Peanut the Squirrel Becomes Right-Wing Martyr in Final Election Push From the Extremely Online

Last week a squirrel died in New York. Over the weekend, the squirrel became a symbol and martyr on the right. As people line up to vote, ballots are cast, and undecided voters make their final decisions on who to vote for, Donald Trump’s surrogates like Elon Musk are tweeting about a squirrel.

Vote
For PNut!
For Liberty!
For Freedom!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2024

P’Nut the squirrel was internet famous. Mark Longo rescued it seven years ago and raised it after its mother died. P’Nut had an Instagram account and Longo had an OnlyFans account named for the squirrel, though P’Nut was not involved in the sultry shoots. On October 30, the Department of Environmental Conservation in New York raided Longo’s home and seized P’Nut and a raccoon. P’Nut allegedly bit one of the officers during the raid. DEC then euthanized the squirrel to test for rabies.

P’Nut captured the imagination of the right, especially the extremely online right, in the waning days of the election. Here, they said, was an example of Democratic government overreach. Longo, upset about the death of his beloved P’Nut, fueled the fire. “They treated me like I was a terrorist. They treated this raid as if I was a drug dealer. They ransacked my house for five hours. They asked my wife, who is of German descent, what her immigration status was. They asked if I had cameras in my house. They wouldn’t allow me to go to the bathroom without a police escort, who then checked the back of the toilet to see if I was hiding anything there,” Longo told the New York Post.

©Image via X.

The Post has published multiple stories about the squirrel since the raid. The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal penned an op-ed about state power and P’Nut. The House Judiciary GOP posted “Justice for Peanut” on its X account. Elon Musk posted about the squirrel an absurd number of times over the weekend and, as of this writing, his pinned tweet is a call to vote for P’Nut. A fake statement from the Trump campaign about the dead squirrel went viral but was quickly debunked by the campaign itself.

Justice for Peanut.

— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) November 2, 2024

The memes flowed. Right-wing stalwart cartoonist Ben Garrison immortalized P’Nut in a post on X. In the cartoon, the squirrel is wearing a cowboy hat, one of his trademarks, and sporting a sign that reads “Vote Trump!” P’Nut looks at the viewer, his large cartoon eyes welling with tears, shouting “Avenge me!” Another meme depicted a ghostly squirrel with its arms on Trump’s shoulders as he sits in the Oval Office. Others show P’Nut in heaven with Harambe, a beloved gorilla who died in 2016 and became a meme superstar.

"Peanut the Squirrel…You shall be avenged!"
On Nov 5th!
Vote Trump don't let Peanut die in vain!
Ben Garrison Cartoon
Feel free to share this image far and wide!!
RIP Peanut! pic.twitter.com/8hsgiKSkNx

— Real Ben Garrison Cartoons (@GrrrGraphics) November 2, 2024

There was a sense from the right online that the squirrel signaled the end of Kamala Harris and the Democrats. Here was a clear violation of a person’s rights and the perfect martyr for their cause. “Are we going to win this election because of this f’ing squirrel?” Mike Benze, Executive Director of Foundation For Freedom Online said in a post on X.

Well, no. Should Trump win it won’t be because of a last-minute bump from people upset that the state of New York killed an internet-famous squirrel. P’Nut is yet another symptom of the terminally online insanity that has plagued the GOP in recent years. Part of what ended Ron DeSantis’s bid for the Presidential nomination in January was his staff’s infatuation with weird online culture war bullshit. He obsessed over Disney which read as weak and weird to normal voters. The final nail in the coffin occurred when one of his too-online staffers published a fascist fancam.

And Trump is even losing the extremely online fascist vote. On November 2, white nationalist groyper Nick Fuentes said he’d realized Trumpism is a cult. Fuentes finally lost faith in Trump after seeing his supporters dress up like garbage.

The garbage thing isn’t playing well with Puerto Ricans either. After a comedian opened Trump’s recent Madison Square Garden rally with a racist joke that called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage” and Biden gaffed and called Trump supporters “garbage” (a comment he claims was misheard), the GOP attempted to reclaim the label. Trump supporters dressed up like garbage and Trump himself did a photo-op in a garbage truck. Trump distanced himself from the comedian while attempting to embrace the image of his followers as garbage.

It hasn’t landed. The Huffington Post sent a journalist to the swing state of Pennsylvania to talk to Puerto Rican voters. One man told HuffPo that he’d never voted before but decided to do so after hearing the comedian’s joke. He saw the garbage truck photo-op as an insult. “If he didn’t have nothing to do with it, what’s he doing in the garbage truck?” He told HuffPo.

If Trump loses this election it will be, in part, because his campaign lost itself in the sauce of the online world. As the election entered the final stretch, Trump and his team spent their days tweeting about squirrels and garbage. It’s not a compelling pitch.