An update from Catherine Rampell on the JD Vance meme saga. The CPB (Customs and Border Protection) was forced to put out their silly tweet on Twitter this week. They claimed the Norwegian tourist was denied entry because of admitted drug use. Mikkelsen told them he had smoked marijuana a couple of times in his life, and that, seemingly, was enough for them to take him into custody, begin the ordeal of strip-searches, luggage ransacking, fingerprinting, blood sampling, and threatening him with a $5000 fine if he didn’t unlock his phone. Generally behaving like assholes with orders to help destroy the U.S. tourism industry.
Source: The Independent
Customs and Border Protection has confirmed that, no, agents did not stop a Norwegian traveler who showed them a meme of a bald Vice President JD Vance.
“Fact Check: FALSE,” the CBP wrote on X. “Mads Mikkelsen was not denied entry for any memes or political reasons, it was for his admitted drug use.”
And no, the agency is not referring to Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, but rather the similarly named 21-year-old who was denied entry at Newark Liberty International Airport on June 11.
The story circulating online — first in Norwegian newspaper Nordlys and then picked up by British tabloids — claims that during Mikkelsen’s encounter with the Department of Homeland Security, agents took his phone and found a meme depicting Vance as a bloated, smooth, bald man staring off into the distance.
