Photo of George W. Bush with Harambe's mom gives life to a bizarre conspiracy theory
Internet sleuths and meme-lovers have discovered a shocking new clue that could reveal the truth behind the ape Harambe's murder, and this wild conspiracy goes all the way to the top.
A photograph from 1998 shows that former President George W. Bush met Kayla, Harambe's mother. Kayla lived at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, back when Bush was still the state's governor.
Esquire, through a Twitter user who goes by the name Lib Crusher, found a defunct website called riosmith.net that collected photographs of gorillas from the Gladys Porter Zoo. Three of the pictures from July of '98 show the future president of the United States interacting with the gorilla who would one day give birth to Harambe, the ape who was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo when a child fell into his enclosure earlier this year.
In the wake of his killing, Harambe has become something of a meme, riffing on the widespread trend of performative grief on social media. The meme has spawned sub-memes, including a crossover with a popular 9/11 meme: Bush did Harambe.
Conspiracy theorists have long believed that the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history was an inside job. Could the worst gorilla murder in our nation's history have been one too?
Was George W. Bush planning the murder of the unborn Harambe when he met with Kayla the gorilla in 1998? Was Kayla in on it too? Did the Bush administration orchestrate the death of Harambe as some sort of "false flag" operation meant to distract from the death of Cecil the Lion?
Considering all this, the picture of Bush with Harmabe's mom has huge implications if this meme-conspiracy is true (it isn't).