For a supposed democracy that prides itself on the principle of free speech, the United States hasn’t done a great job of protecting that right in recent years. Speaking out on hot-button issues can cost you a job offer or a college diploma. Protesting government policies in the streets (or merely covering these demonstrations) means facing excessive force from police, or even the military.
So you could forgive people for believing reports that a man was barred from entering the country due to a J.D. Vance meme.
That’s the claim that Mads Mikkelsen, a 21-year-old Norwegian tourist (not to be confused with the Danish actor of the same name), made to his hometown newspaper Nordlys after a planned two-month vacation to the states was cut short before it even began. Mikkelsen said that he was detained by immigration authorities for hours at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey earlier this month, interrogated about terrorism and drug trafficking, and ultimately sent home to Norway because border agents discovered a Photoshopped picture of the vice president with a bald, egg-shaped head on his phone — having threatened him with a hefty fine or jail time if he didn’t give them access to the device.
Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment on the incident, but both CBP and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, have publicly denied that Mikkelsen’s trip was scuttled over the meme, insisting that he was rerouted back to Oslo because of his “admitted drug use.” Mikkelsen then confirmed to Nordlys that he had told agents about legally consuming cannabis in both Germany and New Mexico. As a pretext for keeping someone out of the U.S., that’s about as flimsy as an offending meme, and Mikkelsen further stated that the explanatory document he received from authorities after he was released is full of bizarre falsehoods, such as claims that he has a Spanish passport, had come to visit family in the U.S., and was traveling with a homemade wooden pipe (in fact, his interrogators had only seen a picture of this object on his phone, along with the outrageous Egghead Vance).
Even going by the agencies’ official story, this was a shocking, thuggish abuse of power. And for all we know, the Vance meme may have indeed been a compounding factor in the decision to refuse Mikkelsen entry, downplayed and dismissed after the fact out of embarrassment. The good news is, the image is once again viral thanks to media coverage, and has been shared by everyone from Democratic senators to politicians in Europe: Ivana Bacik, leader of Ireland’s Labour Party, showed a physical copy of the picture in the Dáil, or Irish parliament, arguing that the U.S. has made a “major incursion on freedom of expression.” Because Rolling Stone refuses to to be intimidated by any censorious regime, we are also publishing the meme here.
It may be worth asking: what is the here, exactly? That the vice president would be more amusing with less hair, a perfectly rounded face, and an uncanny, doll-like stare? Compared to most of the other “rare” Vance portrait edits that took over the internet in February and early March, many of which depicted him as a chubby child, it’s not particularly mean, let alone some kind of threat to national security. Perhaps the most galling thing about custom agents flagging such a picture — remember, they haven’t denied this part — is that when they were all the rage, Vance himself said he had seen them and thought they were funny. Why is he silent now that federal agents are vetting this sort of material in the customs process, violating the liberty and dignity of a man who also happens to enjoy it?
Mikkelsen is hardly alone as a foreigner subjected to more invasive scrutiny when traveling to the U.S. these days. The Department of State said last week that those applying for student visas would have to submit to a review of their social media accounts in order to confirm they are not criticizing their host country or its government. Immigrants in general stand to be denied benefit requests because of activity perceived as antisemitic, which can include any show of support for Palestinians amid the continued bombing of Gaza by Israel.
Hostile or disapproving questions about a silly meme, however, would raise the bar for paranoid border defense to an absurd new level.
We know from history that repression begets more of the same, that authoritarians become more fragile as they attempt to eliminate even the mildest critiques of their policies and personalities. The Chinese government, for example, has long blocked online references to and illustrations of the iconic children’s book character Winnie the Pooh, since bloggers kept drawing comparisons between the plump, slow-witted cartoon bear and leader Xi Jinping. This kind of oversensitivity becomes funny in its own right, and mostly just reinforces the premise of the gag.
Sure, China has the ability to control whether citizens can see Pooh on social media, and the U.S. border patrol has the latitude to turn away anyone who may have ridiculed our current executive branch at some point. But as flexes of the state’s strength, these actions betray institutional weaknesses. A vice president theoretically needing protection from the camera roll of a Scandinavian backpacker cannot actually claim the standing of his own office; it’s simply too pathetic. As for the security personnel who stand to make that decision on the ground — we absolutely should not put it past them. It’s clear from how they treat individuals like Mikkelsen that they are less interested in public safety than opportunities to harass and intimidate.
As with every other disgrace of the Trump era, rank hypocrisy would be a part of the package. Vance, the president, his cabinet of shitposters, and the Department of Homeland Security have been reveling in all kinds of grotesque memes and AI-generated fascist slop. Much of this content is specifically crafted to smear migrants arrested by masked ICE gangs or broadly propagandize about a fictional mass invasion by marauding people of color. These are attacks on the innocent and vulnerable, yet the White House can always hide behind the excuse of comedy. The far right keeps yukking it up about how easy it is to trigger their ideological opponents this way.
And yet, the second you ridicule them, you have crossed a red line. Don’t tell Trump that Wall Street traders have a market strategy based on the common wisdom that he always “chickens out” on tariffs, or he’ll call you “nasty” at a media briefing. Don’t take note of press secretary Karoline Leavitt‘s huge, garish cross necklace, or she’ll be embarrassed into no longer wearing it. Don’t take a shot at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for spending thousands of dollars to install a makeup studio at the Pentagon, or he’ll have to use his personal and departmental accounts to lash out over the “TRASH” story.
Above all, do not digitally alter the sacred visage of J.D. Vance. Making him look slightly wider, or redder, or like an emo mall goth is a grave insult to one of the great patriots of our time. More than that, it emboldens America’s enemies to see that our politicians can be brought low by cheap viral humor. Nowhere in the Constitution are you guaranteed the right to bear memes. You will have to suffer the corruption and stupidity and vindictive punishments of this administration without resorting to the comforts of laughter.
Or, because we seem to be hurtling toward the kind of dystopia in which possession of unflattering Vance edits is a legal liability, we ought to be churning them out in greater numbers than ever before. Perhaps the surprise return of Egghead Vance will turn it into symbol of resistance, seen at every demonstration against the cruelties and greed of the Trump machine. It could be a poster, a flag, a towering projection on a building at night, a beacon for all unwilling to surrender.
As for the unfortunate Mads Mikkelsen, it seems he learned an important lesson: If he wants to truly experience the land of the free, he should just stay home.