I usually just check my email or go on Facebook or something.” “It was just as amusing as anything else stupid on the internet.” When I ask him if any use of Pepe has shocked or disgusted him, he replies, “Not really - there is all kinds of idiotic stuff on the internet. “I’m sure it was just a young Republican dude posting it to appeal to smug Trumpies,” he says. Trump’s retweeting of a Pepe meme seemed like a nonevent to him. “Politics are for dorks,” he tells me in an email. He’s been drawing Pepe on and off as part of a surreal comic strip called Boy’s Club since 2005, and he doesn’t seem to care at all about the ways the character has been used to create havoc online. But Pepe predates their rise to national prominence, and his creator, cartoonist Matt Furie, could not be less connected to their movement. Indeed, Pepe has become something of a mascot for them. Neither the elder or the younger Trump actually crafted the Pepe images they posted - credit for that goes to the hateful meme factories of the so-called alt-right. He’s near-infinitely mutable, and versions of his visage have been posted online by untold numbers of people, among them Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, and - most important, at least for the Clinton campaign - Donald Trump and his son. Occasionally, he’s stroking his chin while contemplating mischief or he’s screaming at the top of his lungs. Other times, he looks existentially downtrodden. Sometimes, he looks blissed out and stoner-eyed while uttering the phrase “feels good man”. He’s that forest green, anthropomorphic frog with the maroon lips the one from all the memes. This morning, Hillary Clinton’s official campaign website published an explainer about a cartoon frog.
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