Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you fall, there is no denying that President Donald Trump is a divisive figure. The conservative base adores and glorifies him, while the liberal base despises him to levels unseen in modern history. The catch is that the president enjoys the attention and uses it as ammo, which is seen quite clearly when he regularly uses pop culture memes to poke fun at or agitate liberals while bolstering the support of his largely Republican base.
And it isn’t just Trump who enjoys using this type of content, as many of his followers and other prominent political figures have been known to share in his love of stoking the fires with pop culture references. Recently, Trump’s own campaign manager, Brad Parscale, posted a tweet stating that they had been building a campaign that was “firing on all cylinders” alongside a Star Wars GIF that showed the Death Star firing its planet-destroying superlaser. Someone should probably remind Parscale that the Death Star belonged to the oppressive, evil bad guys and that it eventually got, well, blown up by the good guys.
For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star). It is firing on all cylinders. Data, Digital, TV, Political, Surrogates, Coalitions, etc.
In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time. pic.twitter.com/aJgCNfx1m0
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) May 7, 2020
But Trump and his campaign don’t seem particularly concerned with embracing “the bad guy” image. Late last year, they also released this short video placing the president’s head on Thanos, the MCU villain responsible for needlessly killing half of the universe’s population. Yikes.
House Democrats can push their sham impeachment all they want.
President Trump's re-election is ??????????. pic.twitter.com/O7o02S26nS
— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 & get the APP (@TrumpWarRoom) December 10, 2019
These completely tone deaf tweets and videos aren’t necessarily rare, either. Trump has also posted a picture of himself with the words “Sanctions Are Coming,” a clear reference to Game of Thrones, and he’s used music from The Dark Knight Rises in a campaign video that resulted in Warner Bros. pursuing the president with legal action and Twitter promptly removing the video.
According to OANN analyst, Jack Posobiec, various Hollywood studios are pretty fed up with Trump’s choices to use their material for what they consider to be antagonistic behavior. In a tweet posted on May 17th, Posobiec said that multiple studio heads are sharing and signing a letter that would aim to stop the president from using memes based on their properties ever again.
Scooplet: Hollywood source tells me major studio heads are passing around a 'letter' to sign calling for Trump to never again post meme videos using their movies. Disney, Sony, WB, Universal, Lionsgate, etc.
— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) May 17, 2020
It may just be a rumor for now, but if this turns out to be true, the letter would assumedly be a promise from all studio heads to pursue prompt and aggressive legal action against Trump should he continue to disobey their requests to stop making use of their property for his divisive content. However, when dealing with a president who doesn’t seem to care much about playing by the rules, who knows if it’ll make much of a difference in the long run.
