The Trumpsman

About

The Trumpsman, also known as Donald Trump vs. Fake News, refers to a Donald Trump-themed edit of a scene from the 2014 action film Kingsman: The Secret Service in which a secret agent massacres violent church go-ers. The edit of the scene, which depicted Donald Trump murdering various media outlets, journalists and critics, was widely criticized by those who claimed it glorified political violence, while others defended it as a harmless meme video.

Origin

In early 2015, the film Kingsman: The Secret Service was released, which contains a scene in which the character Harry Hart (played by actor Colin Firth) massacres a hate group inside a church (shown below).

On July 11th, 2017, YouTuber Andrés Hughes uploaded a video titled "Kingsman Trump Vs. Fake News", featuring Trump substituted for Harry Hart in the scene, as an entry to the #CNNMemeWar contest on Infowars (shown below, left). On July 3rd, 2018, YouTuber TheGeekzTeam^[4] uploaded a similar edit of the Kingsman scene titled "The Trumpsman (The Kingsman Parody)," in which Trump is shown killing members of the news media. The video has since been removed, but several mirrors have been reuploaded (shown below, right). On October 14th, 2019, The New York Times^[1] published an article titled "Macabre Video of Fake Trump Shooting Media and Critics Is Shown at His Resort," which reported that the edited video had been shown at a conference for Trump supporters in Miami.

Spread

Following the CNN report, discussions about the video widely circulated on Twitter, leading the hashtag #TrumpVideo^[2] to trend. Meanwhile, Twitter user Yashar Ali tweeted^[3] the video, which gained more than 3.4 million views within 24 hours (shown below).

Search Interest

External References