Council to Re-open America

About

Council to Re-open America refers to parodies of a graphic presented by Fox News which shows President Donald Trump's team to put America back to work after the Coronavirus forced Americans to practice social distancing by quarantining in their homes and many businesses to temporarily close. The council includes Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Mark Meadows, Steve Mnuchin, Larry Kudlow, Robert Lightizer, and Wilbur Ross. Parodies of the graphic will photoshop other faces, usually those of notably evil or incompetent fictional characters, onto the council members.

Origin

On April 13th, 2020, Fox News ran a segment discussing President Trump's advisory council on lifting social distancing restrictions and re-opening businesses, called the "Council to Re-open America."

Spread

The graphic was posted to Twitter shortly after, where it was mocked by users, particularly the inclusion of Ivanka and Kushner, who users felt were unqualified to be offering advice on the matter. Twitter user @numbersmuncher^[1] wrote, "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. Trump put his daughter and son-in-law, who were elected to nothing, to lead the country out of the coronavirus outbreak? Beyond parody," gaining over 300 retweets and 1,000 likes (shown below, left). Parodies shortly followed, where people replaced the faces in the graphic with notable fictional characters. For example, the satirical website The Beaverton^[2] posted a graphic including "The Babadook" and "Poisonous snakes" in the graphic, gaining over 180 retweets and 650 likes (shown below, right).

One common thread of jokes used character-select screens from video games in place of the Fox News graphic. For example, user @ChaseHaynes89^[3] posted the character-select screen from Mario Kart 64, gaining over 670 retweets and 2,200 likes (shown below, left). User @burgerkrang^[4] used the character-select screen from Super Smash Brothers Melee, gaining over 170 likes (shown below, right). Memes were covered by Stayhipp.^[5]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References