Donald Trump‘s re-election campaign may have learned the wrong lessons fromAvengers: Endgame.
On Tuesday, a Trump 2020 Twitter accountposted a clip fromEndgamethat turned the president, 73, into the purple-skinned genocidal maniac Thanos — aka the supervillain, who is defeated.
Not so in the Twitter clip, which had Trump-as-Thanos use his reality-warping powers to turn leading Democratic lawmakers into dust.
“House Democrats can push their sham impeachment all they want,” the campaign wrote.
Playing off of one of Thanos’ favorite boasts, the campaign added, “President Trump’s re-election is ??????????.”
While the tweet was in keeping with Trump’slove of trolling memes, it quickly boomeranged once other users began pointing out Thanos is the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s mass murdering antagonist … who ultimately fails, despite his claims of “inevitability.”
“Y’all realize that Thanos loses? He wipes out half the universe’s population before the Avengers can defeat him and reverse the snap, and you think that he’s the good guy? Good grief,” one userwrote.
“Did you, uh…. did you happen to watch the rest of that movie?” anotherasked.
Thanos’ co-creator Jim Starlin wasn’t laughing either.
On Tuesday,he posted a critical responseto the Trump campaign on Instagram for using the clip, saying he felt “violated” that they edited his work for their own purposes.
“After my initial feeling of being violated, seeing that pompous dang fool using my creation to stroke his infantile ego, it finally struck me that the leader of my country and the free world actually enjoys comparing himself to a mass murderer. How sick is that?” Starlinwrote. “These are sad and strange times we are going through. Fortunately all things, even national nightmares, eventually come to an end.”
“Thank you for making it clear that Donald Trump is a murderous villain who must be defeated to save humanity,” television writer David Slackresponded. “Very inspiring.”
The campaign’s Twitter video includes a clip of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi from Tuesday, when she and a group of Democratic House leaders announcedtwo articles of impeachment against Trumpin connection withthe Ukraine scandal.
The president steadfastly maintains he did nothing wrong. On Tuesday, following the Democrats’ announcement,he tweeted, “WITCH HUNT!”
Donald Trump.Noam Galai/WireImage
The 21-second clip has been viewed more than 3.5 million times since it was posted Tuesday, with more about 10 thousand retweets and a well of joking responses.
“So Trump is Thanos and the Democrats are the Avengers trying to restore democracy that evil Republicans have nearly destroyed,” a usertweeted back. “Glad we’re on the same page.”
Garbled pop culture references aren’t new for Trump. Earlier this year, the presidentposted a memereferencingGame of Thrones, which showed his face looming over a picture of his proposed border wall with text that read, “The Wall is Coming” — a play off the show’s tagline, “Winter is Coming.”
Users quickly pointed out that The Wall inGame of Throneswas dramatically destroyed in the Season 7 finale.
The president also had a campaign videoremoved from Twitterfor copyright issues after he posted a re-election clip using music fromThe Dark Knight Rises.
source: people.com
