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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Luke O'Neil

'I'm inevitable': Trump campaign ad shows president as Avengers villain Thanos

‘House Democrats can push their sham impeachment all they want,’ the team tweeted. ‘President Trump’s re-election is inevitable.’
‘House Democrats can push their sham impeachment all they want,’ the team tweeted. ‘President Trump’s re-election is inevitable.’ Photograph: Screengrab

Donald Trump is a genocidal warlord hell bent on destroying half of existence in the universe. That’s not a criticism from the unhinged leftwing media, it’s apparently how the president and his team see him.

Shortly after the House brought two articles of impeachment against the president for his efforts seeking foreign interference to bolster his own political interests, the official Trump War Room re-election campaign Twitter account posted a video to social media that superimposed his face over that of the villainous Marvel comic book character Thanos.

In the scene from the movie Avengers: Endgame, Thanos snaps his fingers, attempting to destroy the diverse array of heroes from throughout the universe who’ve teamed up to defeat him. I am inevitable Trump/Thanos says.

“House Democrats can push their sham impeachment all they want,” the team tweeted. “President Trump’s re-election is inevitable.”

The video then cuts to footage of Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Jerry Nadler who magically vanish much like in the movie. Not the movie in question, mind you, the previous one, but these low-effort trolling operations from Trump’s social media team tend not to be heavy on consistency or logic.

Marvel Universe timeline discrepancies aside, the choice of this moment from the film was a strange one, as it’s seconds before Thanos realizes he’s about to be defeated.

Among the chorus of critics to point out the many other flaws at work in the analogy here was Jim Starlin, the artist who created the character of Thanos in the 1970s.

“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,” Starlin posted to Instagram.

“How sick is that? These are sad and strange times we are going through. Fortunately all things, even national nightmares, eventually come to an end.”

Previous efforts to insert Trump into iconic pop culture moments have had similarly muddled messaging. A clip using scenes from the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises was taken down after a copyright claim from Warner Bros.


In a post in January of this year he evoked themes from Game of Thrones to suggest his wall along the southern border is coming soon. In that series the wall is destroyed.

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