From Shit to Bit: How the President Stole My Joke and Made It VIRAL

This week, the President of the United States shared a joke that I wrote. Not a joke that I wrote for him, but a joke that I wrote about him, which feels like an important distinction to make right up front.

The joke was, “From now on, Canada geese will be called Donald’s Ducks.”

It’s a stupid joke. I’m very proud of it.

What makes this whole thing particularly weird is that I didn’t write it because of something that happened this week. I’ve actually been performing this joke onstage for more than a year. It started as one punchline in a much longer bit, lived a perfectly normal life as part of my stand-up material, and then somehow escaped onto the internet, became a meme, and eventually made its way to the President of the United States.

And now I have a problem I never expected to have: my joke may have become so popular that if I tell it onstage, people might think I stole it from the internet.

Welcome to comedy in 2026.

Welcome to “From Shit to Bit”

I’ve been wanting to do something a little different on Laugh or Death. Every once in a while, I want to take a joke I’ve written and show you where it actually came from, how I worked on it, what changed when I started performing it, and how a dumb idea eventually became something that made people laugh.

I’m calling these episodes From Shit to Bit, because that’s essentially what joke writing is. You start with some random observation or stupid idea and keep messing with it until, hopefully, there’s a bit on the other side.

For the first one, I don’t think I could have asked for a stranger case study than Donald’s Ducks.

Where Donald’s Ducks Came From

About a year and a half ago, President Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. There were obviously a lot of serious reactions to that, but my immediate response was basically,

“Donald, you’re being silly.”

Then my comedian brain started wondering what would happen if he just kept going.

If we were going to rename the Gulf of Mexico, what else with another country’s name in it needed a new American name?

That became the premise for the bit.

Chinese checkers became American Star Marbles. Polish sausage became MAGA Meat Sticks. The Italian greyhound became the Republican Rat Dog. Swedish meatballs became Trump Nuts. The White Russian became the Elon Island Iced Tea. And Canada geese became Donald’s Ducks.

Coming up with those names was actually a good example of what joke writing looks like behind the scenes, because most of them didn’t just pop into my head fully formed.

I knew simply replacing every country with “America” wouldn’t be funny. Chinese checkers becoming American checkers is exactly what you would expect, and comedy usually needs some kind of surprise. So I started looking for ways to make the names weirder while still having them make enough sense that the audience could follow the joke.

For some of them, alliteration helped. A Polish sausage is basically a stick of meat, so eventually that became MAGA Meat Sticks. With the Italian greyhound, I was looking at a picture of one and thinking that it basically looks like a rat dog, and Republican Rat Dog had the alliteration I wanted.

Other punchlines took more work. The White Russian was such an obvious drink to rename because of all the political associations with Russia, but I couldn't find the right joke. Eventually I started thinking about drink names that sounded like “Elon,” landed on Long Island Iced Tea, and got to Elon Island Iced Tea.

Donald’s Ducks came from the same kind of word association. I was making lists of things related to geese—hissing, honking, pooping, other birds—and eventually got from goose to duck, from duck to Donald, and there it was.

Donald’s Ducks.

The Audience Made the Joke Better

Once I started performing the bit live, I learned something else.

Donald’s Ducks consistently got the biggest laugh.

Originally, I had it much earlier in the bit. But if you have one joke that consistently gets the strongest response, you probably don’t want to follow it with three jokes that get smaller ones. You want to get the biggest laugh and get the hell out of there.

So I started moving Donald’s Ducks to the end.

That’s one of the things I love about performing comedy live. Writing the joke gets you part of the way there, but the audience tells you things you can't learn sitting alone in your office. They show you where the biggest laugh is, where something drags, and sometimes where something you thought was hilarious isn't nearly as funny as you hoped.

For about a year, that was basically the life of this joke. I performed it. It got laughs. I posted an early version online that did pretty well, but nothing crazy happened.

Then the news cycle brought the premise back from the dead.

And Then the Internet Got Involved

When Trump started talking about renaming Lake Ontario, I realized my old renaming bit was suddenly relevant again. I reposted a couple videos, and then I put the Donald’s Ducks joke in writing on Threads.

That post took off.

