not currently support a border wall deal is because Trump, a Republican, is president, is false.
Thanks for reading my post! I hope this gives you an idea of the context behind claims, and how to check them out for yourself.
All of my sources are hyperlinked or mentioned. The rest is my own, original content.
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