Reform's Mayoral Candidate Recreates Trump's Controversial Penguin Meme

Donald Trump’s controversial penguin meme has been recreated by Reform’s mayoral candidate for London, Laila Cunningham.

The White House caused a stir online this week when it posted an AI image of the president walking with a penguin through a snowy landscape as the bird holds the US flag. A Greenland flag can also be seen in the distance. 

The image was accompanied with a caption which read, “embrace the penguin”.

The post was incredibly strange for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it was a copy of a “Nihilist Penguin” meme which has dominated the internet in recent days, originating from a 2007 documentary where one penguin separated himself from the rest of the colony and walks towards the mountains.

Secondly, the US administration shared it shortly after coming to an agreement over Greenland with Nato allies, which was meant to put Trump’s plan to control the whole Arctic island to bed. 

Trump agreed to a “framework of a future deal” with Nato chief Mark Rutte last week, ending major concerns across Europe that the US would try to forcibly seize the semiautonomous Danish territory.

But this provocative post suggested Trump still very much had plans for Greenland. 

And thirdly, penguins live in the southern hemisphere, not in the Arctic circle, an area Trump has spent the last month talking about – so it didn’t even make sense.

But the White House doubled down over its post in a later comment, writing: “The penguin does not concern himself with the opinions of those who cannot comprehend.”

Things took an even stranger turn when Cunningham, a Reform councillor for Westminster and Reform’s mayoral candidate for London, replicated the image.

She inserted her own silhouette into the picture, and put London landmarks in the background – covered in snow. 

″Choose a new path for London. Before it’s too late,” she added in her caption.

Much like Trump’s meme – and unlike most of the other ones circulating on the internet – Cunningham’s post featured a flag, only this time it was the Union Jack.

Plenty of people were rather confused by this on social media, pointing out how Trump had insulted Brits this week by claiming Nato troops stayed back from the frontlines during the Afghanistan war (although he later climbed down from his claims).