Trump’s garbage truck stunt gets Michael Dukakis’s tank moment trending

It’s been an interesting week for garbage, politics-wise. 

First, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe set off a firestorm when, at former President Donald Trump’s New York City rally, he jokingly compared Puerto Rico to a “floating pile of garbage.” Then President Joe Biden got into some trouble of his own when he seemingly compared Trump’s supporters to garbage in response.

Never one to be outdone, the Republican presidential nominee attempted to capitalize on Biden’s gaffe by wearing an orange vest and getting behind the wheel of a Trump-branded garbage truck. But what the photo op brought to mind may not have been what Trump intended.

On Thursday morning, Michael Dukakis was trending on X (formerly Twitter), not a common occurrence these days for the 90-year-old former governor of Massachusetts who ran for president in 1988. Citing Trump’s general appearance behind the wheel of the truck, and his seeming inability to open the truck’s door, many were comparing Trump’s stunt to Dukakis’s infamous “tank moment,” which some say killed his campaign.

Dukakis was ridiculed during his 1988 campaign after he was photographed in a military helmet while riding in a tank, an incident Trump himself brought up while touring an Ohio Army tank plant in 2019. Concerns over seeming too Dukakis-like kept him out of a tank that day, but apparently similar considerations didn’t come into play with the garbage truck event this week. (Trump even kept his orange vest on for his rally afterwards.)

As for Dukakis, he told U.S. News and World Report in 2008 that it was a poorly run campaign, not his “tank moment,” that sunk his presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush. “That didn’t beat me. If we had run a decent national campaign, that wouldn’t have had any effect,” Dukakis told the magazine. “Now, should I have been in the tank? Probably not, in retrospect.” He also noted that to that day, people were still asking him at events, “Did you get here in a tank?”

Here are some of the Dukakis comparisons from X users inspired by Donald Trump’s garbage truck moment:

In fairness, not everybody found the moment Dukakis-y:

Peter Chianca

General Assignment Editor

Peter Chianca, Boston.com’s general assignment editor since 2019, is a longtime news editor, columnist, and music writer in the Greater Boston area.

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