(Kevin Kan | Contributing Illustrator)

In our increasingly online world, viral sound bites and video clips hold more weight in electoral politics than ever. Today, more than half of Americans get their news from social media sources. Arguably, the 2024 is fought as much on TikTok and X as it is on the ground in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

With each campaign spending millions of dollars on its social media presence, viral moments, both organically and inorganically developed, are a hot commodity. With that in mind, here are five of the most viral moments of the 2024 election that you may have missed.

RFK Jr.’s Animal Escapades

Perhaps the most entertaining saga of the cycle has been Democrat-turned-Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “encounters” with various animals. The environmental attorney and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy is a self-proclaimed animal lover, a falconer, and an outdoorsman. But RFK Jr.’s campaign became engulfed in several animal-related controversies before his faltering poll numbers caused him to drop out in late August.

The first animal bombshell broke on May 8, when The New York Times published a report that was succinctly summarized in its title; “R.F.K. Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain.” As the story goes, Kennedy complained of brain fog and memory loss back in 2010, and upon consultation with a doctor, learned that he likely had a dead parasite in his brain. However, he did not shy away from the worm, tweeting  on May 8: “I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate.”

However, the worm was just a drop in the bucket. In July, a Vanity Fair article included a resurfaced picture from 2010 of Kenedy eating what appeared to be a dog, which he vehemently denied. 

In August, perhaps the biggest story broke when Kennedy admitted to disposing of a dead bear in Central Park that he had picked up off of the side of the road in New York’s Hudson Valley, staging an incident to make it appear as if the Bear was struck by a bicycle. RFK Jr. had apparently initially planned to skin and eat the cub. The story was so bizarre that Kennedy released a video explaining his side of the story before the media could “spin” it against him.

Finally, later that month, another story broke about RFK Jr. and a dead critter, where he had chainsawed the head off of a washed-up whale back in 1994. According to an interview with his daughter, Kennedy bungee-corded the whale to the family minivan and drove it from Massachusetts back to the family home in New York, where Kennedy may have done God-knows-what with it.

Handicap Wars

In what would end up being President Biden’s first and final debate, Trump and Biden spent significant airtime on the issue at the forefront of the minds of all Americans: who has a better golf game. The following is a direct transcript of the argument that 51 million Americans were unfortunate enough to witness live (for context, Trump was asked about his ability to serve as president at age 82).

TRUMP:  I just won two club championships. Not even senior — two regular club championships. To do that, you have to be quite smart and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way. And I do it. He doesn’t do it. He can’t hit a ball 50 yards. He challenged me to a golf match. He can’t hit a ball 50 yards …

BIDEN:  Look, I’d be happy to have a driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which, when I was Vice President, down to a six. And by the way, I told you before, I’m happy to play golf if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it?

TRUMP:  That’s the biggest lie that he’s a six handicap, of all.

BIDEN:  I was eight handicap.

TRUMP:  Yeah.

BIDEN:  Eight, but I have — you know how many …

TRUMP:  I’ve seen your swing, I know your swing.

But the golf debacle did not end there. While Trump continued to hit the course (as he did nearly 300 times during his presidency), Biden criticized the former President for “riding on his golf cart, filling out his scorecard before he hits the ball,” in a speech two weeks later.

So… yeah. With our nation engulfed in foreign conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, a border crisis, and a warming climate, arguably the two most important men in the world spent their precious airtime fighting about who could hit a ball further. No wonder both were unsuccessful in their (initial) quests for reelection.

Kamala IS Brat

In one of the more surprising collabs of the year, Charli XCX, a British pop star known for her recent “Brat” album, endorsed Kamala Harris on July 21, tweeting simply “kamala IS brat.” The Harris campaign team began to play into the Brat trend, changing their X background to the lime-green hue of the album’s cover and posting several Brat-themed remixes. 

Hand-in-hand with Brat summer came the coconut-tree phenomenon. Throughout the summer, Harris’s fans on TikTok had edited a quote from one of her speeches where she said “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” into countless TikToks, tweets, and reels. As Harris replaced Biden at the top of the ticket, the party became “coconut-pilled,” and the endorsement from Charli XCX, one of the iconic figures in the pop culture of summer 2024, put liberal Gen Zers and Millennials into a frenzy. 

Eating the Dogs and Cats 

By the time the second presidential debate rolled around, President Biden had been replaced by Vice President Harris. Trump’s debate performance lent itself to several viral moments. When asked about a potential replacement for the Affordable Care Act, Trump said that he had come up with “a concept of a plan,” and repeated his claims about “abortion in the ninth month” and “execution after birth.” 

And in the debate’s most-watched moment, Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating the cats and dogs of the city’s residents.

The claim had originated on Facebook, where a woman said that her cat had been slaughtered. After being spread amongst right-wing groups, the pet-consumption myths were exposed to a national audience by Trump’s running mate and Ohio Senator, JD Vance. After Trump mentioned the claims during the debate, they were given a life of their own on social media in the form of memes and lewd song remixes.

In the aftermath, the claims were promptly disproved. However, when asked about the statement, Vance declared: “If I have to create stories so that the American media pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Dueling Podcasts

In recent weeks, both campaigns have entered a new frontier to court younger voter demographics: podcasts. In October, Harris made headlines by appearing on Call Her Daddy, a relationships and sex-themed podcast that caters largely to a female audience. Hosted by Alex Cooper, Call Her Daddy is currently the second-most-listened-to podcast on Spotify, trailing only The Joe Rogan Experience. Harris spent the majority of the run time discussing women’s health and attempting to appeal to young voters. In response at a rally later that month, Trump criticized Cooper, calling her “one dumb woman.”Trump has also made his voice heard in podcasts, albeit in a different sphere of content creators.  He has sought to make his voice heard online in communities of young men by appearing on the podcasts of Andrew Schultz, Adin Ross, and Theo Von. With Ross, the former President revealed his love of Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys, and in the podcast with Von, Trump discussed his sobriety and questioned the host about his prior cocaine use in a series of touching moments.