About

Dianne Feinstein In A Wheelchair refers to the U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein appearing at the senate to cast a vote for the first time in three months, pulling up in a wheelchair pushed by her staff. The image elicited a major reaction online with a renewed interest in the conversation on mandatory term limits and a call for her to resign.

Origin

On May 10th, 2023, Dianne Feinstein returned after a three month hiatus to cast two votes in the senate, arriving by car and then getting into a wheelchair. Multiple different images of the event were uploaded online, with the one by @GaryGrumbach^[1] having the most reach at 6.3 million views in 12 hours (shown below).

Spread

Within a few hours, meme pages began posting memes about the old age of several leaders within U.S. Politics, as well as Feinstein, who at 89 is the oldest living Senator. This is best seen in the tweet by @ImMeme0^[2] on May 10th, 2023, in which the tweet caption is about several commonly known politicians on both sides are over the age of 80 and that term limits should be a thing, earning over 100,000 views in 10 hours (shown below).

Because of her age and appearance in the wheelchair, memes about her being close to death, or already being decrepit, began to spread. On May 10th, 2023, the Redditor u/TheMiddleWeb^[3] uploaded a meme to the r/Dankmemes Subreddit, showing a mummified body in an airport captioned as Dianne Feinstein accepting the 2024 Senate Nomination, earning over 650 upvotes in nine hours (shown below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References