The prolific voice actor Billy West, who played more than 100 characters on Matt Groening’s cult classic sci-fi comedy cartoon Futurama, has lent the voice of Zapp Brannigan to a real-world figure almost as audacious as the pant-less spaceship captain: Donald Trump.
Zapp presents...Famous Quotations from Donald J Trump#MakeAmericaBrannigan pic.twitter.com/kbaV8rIkwK
— Billy West (@TheBillyWest) August 11, 2016
Using the hashtag #MakeAmericaBrannigan, West has re-performed Trump’s dismissal of John McCain’s war record, his crediting of “the Chinese” with the concept of global warming, his explanation of his hair, and his generous estimation of his own honesty.
West began the project on 10 August and promised to keep it going into the weekend. Twitterers found the comparison between Trump and Brannigan so insightful that they followed suit, mostly through creative use of Photoshop.
.@TheBillyWest I've been inspired. #Brannigan2016 #MakeAmericaBrannigan pic.twitter.com/QZTRyAFOO0
— Adam Whitley (@AdamWhitley) August 12, 2016
Futurama ran for 72 episodes on Fox between 1998 and 2002; in 2008, it was revived as a series of direct-to-DVD movies and then resurrected by the cable network Comedy Central.
Futurama writer Patric M Verrone called the staff “the most overeducated cartoon writers in history” in a 2014 essay on asymmetical warfare for Slate, noting that despite the high quality of the diplomas represented in the writers’ room, “we weren’t smart enough to figure out how to avoid cancellation (three times)”.
The show attracted a small but fanatical following among math nerds with its running gags about taxicab numbers, its contribution of “The Futurama Theorem” to game theory, and the “alienese” code that writers made more difficult with each season.
West’s rendition of Trump discussing intelligence as Brannigan can be found here.
