The Onion doesn’t endorse candidates, and the site’s editor-in-chief, Chad Nackers, says it hasn’t endorsed Sanders. Just before the Iowa caucuses, it popped the barely satirical news brief: “DNC Mulls Asking Donald Trump To Run As Democrat In Effort To Stop Sanders.” Another read “Bernie Sanders Holds Secret Campaign Meeting With 15,000 Working-Class Democratic Donors,” seemingly boasting on the candidate’s behalf of his immense grassroots support. “MSNBC Poll Finds Support For Bernie Sanders Has Plummeted 2 Points Up,” the Onion proclaimed in November, not so much poking the Sanders camp as echoing its complaints about the media. The Onion loves going after Donald Trump and his followers, to great effect 2020 contenders like Mike Bloomberg and Amy Klobuchar are tweaked for their off-putting personality quirks, both seriously problematic and less so, and the Democratic Party’s general fecklessness is fodder for a cyberpunk dystopia. Hillary Clinton urged voters to “ not fuck this up for me.” Barack Obama, whose liberal politics often presumably lined up with those of the site’s urbane (and Chicago-based) editorial staff, wasn’t let off the hook either the Onion skewered his meticulously managed image, his support from the culturally liberal elite, his lack of experience and his use of drones as president. Bush complained about Iraq War activist Cindy Sheehan ruining his vacation.

Since it first went online in 1996, the Onion has served up equal-opportunity political satire-hammering Republican and Democratic absurdities, finding public figures’ most sensitive pain points and lancing them relentlessly.

Onion headline meme