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US House of Representatives member Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican and member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, has become the new star of congressional TikTok – albeit unofficially. According to The New Yorker, Ogles has recently been regularly posting videos filmed in his Capitol Hill office against the backdrop of a reproduction of the patriotic masterpiece Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Loitze.
In the video, titled “The Trump Case 2028”, the congressman dramatically declares that the United States is experiencing the “moment of the century” and openly calls on Donald Trump to run for a third presidential term – despite constitutional restrictions. Other videos are made in the style of political TikTok with elements of provocative editing: in one of them, Ogles walks around the office dressed as an “impersonator judge” and at the end, without further explanation, feeds a paper shredder a court order that blocked Trump’s executive order.
“Political hackers and their solutions should be in my shredder,” Ogles wrote in a post under the video, which features Travis Scott’s Sicko Mode hit in the background.
Recently, the congressman also filed several articles of impeachment against federal judges who, in his opinion, “obstruct the will of the people” – that is, block the initiatives of the 45th president. The very style of his speeches – half music video, half manifesto – reflects the new aesthetics of radical populism: TikTok impeachment, meme patriotism, and a protest tracklist.
The New Yorker notes that although the real prospects of a third Trump term remain legally nil, videos like Ogles’ are a symptom of the radicalisation of a part of the Republican Party, where showmanship, hype and demonstrative resistance are part of the political strategy.
