After an over-the-top doctored movie clip showing the likeness of President Trump massacring his political and media opponents triggered fits of fury, its creators have responded – with an even more ridiculously edited meme.
The outrage from mainstream media pundits and political commentators was palpable when a meme video went viral last week. It featured US President Donald Trump’s face cartoonishly copy-pasted into a mass fight scene from the film ‘Kingsman’ with everyone else’s faces replaced with those of his political opponents and the logos of anti-Trump media.
The scene where the obviously fake ‘Trump’ murders everyone else using every means at his disposal takes place inside the ‘Church of Fake News’. The clip was made back in 2018, but caught the world’s eye after it was shown as part of a “meme exhibit” at a conference of Trump supporters in Florida.
Commentators on cable television declared the video “disturbing,” and an “incitement to violence,” saying it was “so violent we can only show a few seconds of it.” NBC showed Trump’s somber face next to a description of the violence portrayed, as if the president was somehow responsible, and as if the violence was real.
The makers of the video, posting on YouTube as ‘TheGeekzTeam,’ issued their response on Saturday, pointing out that garish violence is not just the calling card of pro-Trump internet memesmiths.
The video features a clip of rapper Snoop Dogg mock-assassinating Trump; 2020 candidate Joe Biden waxing lyrical about “beating the hell out of” the president; #resistance singer Madonna telling a crowd she had “thought…of blowing up the White House;” and comedian Kathy Griffin (who complained about being featured the last video) holding up a model of Trump’s severed, bloody head.
The response isn’t all a callout of liberal hypocrisy though, and finishes with a montage of Trump as a wrestler, body-slamming, punching, exploding and burying CNN, in a suitably over-doctored style.
Curiously, the first video was made in mid-2018, and was only seen by a handful of people at a pro-Trump conference last weekend. Only the media outcry brought it to a mainstream audience. Whether America’s cable news moralists will once again clutch their pearls in outrage remains to be seen.
