President Donald Trump has been crashing out over Somali Americans for several days now. Instead of earnestly calling out the president’s racist, xenophobic tirades, some in the community have decided to fight bigotry with rage-bait ‒ and I can’t lie, it’s pretty funny.

“Will somebody tell Trump that he can’t deport us and that Minnesota was promised to us 3,000 years ago,” TikTok user Him.za1 posted on Nov. 30, days after Trump posted a Thanksgiving message on Truth Social saying Somali “gangs” had taken over the state.

The video, which has been viewed nearly 212,000 times, catapulted a trend on multiple platforms.

“My girlfriend's twitter timeline is exclusively posts about how the founding fathers are Somali,” X user @PunishedFredda posted. I can see how she got there: My own social media feeds have recently included AI-generated videos of Somali men wearing Revolutionary War getup.

In the same vein of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Trumpian posts, Somali netizens are proving that the best way to fight blind hatred from the White House is with humor. I commend them for being able to make jokes about the situation.

Trump called Somalis 'garbage.' They're calling him a joke.

Trump has spent the past several days making disparaging remarks about Somali Americans, including U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar. On Dec. 2, he referred to Omar and Somali immigrants in the United States as “garbage” and said they should go back to where they came from.

Attacking minorities and immigrant communities is nothing new for Trump and his administration. He attacked Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and "drug dealers" during his first run for president, then claimed on the 2024 campaign trail that Haitian immigrants were eating people's pets.

Omar, a Democratic representative of Minnesota, weighed in on the attacks in a guest essay for The New York Times. She didn't commit to rage-baiting the president, but she did highlight the same sentiment that many of the comedic posts are getting at.

"I often say that although Minnesota may be cold, the people here have warm hearts," Omar wrote. "Minnesota is special. That is why when so many Somalis arrived in this country, they chose the state as home."

Just like my grandfather came to this country from Cuba seeking a life free from persecution in the 1960s, the majority of Somali immigrants in Minnesota came here in the 1990s during a time of civil war. They have made their homes here, and are just as American as the rest of us. Trump is trying to other them as a way of turning us against one another. Instead, we're uniting with memes.

MAGA activists' meltdown over Somali memes proves how unserious they are

Some of the jokes are a little edgy, poking fun at the claim that Israelis have a right to Palestinian land in Gaza. Others were focused on the idea that Somalians actually founded the United States, claiming that it was "the truth Trump is trying to hide." Some are even claiming that Abraham Lincoln had Somali heritage.

No matter where the jokes fall on the tastefulness scale, they're all infuriating MAGA conservatives, who are in the comments of every post telling Somalians to go back to their home country. They must not have heard that the majority of Somali immigrants in the United States are citizens.

Jokes aside, the Trump administration is still attempting to inflict terror on the Somali American community. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been sent to the Minneapolis-St. Paul region in the wake of the president's racist tirades. We must not forget that, as we laugh at the memes.

But in the face of what feels like daily terror, I'm glad we are able to find ways to defang the Trump administration. I hope it shows the president that there is still a resistance movement, and it's a lot stronger than the MAGA faithful may expect.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter: @sara__pequeno

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Somali Americans are throwing Trump's 'garbage' back at him | Opinion

Reporting by Sara Pequeño, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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