With “rage bait” declared 2025’s word of the year, Somali Americans have fittingly responded to Donald Trump’s latest wave of xenophobic attacks not with fear but with something far more subversive: Humor. Online satire, memes, artificial intelligence-generated folklore and parody Bible verses have become the community’s preferred medium of resistance. The effect has been to turn the president’s inflammatory rhetoric into a mirror that reflects just how ridiculous and brittle MAGA’s nationalist claims really are.
Last week, Trump unleashed a withering tirade against Somali immigrants, targeting the large community in Minnesota, which has the largest Somali population of any state in America. The attacks were particularly vicious, even for him. From the Oval Office, flanked by Cabinet officials, the president declared that Somalia wasn’t “even a nation” and that Somali immigrants “contribute nothing.” Taking them, he argued, amounted to bringing “garbage” into the U.S. “These Somalians have taken billions of dollars out of our country,” he said. “They have destroyed Minnesota.”
Trump’s comments were made a few days after the New York Times reported some Somalis living in Minnesota had orchestrated a fraud scheme that, according to federal prosecutors, stole “more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money.” The welfare scam was first revealed in 2022, with prosecutors calling it “the largest pandemic fraud in the United States.” Among the operations, which targeted social programs in the North Star State, was a $250 million scheme involving the nonprofit group Feeding Our Future. Five people were convicted in the case in 2024 for misusing funds intended to feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the 87 people charged in connection with the scheme, 79 are of Somali descent. Right-wing media has speculated that fraudsters sent money to the Somalia-based — and al-Qaeda affiliated — terrorist group Al-Shabaab. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Dr. Mehmet Oz, who heads the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, have since announced two separate federal probes into the fraud.
Instead of treating the case as what it was — a criminal prosecution against specific individuals — Trump and his administration have framed it as a moral indictment of an entire ethnic community, casting Minnesota’s Somali population as a contagion undermining both the state and the country from within.
Instead of treating the case as what it was — a criminal prosecution against specific individuals — Trump and his administration have framed it as a moral indictment of an entire ethnic community, casting Minnesota’s Somali population as a contagion undermining both the state and the country from within. Federal authorities began targeted immigration enforcement in Minneapolis and St. Paul aimed at the more than 84,000 residents of Somali descent, 95% of whom are U.S. citizens. (Fifty-eight percent of Minnesotans of Somali descent were born in the U.S.) The move suggests that labeling a community “garbage” had overridden legitimate security priorities.
The administration’s actions and rhetoric were subjects on the Sunday political television shows. Dana Bash, co-host of CNN’s “State of the Union,” asked border czar Tom Homan a question about Trump’s xenophobic attacks that cut to the chase: “Is that the real reason this operation is happening in the Somali community?” Homan defended the president without answering the question, saying he was “not aware what the president was thinking” but added, “I agree 100% with what he’s doing.”
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Margaret Brennan interviewed Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who is of Somali descent and was specifically singled out as “garbage” by Trump.
“It’s disgusting, it’s completely disgusting,” Omar said. “These are Americans that he is calling garbage. I think it’s also really important for us to remember that this kind of hateful rhetoric and this level of dehumanizing can lead to dangerous actions by people who listen to the president.”
The congresswoman’s comments on safety follow concerns she raised in a Dec. 4 New York Times op-ed, in which she alleged that every time Trump targets her, there is an immediate spike in death threats against her family and staff.
Trump, Omar said, is exhibiting “an unhealthy obsession on the Somali community and an unhealthy and creepy obsession on me.” She also called out White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who is widely credited as the architect the Trump administration’s most draconian immigration policies, likening his rhetoric to the language Nazis used against German Jews.
In response, Miller said on X that “the entire Somali refugee program is predicated on a lie. Destroying your own country does not give you the right to become a citizen in ours.” His wife Katie also felt compelled to weigh in, posting that every TV appearance by Omar increases support for deporting all Somalis. The congresswoman also triggered a response from the official account of the House Committee on the Judiciary, chaired by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, insinuating that because Miller is Jewish, her comments were antisemitic.
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Elsewhere on social media, the Somali American community turned to satire.
On X, users began posting elaborate folklore claiming that Somali sailors discovered Minnesota thousands of years ago, naming it “Minnadishu,” the twin of Mogadishu. Others created AI-generated images of Somali “founders” planting flags on the shores of Lake Superior. Some crafted faux-biblical verses like “Whoever harms Somalis will bring harm onto himself—Genesis 67:67” and “If you bless the Somali people, God will bless you—Genesis 12:8.” On TikTok, creators visited museum exhibits to claim, “This is one of the ships that our Somali ancestors used to migrate to explore the state of Minnesota 3,000 years ago.”
Many MAGA supporters responded by sincerely fact-checking the jokes, pointing out that Minnesota became a state in the 1800s or that the verses weren’t real, inadvertently feeding the humor. Trump’s close adviser Laura Loomer, a well known conspiracy theorist, also appeared to take the satire at face value.“WE ARE GOING TO LOSE THE MIDTERMS AND OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY WILL BE FLOODED WITH ISLAMIC PROPAGANDA!” she warned.
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But the MAGA influencers were too late for the Somali American community. Humorous responses to rage bait, which depends on eliciting defensiveness that can be fed back into the outrage machine, robs it of oxygen. Trump’s attacks were meant to provoke panic. Refusing to play the role assigned to them, Somali Americans flipped the power dynamic by going for the punchline. It’s a reminder that when someone tries to dehumanize you, laughing in their face can be a declaration of personhood.
Humor can also provide a platform for solidarity. Being scapegoated for political gain can be painful, but laughter is a helpful balm — a means of maintaining dignity when powerful figures like Donald Trump attempt to strip it away. In this way, the memes and satire are likely helping young Somalis in the U.S. reaffirm their Americanness.
But humor can only absorb so much. Behind the jokes, the fear remains real. Somali community groups report people staying home from work, while businesses worry they are being surveilled. Even U.S.-born Somali Americans are carrying passports or IDs everywhere they go.
Rage bait may dominate American politics, but Somali Americans have shown that it doesn’t have to dominate the spirit. Their jokes aren’t merely distractions from the torment of Trump’s rhetoric but are declarations that even in the face of dehumanization, they refuse to disappear.
