Did journalist Taylor Lorenz, who was at the White House Correspondents Dinner, say somebody should "do it" while referring to "killing Trump"? No, that's not true: Lorenz reported on people using that phrase with that meaning in May of 2025. But she was not herself calling for somebody to "do it", she was only reporting on the meme.
The claim was heavily implied in a viral X post (archived here) published on April 26, 2026 that said:
This "journalist" was at WHCD tonight
"Do it" refers to kiIIing Trump
It was accompanied by this image:
(Image source: post by @EndWokeness on X.com)
According to a USA Today picture gallery (archived here) Lorenz was indeed present during the 2026 edition of the dinner when Trump and his cabinet had to be evacuated after a gunman tried to storm the room.
The image in the post was the thumbnail from a YouTube video Lorenz published on May 19, 2025 (archived here) under the title 'Somebody needs to do it'. The description of the video read:
Thousands of posts on TikTok, X, and Instagram pleading "someone needs to do it" are racking up millions of likes. The subject is never named and the action is never spelled out, but it's a loaded call to action that somehow everyone understands.
The phrase has become online shorthand for a society that has lost all faith in the system. In this video, I unpack how and why this meme became so pervasive, the political and cultural moments that led us here, and dissect what the "someone's got to do it" meme reveals about the cultural and political moment that we're living in. I talk about collective trauma, political cynicism, our decaying faith in democratic institutions, and so much more.
The video is a report about people online using the phrase "do it" to refer to killing President Trump. However, Lorenz does not endorse or condone this, explicitly saying at 2:20 in the video:
In this video, I'm going to attempt to dissect this belief and unpack exactly what led us here. I'm not going to get into whether these memes and posts are moral, legal, or even advisable. But what I want you to understand is where these memes are coming from and what they say about the cultural and political moment that we're currently living in. Because these memes are not just about unaliving Trump. They are about collective trauma, political cynicism, our decaying faith in democratic institutions, and so much more.
