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Moo Deng has potentially won over a swathe of MAGA supporters, courtesy of a food-driven prediction as to who will win the upcoming presidential election.
In case you’ve been living under a rock (if so, hey down there!), Moo Deng is the utterly adorable female pygmy hippopotamus who, earlier this year, transcended her Thailand enclosure to become a bonafide internet celebrity. She enjoyed a level of virality that Grumpy Cat could only dream of, to the point where she’s now being asked to weigh in on international affairs like the U.S. election.
At the risk of incurring the wrath of Kamala Harris supporters, I regret to inform you that — despite her cuteness — Moo Deng predicted that Republican nominee Donald Trump will win the race to the White House, promptly shattering the dreams of millions of netizens. The prediction was made when the lil’ hippo was presented with two watermelon cakes; one emblazoned with Trump’s name and the other with his opponent’s, both written in local spelling.
Footage of the prediction — made in the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi, Thailand — shows Moo Deng casually approaching the former president’s watermelon without even glancing at its alternative, after which she promptly feasts on a smorgasbord of MAGA-imprinted fruits. It’s the same reaction I imagine Trump has when sighting a McDonald’s Happy Meal. Before Harris supporters begin some sort of boycott campaign, it’s useful to remember a few things.
For starters, the larger hippo in Moo Deng’s pen darted straight for the Harris fruit cake, and while that hippo is nowhere near as famous as its housemate, that vote must count for something. It’s also worth remembering that Moo Deng is not an American citizen, and therefore cannot vote — so her cake-eating prediction won’t have any sway on those puzzlingly close polls.
Oh, and perhaps most importantly, Moo Deng is a hippo — whose name translates to “bouncy pork” — so she’s undoubtedly driven more by whatever food is closest to her than she is by Trump’s stance on immigration, tariffs, or… does he have any other policies? In any case, Moo Deng stans seem to have forgiven her for the prediction, with some suggesting that her eating the Trump cake was actually a vote in Harris’ favor.
“She obviously thought she was attacking him and eating him alive,” one X user wrote in response to the news, “don’t do her like this.” Others said Moo Deng was offering a metaphorical prediction by “express[ing] the saying of ‘eating the rich’,” therefore “signifying she wants him out of the presidential race and in turn endorsing Kamala Harris.” In another example of playing semantics, one user said that by eating the Trump cake, Moo Deng was simply allowing “Kamala’s cake [to] shine now and get all the attention.”
It marks the most recent example of animals somehow finding their way into the political discourse during the presidential race. In September, Trump invoked neighborhood cats and dogs with that now-infamous pet-eating soundbite during the debate, while RFK Jr. dodged allegations of actually eating a dog, then admitted to burying a bear cub in Central Park, and was accused of decapitating a beached whale. Please lord, keep RFK Jr. away from Moo Deng. Regardless of her political affiliations, she’s all we have left.