What The ‘Trump Baby’ Blimp Really Represents

The Museum of London has acquired the famous “Trump Baby” blimp that caricatured Donald Trump as an oversized infant, clutching a smartphone.  

The blimp cost £16,000 to create, and was funded through an online crowdfunding campaign; it was first flown over London’s Parliament Square in 2018 to mark Trump’s official visit to the UK, and quickly became a common sight during protests against Donald Trump’s administration. 

Museum of London director Sharon Ament stated:

“By collecting the baby blimp we can mark the wave of feeling that washed over the city that day and capture a particular moment of resistance, a feeling still relevant today as we live through these exceptionally challenging times—that ultimately shows Londoners banding together in the face of extreme adversity.”

I agree that the blimp certainly belongs in a museum, as a monument to an era of depressingly deflated protest art, obsessed with playground insults like “small hands,” defined by lazy caricatures like Alec Baldwin’s tired impersonation on SNL, and the color orange. 

In the last four years, every single caricature and comedic criticism of Trump has either repeated some variation of “orange baby,” or simply quoted the man, verbatim; it’s been an easy era for late-night hosts, and an excruciating time to be a viewer. 

But to be fair, it isn’t easy to caricature Trump; when a leader regularly debases himself on the level in which Trump did, it’s almost impossible for satirists to top it.

Try as they might, they simply couldn’t make Trump look as foolish as he himself could; his weird, rambling speeches, the childish insults directed at his opponents, the fawning flattery for his allies; it could all be flipped at a moment’s notice, until it became one indistinguishable deluge of verbal diarrhea, in which every single occurrence was either the greatest event in human history, or the worst atrocity imaginable. 

Every single tweet the man typed out was a masterpiece, a pure, pulsating blend of raw ego and bubbling emotion, succinctly expressed through a few lines; we’ll never again see a Twitter account that was so consistently entertaining. SAD! 

Trump’s obsession with his own fame, his ability to blend tabloid gossip with unhinged claims and conspiracy theories was simply unmatched, way beyond the absurdity of any South Park sketch. 

In Trump’s speech to his supporters, right before they swarmed Capitol Hill, the man made sure to mention:

“I had to beat Stacey Abrams and I had to beat Oprah, used to be a friend of mine. You know, I was on her last show, her last week. She picked the five outstanding people. I don't think she thinks that anymore. Once I ran for president, I didn't notice too many calls coming in from Oprah. Believe it or not, she used to like me.” 

How can anyone exaggerate this? When faced with a man so open about his own insecurities, proudly displaying his pathological fixation with celebrities, entertainment magazines, prestige and social status, where could satirists go? 

Well, they followed Trump’s lead, and repeated his style of petty, superficial insults, mocking his appearance, depicting him as an overgrown baby in the midst of a perpetual tantrum.

But Trump never pretended to be anything else.

By lowering down to his level, the protest art of the Trump era became insufferably repetitive, sometimes indistinguishable from the humor and memes of Trump’s own supporters, in the doomed attempt to caricature a living caricature.

The aim of the art seemed to be to make Trump angry enough to tweet about it, and supposedly, publicly humiliate himself. But one cannot humiliate the shameless. 

Hence, it became all about drawing Trump’s attention; instead of speaking truth to power, it was, in a sense, stroking his ego. A quote from Gossip Girl best summarizes the situation:

“You're no one until you're talked about.”