Donald Trump Staring at the Eclipse

About

Donald Trump Staring at the Eclipse or Donald Trump Looking at the Sun refers to images of United States President Donald Trump squinting his eyes while looking at the 2017 solar eclipse without eye protection on. Online, many mocked the President for failing to heed warnings about the dangers of staring directly at the sun. In April 2024, during the 2024 solar eclipse event, the image briefly regained popularity online as it was used in numerous memes.

Origin

On August 21st, 2017, Twitter user @leyawn^[1] tweeted a pair of fake New York Times headlines reporting that Trump had "suffered permanent eye damage" after staring at the solar eclipse (shown below). Within 24 hours, the tweet received upwards of 23,500 likes and 7,800 retweets.

Later that day, Trump was filmed observing a solar eclipse with his wife Melania and son Barron.^[3] After looking at the sun while wearing protective glasses, Trump removed them and squinted while briefly looking at the sky (shown below).

Spread

Shortly after the First Family's appearance, Twitter user @axios^[4] tweeted a screen-captured image of Trump looking upwards at the eclipse without glasses, along with the message "And he goes for it" (shown below, left). Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported Ted Mann posted a photo of Trump looking upwards at the sky along with a tweet claiming a person in the crowd yelled "Don't look" at the same moment (shown below, right).^[2]

Also on August 21, 2017, comedian Paul F. Tompkins posted a short video clip of Trump looking at the sun along with the message "Hey, our President may have irreparably damaged his retinas?" (shown below).

On August 22nd, the New York Daily News printed a newspaper cover featuring Trump squinting at the sky with the headline "Not Too Bright!"

April 2024 Resurgence

In early April 2024, before the April 8th total solar eclipse in North America, the photograph of Donald Trump looking at the eclipse regained popularity on social media. On April 3rd, Redditor Gavin-Oldsom posted the photograph to the /r/pics^[5] subreddit, where it gained over 68,000 upvotes in six days.

On April 8th, 2024, American politician Hillary Clinton posted the photograph with the caption "Reminder:". The post (shown below, left) gained over 17,000 reposts and quotes, and 71,000 likes on X^[6] / Twitter in one day, and was followed by users quoting the post with mentions of Clinton's loss to Trump in the 2016 United States Presidential election. For example, an April 8th post by X^[7] user @lukeisamazing received over 3,000 reposts and 39,000 likes in one day (shown below, right).

Also on April 8th, the photograph saw viral spread on social media, being used in various formats (examples^[8][9] shown below) and compared against the photograph of the United States President Joe Biden looking at the eclipse in protective eyewear.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References