Corey Lewandowski offered a dismissive “womp womp” reaction on Fox News on Tuesday to a story about immigrant girl with Downs syndrome being separated from her mother.
Lewandowski’s remark came after liberal Fox News guest Zac Petkanas recounted the story of the girl, separated from her mother under the Trump administration’s family separation rules.
“Womp womp,” Lewandowski said.
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“Did you just say womp to a 10-year-old with Downs syndrome being taken from her mother?” Petkanas said. “How absolutely dare you, sir?”
CNN reported that the remark cost Trump’s former campaign his deal with a speaker’s bureau.
But his atrocious remark has fared much better on the right-wing internet, where “womp womp” has been embraced both as fodder for countless racist memes and as an increasingly popular response to liberals on a variety of issues.
On right-wing sites like 4Chan’s /pol/ forum, Lewandowski’s two-word rebuttal has been turned into countless memes. Several play off “Straight Outta Compton,” rephrased as “Straight Outta Wompton,” sometimes with Lewandowski photoshopped into smoking a blunt.
Reddit’s top forum for Trump supporters, The_Donald, launched a contest for “Womp Womp” memes, and has started tagging news items they think will be particularly devastating to liberals with “womp womp.”
Like “cuck” before it, “womp womp” is effective for the internet right both because its meaningless makes it difficult to rebut and because it is guaranteed to “trigger” liberals.
“We all owe Corey Lewandowski a big thank you for creating the ‘Womp, Womp’ meme,” a user on Gab, a Twitter rival popular with white supremacists, wrote. “From now on, whenever you spot emotional manipulation, just respond: ‘Womp, womp.’”
Neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer called it “the womp heard round the world,” enthusing that Lewandowski, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, had ushered in “THE AGE OF THE WOMP!”
“We have been empowered by it,” the site continued.
On 4Chan, “womp womp” has become so popular that one user asked Thursday for posters to stop flooding the board with it.
“Please…stop womping before it's too late,” the user wrote.
The first response to the plea: “womp womp.”
