Riggers (Slang)

About

Riggers is a slang term spoken by Donald Trump as a term for those he sees as his adversaries at the January 6th Committee over the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021, as well as the supposed "deep state" his campaign is built against fighting. Since his nomination in the 2016 Presidential Election, his accusations against alleged rigging of the election process have been stated publicly. The term gained traction online in the late 2010s and early 2020s, mainly due to its closeness to the N-word.

Origin

On July 21st, 2016, then President-Elect Donald Trump was speaking at the Republican National Convention when he started to talk about the electoral system supposedly being rigged against him, as it was for Bernie Sanders, and talking a lot about his perceived enemies who rig things, without directly using the word "riggers."

This speech was the first of many he would give talking about his continued point of election fraud and supposed "rigged" things, with it being uploaded by the PBS Newshour YouTube channel^[1] on July 21st, 2016 (shown below).

Two weeks before the 2016 election, on October 26th, the Epic Rap Battles YouTube channel^[2] uploaded a video of Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton. Near the end of the rap battle, Trump's rap verse had him say the rhyme "this whole system's rigged, and we all know the riggers, for the last eight years this country's been run by," which was a reference to Barack Obama, the first Black President of America for the eight years prior, insinuating that Trump's repeated usage of "rigged" and "riggers" was a thinly veiled attempt at using the N-word (shown below).

Spread

Since Trump's election and the growth of the alt-right movement within memes, a dogwhistle was made using the term "riggers" and Scooby-Doo by way of his uniquely identified stutter.

Online, comics, voice renditions and memes about Scooby-Doo saying "riggers" became prominent, with the first one being a MAGA Scooby-Doo telling "Raggy" that he "rates riggers," which was posted to the subreddit /r/dankmemes on July 19th, 2019, by Redditor u/kekyoin12^[3] (shown below).

2023 Resurgence

On August 15th, 2023, Donald Trump used "riggers" to finish off a Truth Social post^[4] in which he ranted about the 2016 election and the fraud that supposedly occurred, stating that there is proof coming out soon that will completely exonerate him from all charges and those who followed his lead.

His use of riggers to finalize the post targeting his enemies was quickly picked up on by others online, with many X users creating their own memes and making their own hot takes about the word and it being used as a slur for liberals and Trump adversaries (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References