Clinton Camp Isn't Behind MakeAmericaNastyAgain.com—But It Should Be

During every one of the debates in the political thunder dome that is the 2016 presidential election, some meme or talking point has emerged to grab the Internet’s attention: Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s shimmy, Republican nominee Donald Trump's sniffling, and—last night—his "bad hombres" comment. For a while, those things just became trending topics before swiftly fading away. Last night, though, those memes became websites—and those websites redirected to HillaryClinton.com.

At least three new web sites (at the time of writing) popped up and immediately started directing people to Clinton’s homepage. There was NastyWomenGetShitDone.com, the brainchild of Jeff Meltz, who works in social media in New York. His site was accompanied by MakeAmericaNastyAgain.com, the handiwork of a writer and editor in San Francisco named Michelle Weber. Those two were both in response to Trump’s claim last night that Clinton was a “nasty woman.” And then there was BadHombres.org, a reference to Trump’s aforementioned comment, created by Austin Valeske, a software developer in Seattle. They were all up within hours of the end of the final presidential debate, and they were all redirecting to HillaryClinton.com—without Clinton’s team having to do anything.

Valeske says he registered the site just after hearing Trump's comment during the debate. "I'm not associated with the Hillary campaign. I'm just very excited to vote for her," he says.

As for MakeAmericaNastyAgain.com: “I purchased and configured the domain right after watching the debate,” says Weber, “chief semicolon advocate” at Automattic. “Apparently, my way of calming down and feeling like a productive citizen after watching these incredibly troubling, offensive Trump performances is to purchase domains and redirect them to Secretary Clinton's site.”

Weber isn’t the only one. In fact, this isn’t even her first time redirecting a site to the Clinton campaign homepage—she did the same thing with 400PoundHackersForHillary.com following Trump's “fat-shaming” about who was responsible for the hack on the DNC during the first Trump/Clinton face-off. That was followed by Danilo Alfaro’s claiming of ThatMexicanThing.com for Clinton after Mike Pence’s comments during the vice presidential debate. And now we have NastyWomenGetShitDone.com and BadHombres.org, the former of which is inspired by the “bitches get stuff done” segment of “Weekend Update” Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did in 2008. "I tweeted [that] GIF from SNL earlier in the night, so when the "nasty woman" comment happened I immediately tweeted that and then went and registered the domain,” Meltz says.

What’s amazing is that all of this is happening without any direction from the Clinton camp, according to campaign spokesman Tyrone Gayle. They just had to wait for something viral to happen and then hope someone runs with it, which—increasingly—people do. It’s digital democracy at its finest. “I don't think a novelty domain is going to change hearts and minds, but if a laugh and a nudge helps keep people fired up to vote and/or to engage in get-out-the-vote or election day support efforts,” Weber says, “I think that's $15 well-spent.”

This story was updated on October 21 to include the name of the creator of BadHombres.org.
Additional reporting by Joanna Pearlstein