For those unfamiliar, the “leopards ate my face” meme refers to people who suffer the consequences of political parties or policies they supported electorally. It stems from this classic tweet:
Quite simply, it is schadenfreude, and thanks to Donald Trump’s voters, we will be swimming in it over the coming four years.
No modern-era president did more for organized labor than Joe Biden. Among other things, he was the first president to walk a picket line, bailed out the pension for 600,000 Teamsters at a taxpayer’s cost of $36 billion, helped radicalize billionaire Elon Musk by excluding him from an electrical-vehicle summit at the apparent behest of the United Auto Workers union, increased funding for the National Labor Relations Board, and stocked that board with labor advocates.
In return, the Teamsters refused to endorse a presidential candidate, and the union’s president, Sean O’Brien, spoke at the Republican National Convention, and 45% of labor households voted for Trump, compared with 40% in 2020, according to exit polls.
Meanwhile, Trump said this to Elon Musk: “I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in and you say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike, I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone.’” And Project 2025 is an anti-union corporatist’s wet dream.
In other words, the leopards will soon feast.
One of the election’s most bizarre developments was that many Muslim Americans abandoned the Democratic ticket for both Trump and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, largely due to the Biden administration’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas. In fact, Arab-majority Dearborn, Michigan, went from a 69% Biden majority in 2020 to giving Vice President Kamala Harris just 36% of its vote this November. Trump got 42%, and Stein got 18%. Boy, did they send a message for peace!
In fact, the leopards are already dining out on this one. Reuters reported this on Saturday:
U.S. Muslim leaders who supported Republican Donald Trump to protest against the Biden administration's support for Israel's war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon have been deeply disappointed by his cabinet picks, they tell Reuters."Trump won because of us and we're not happy with his secretary of state pick and others," said Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump.
These people are so devoid of common sense that they’re begging Biden to help them before Trump takes office. Yet the reason Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s far-right prime minister, ignored Biden’s peace efforts all year was precisely because he bet that Trump would be reelected, giving him an even friendlier U.S. government to let him do whatever he wanted. And these Arab voters played right into this transparent scheme.
Rural America has been the bedrock of MAGA support. This year, 64% of rural voters went for Trump, and just 32% for Harris. And the nonprofit news outlet Investigate Midwest finds that Trump won over 77% of the popular vote, on average, in the nation’s most farming-dependent counties. So you know the leopards are hungrily circling that crowd.
NPR writes about alarm in the farm industry over both Trump’s proposed tariffs and his nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A former head of Missouri’s Farm Bureau called the Trump-Kennedy pairing as an “unholy alliance.”
On the tariffs, NPR writes:
A study released last month by the National Corn Growers Association found a tariff-driven trade war with China could cost U.S. soybean and corn farmers as much as $7.3 billion in annual production value."This burden is not limited to the U.S. soybean and corn farmers who lose market share and production value," the study's authors predicted. "There is a ripple impact across the U.S., particularly in rural economies where farmers live, purchase inputs, utilize farm and personal services, and purchase household goods."
Democrats need to oppose the inevitable taxpayer-funded efforts to bail out farmers affected by Trump’s economic policies. Remember, farming counties heavily backed Trump on average. If they want to start voting out their elected Republican officials, we can revisit. But there’s no reason for Democrats to repeatedly mitigate the consequences of those voters’ poor electoral choices.
And speaking of poor choices, what about the immigrants who supported and/or voted for Trump? The leopards just can’t believe their luck. Examples abound, like this immigrant family who thinks Trump won’t go after their undocumented relatives because they aren’t “criminals,” or this undocumented Guatemalan migrant who thinks he’s safe because “Trump wants to deport those who do bad things. … I haven’t broken any laws.”
And it’s not just Latinos. Arabs will be heavily targeted, as well as Trump-loving Filipinos.
How about all those women who voted for abortion-rights amendments while voting for Republicans who oppose those very same rights? Harris got 43% of the vote in Florida, yet the state’s abortion-rights ballot initiative got 57% of the vote (it needed 60% to pass). In Arizona, an abortion-rights ballot initiative got nearly 62% of the vote, while Harris got just under 47%. That’s a lot of people who support a right that Republicans have vowed to eliminate. You know that won’t end well.
And get ready for new headlines like this one from February 2017: “She voted for Trump. Now she fears losing the Obamacare plan that saved her life.” After all, shortly before the election, House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged that Republicans plan to kill the Affordable Care Act.
Amazingly, eliminating ACA subsidies and other such programs helping out low-income Americans will most affect Republican voters. Of the 30 states with the lowest household income, Trump won 28 of them, according to data compiled on Wikipedia. Of the 20 states with the highest income, Trump won three.
From Social Security cuts to curbs on press freedoms, and from higher grocery prices to raw-milk illnesses, and to say nothing of the return of measles, polio, whooping cough, and other once-eradicated diseases—these next four years will be awful. And those bearing the brunt of the awfulness will be disproportionately Trump voters.
And the rest of us? For now, all we can do is look on and ask every time a leopard takes a bite, “Is this what you voted for?”
Some people are too far gone and will say “Yes!” and blame Democrats for their sad lot in life. Good for them. Trump will always have his 20-30% deplorable base. But the rest of them? We can remind them there is a political alternative, both in 2026 and 2028. (Hint: Calling them stupid and racist won’t do the job.)
There are no capital-D Democratic guardrails to mitigate the effects of Trumpism. The best we can do is see this as an opportunity for people to see what it really looks like, and plan for better days ahead.
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