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Twitter users stick it to Trump over new campaign logo

Technically Incorrect: The graphic symbol for the Donald Trump-Mike Pence ticket is perhaps more graphic than the campaign intended, at least to some of the Twitterati.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.


Trump-Pence logo

What do you see here?

Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

When the rumor spread that Donald Trump would choose Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his presumptive veep, the wags came out on Twitter.

Perhaps the most elegantly literary remark came from legendary sci-fi writer William Gibson, who crafted a satirical take on the Bard in response: "Trump Pence. Trumppence? 'I'd not warrant you a harlot's trumppence, thou foul gobshite.' --Shakespeare."

On Friday after the official announcement, also on Twitter, the campaign logo made its debut in a fundraising email, according to The Wall Street Journal.

And what a logo it is.

To your average nun, this might seem no more than the "T" that fronts "Trump" entwining itself with the "P" of "Pence."

Most Twitterers aren't your average nun, however. Many saw something a little more erotic.

Bloomberg Politics contributor Matt Negrin mused, "the Trump-Pence logo looks like a forbidden sex act that Pence would definitely not be OK with."

Then there was comedian Samantha Bee, with one of the more glorious and moving interpretations:

NBC News political reporter Alex Seitz-Wald urged everyone to stay calm. "It's just two consenting adult letters being...intimate with each other," he wrote, "back off."

You might assume that it was just so-called liberal types who snorted. But conservative blog Red State was also driven demented by this creation, even alleging that the logo might have been designed by, no, not a hipster, but a Democrat.

Looking too closely at logos can have its amusements.

Who can forget Jeb Bush, whom Trump constantly described as being "low energy," enjoying a logo with a large exclamation point?

Of course, there were some who preferred to focus less on the design aesthetics of the Trump-Pence logo and more on the fact that "TP" is short for toilet paper.

As the campaign begins to roll into a mind-numbing overdrive, humor and invective will only increase on Twitter and other social media.

I wonder, though, how much difference the mockery will make and how much old-fashioned elements such as world events, party organization and monstrous public gaffes will ultimately be the things that will elect a president.