It got around 230,000 views, hundreds of reshares, and then people started making memes out of it. Some people were even commenting things like, “This is great. I’m stealing it.”

Which, honestly, I appreciate. At least there was transparency in the theft. 😂

Soon friends were texting me Donald’s Ducks memes they had found elsewhere online. My punchline was spreading beyond the original post, getting turned into AI images and videos, and becoming its own little internet thing.

Then I saw that President Trump had shared an AI video using it.

The caption was essentially: “Lake America — protected by Donald’s Ducks.”

My stupid little joke had officially escaped into the wild.

The Weirdest Part About Going Viral

To be clear, the President didn’t knowingly steal my joke. He shared something that someone else created using a punchline that had already been circulating around the internet.

But from my perspective as the comedian who wrote it, I suddenly had a very strange problem.

The joke didn't really feel like mine anymore.

If I go onstage tomorrow and do the original bit, there may be people in the audience who have already seen Donald’s Ducks in a meme. Instead of thinking I wrote the joke, they could think,

“Oh, this guy just took that joke from the internet.”

I could look like I stole my own joke.

There was also a weird emotional part of this that I wasn't expecting. On one hand, it was incredibly cool to see something I created travel that far. On the other hand, there was a part of me yelling,

“BUT NOBODY KNOWS I WROTE IT.”

No followers. No tag. No giant flashing sign saying, “Original joke by Paul Osincup.”

Apparently I have not transcended my need for attention just yet.

When Something You Create Stops Belonging to You

After sitting with it for a while—and having my wife and a few other people essentially tell me to get over myself—I started thinking differently about what happened.

As a comedian, you dream about writing something that people remember. You want people repeating your jokes. You want something you created to make its way into the culture.

You just imagine that your name will remain attached to it when it happens.

In this case, it didn't.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe that's okay.

There’s an interesting tension for comedians right now when it comes to sharing material online.

If you put your jokes online, people can copy them, turn them into memes, recreate them, or make them so ubiquitous that you can’t use them anymore. But if you never share your best material, how does someone discover you and decide they want to come see you perform?

I don't know that there's a perfect answer.

What I do know is that my goal since I was a kid has been to make people laugh. If something I wrote is making people I will never meet laugh, that’s pretty awesome—even if I don't get all the credit I would prefer.

And believe me, I would still prefer some credit. I’m a comedian. I also love attention. We don't need to turn this into a story about me achieving enlightenment.

Maybe the bigger lesson is simply to make things and put them into the world.

You can control the idea. You can control the work you put into it. You can decide whether you're willing to share it.

But once it's out there, you don't get to control everything that happens next.

So I think I’m going to keep making stuff, keep sharing it, and keep trying to make people laugh.

And President Trump, if you're listening, I've got plenty more where that came from.

Maybe just tag me next time. 😂

Links:

FREE GIFT! Download the Fun Over Funny Guide For Leaders! https://www.paulosincup.com/freegift 

If you enjoyed this episode and want to build your own humor habit, make sure to follow the podcast and share it with someone who could use a little more levity in their life.

To learn more about Paul’s work, book him for speaking engagements, or explore the science behind humor and resilience, visit: 👉 https://www.paulosincup.com You can also dive deeper into the tools discussed in this episode in Paul’s book: 👉 The Humor Habit

All Links For Paul: https://stan.store/PaulOsincup 

Episode Minute-By-Minute:

• 00:00 – The President Shared My Joke

• 01:00 – Introducing “From Shit to Bit”

• 02:00 – Where the Joke Started

• 03:00 – The Original Trump Renaming Bit

• 05:00 – How I Actually Wrote the Jokes

• 07:00 – How “Donald's Ducks” Happened

• 08:00 – Testing the Joke on Stage

• 09:00 – Why I Moved the Biggest Laugh to the End

• 10:00 – The Joke Comes Back From the Dead

• 11:00 – Donald's Ducks Goes Viral

• 12:00 – The Internet Steals My Punchline

• 13:00 – The President Shares My Joke

• 14:00 – Can I Even Tell This Joke Anymore?

• 16:00 – Do I Want Credit or Do I Let It Go?

• 17:00 – The Problem With Posting Comedy Online

• 19:00 – When Your Art Escapes You

• 20:00 – Mr. President, I've Got More Jokes