Slamming journalists to the floor, attacking the most senior black congresswoman and shooting critics in the face. These are not scenes normally associated with the highest office in the land, but they appear in a doctored video of Donald Trump shown at a pro-Trump conference in Miami last week.
The two-minute clip is taken from a famous scene from the end of the movie Kingsman, in which the lead character, played by Colin Firth, goes on a killing spree in a church.
On Monday, a list of high-profile figures slammed the president for failing to condemn the video.
In the edited video, Trump’s face is digitally superimposed on to Firth’s body, and he is depicted shooting, stabbing and attacking adversaries in the “Church of Fake News”.
It includes a scene of him setting the 2020 Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders on fire, stabbing the comedian Rosie O’Donnell in the face and throwing the California congresswoman Maxine Waters out of a window. At the end of the video, Trump sticks an axe in CNN and then walks off smirking, admiring the scene of dead bodies across the floor.
Democratic political strategists pointed out that Trump had managed to send out a tweet encouraging his followers to vote for Sean Spicer on Dancing with the Stars since the video was released.
Every headline says trump condemned that video. He has done no such thing. The only statement from the WH says he hasn’t even seen it. Asshole is on twitter all day. When he wants to condemn something, he does. Stop giving him free passes.
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) October 14, 2019
Meghan McCain called the video “disgusting and disturbing” on The View on Monday morning. Her father, the late senator John McCain, is specifically targeted in the video, with Trump hitting him in the back of the head with a gun.
Widow Cindy McCain also spoke out against the video today, saying it violated “every norm our society expects from its leaders”.
Reports describing a violent video played at a Trump Campaign event in which images of reporters & @JohnMcCain are being slain by Pres Trump violate every norm our society expects from its leaders& the institutions that bare their names. I stand w/ @whca in registering my outrage
— Cindy McCain (@cindymccain) October 14, 2019
Andrea Chamblee, whose husband was killed in the Capital Gazette shooting last year said that the video was “not only offensive, but dangerous”. She is a volunteer for the gun safety activist organisation Moms Demand Action, and was quoted by its founder, Shannon Watts, in a tweet.
“Videos like the one shown at a political event for President Trump are not only offensive, but dangerous to the safety of my husband's fellow news media colleagues,” Andrea Chamblee, a @MomsDemand volunteer whose husband was fatally shot at the Capital Gazette #TrumpVideo
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) October 14, 2019
Those thoughts were echoed by the Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal, who said that the video was a reminder of behavior that Trump has encouraged during his time as president.
Despite the White House’s half hearted distancing, this sickening video is a reminder & result of what Trump has condoned, even encouraged. Make no mistake: Mass murder, gun violence, & raw hatred have no place in our country—Americans are saying enough is enough. https://t.co/BZBWtk1T2W
— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) October 14, 2019
Almost 50 political opponents and media organizations are name-checked in the video, including:
ABC
Adam Schiff
Antifa
Barack Obama
Bill Clinton
The BBC
Black Lives Matter
Bloomberg
BuzzFeed
Bernie Sanders
CBS News
CNBC
The Democratic party
Global News
The Guardian
Harvey Weinstein (as an attacker)
Hillary Clinton
The Hill
HuffPost
James Comey
Joe Kennedy
John McCain
Kathy Griffin
Maxine Waters
Mika Brzezinski
Mitt Romney
NBC
Talking Points Memo
The New Yorker
NPR
The Obama Foundation
PBS
Peter Fonda
Politico
Rachel Maddow
Rosie O’Donnell
Slate
Univision Noticias
The Washington Post
Women’s March USA
Yahoo News
The Young Turks
Vice
Vox
The video appears to have been created more than a year ago, but was shown at a three-day conference held by American Priority last week, at a Trump hotel in Miami. It is probably a rip-off of another video that was uploaded for a 2017 Infowars meme competition, in which Trump is depicted in the same killing spree, attacking CNN.
Trump and the former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders both attended the conference but say they did not see the video, according to the Times. On Sunday evening, the White House condemned the violence depicted in the video.
