A recent pro-Trump conference at the President’s Doral, Florida resort included a grim parody video showing the President “killing” political opponents and media outlets.
On Friday, the same day that pro-Trump heavy hitters including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Donald Trump Jr. were scheduled to appear at the Trump National Doral Miami resort for a conference, a video of Trump massacring political figures and media outlets went unreported. The New York Times flagged the clip on Sunday.
In the video, a character with Trump’s face digitally superimposed over the original actor’s head is seen shooting, stabbing and impaling politicians including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), and news outlets including BBC, The Hill and Talking Points Memo.
The original footage came from the film “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” In the altered version played at Trump’s resort, various media logos and politicians’ faces hover over the original characters. The scene takes place in the renamed “Church of Fake News.”
The clip was shown at last week at the American Priority conference. Event organizers didn’t respond to a request for comment from TPM, but American Priority’s Alex Phillips told the Times that the content was shown at a “meme exhibit” which featured clips “submitted by third parties.” Phillips went further in a subsequent statement posted to American Priority’s website, calling the video “unauthorized.”
CJ Ciaramella, a reporter from Reason magazine, attended the conference and recorded a clip of what appeared to be the video in question, starting at around nine seconds in the footage below:
There’s a big empty room here with TVs and projectors playing videos by that “carpe donktum” guy pic.twitter.com/O87stQDfrc
— CJ Ciaramella (@cjciaramella) October 11, 2019
It wasn’t immediately clear what process, if any, organizers used to screen videos before showing them at the conference.
But a video matching the Times’ description and the clip seen on Ciaramella’s footage was published in July last year by the pro-Trump creator “TheGeekzTeam.”
The President has courted the support of viral meme-makers in the past, most recently when he hosted many high-profile creators at the White House for a “social media summit.”
He also frequently republishes their work on his own Twitter account, such as when he shared a doctored video that showed him bodyslamming the “CNN” logo. He also praised the real-life version, joking on stage at a rally about Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-MT) for bodyslamming the reporter Ben Jacobs.
Trump Doral recently made headlines after an area strip club announced plans for a charity golf tournament there. The event was eventually cancelled.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted Monday that Trump had not seen the video, but that he condemned it.
Re: the video played over the weekend: The @POTUS @realDonaldTrump has not yet seen the video, he will see it shortly, but based upon everything he has heard, he strongly condemns this video.
— Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) October 14, 2019
“All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”
~~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf , 1925
Colorable incitement of the dead-ender ‘base’.
Trump is leaving no doubt he will resort to violence, if necessary, to hold on to power. I can both believe and not believe we’ve sunk this low. Democracy is nothing if not about a peaceful transfer of power, something he and his supporters (many of them evangelicals) clearly don’t understand.
ETA: If this was truly done without Trump’s knowledge, of which I’m skeptical, they knew it was just the kind of thing he’d like and condone. Watch what he does as Maddow says. They’ll probably receive a White House invite.
Was reading about this at Political Wire. Meghan McCain is angry, of course.
This is your party, Meghan. Out in the open and in your face.
(No, not that Stephen Miller.)
I didn’t go looking but did see most of this thing. It’s pretty cartoonish, actually, and hard to take all that seriously. I’d like to hear from someone with expertise in stochastic terrorism about how influential and dangerous this is compared to the damn president himself saying flatly at a rally or somewhere that the media are the enemy of the people. As for his third-party denunciations, pre-emptive or a week later, the fact is if someone put the graphic “Trump is really cool guy and smart too” over images of dead puppies he would be very reluctant to condemn it because he seems unable to condemn anything, literally anything complimentary to him. Saying one more time for the Google indexing bots: Donald Trump is mentally ill.