How Dare You Say We Showed The Fake Trump Murder Spree Video, Says Trump Conference That Showed The Fake Trump Murder Spree Video

Triumph of the ill.

Visitors to a pro-Trump conference at Donald Trump's Miami resort last week were treated to a super-violent video featuring a fake Donald Trump shooting his way through a "Church of Fake News" filled with figures digitally altered to represent Trump's enemies. In the video, lifted from the movie Kingsman: The Secret Service , the fake Trump is seen gleefully shooting, stabbing, and otherwise slaughtering baddies whose faces have been replaced with various evil liberals, news outlet logos, or just labels for things good Americans hate and want to die, like "Black Lives Matter" or "fake news." The New York Times   broke the story Sunday afternoon after an attendee of the three-day "American Priority Conference," aka AMPFest, got cell phone video of the clip to a Times reporter.

Featured speakers at the conference, held at Trump National Doral Miami, included Trumpworld luminaries Donnie Jr. and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, plus all sorts of top-flight wingnuts like Rep. Matt Gaetz, Dinesh D'Souza, Charlie Kirk, and Dana Loesch. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was also supposed to appear. Sanders and a flack for Junior told the Times neither had seen the video. Organizers of the conference are busily backing away from the video, because heavens, supporters of the guy who fantasizes about shooting undocumented immigrants, or at least impaling them on spikes, would never condone violent imagery.

It didn't take long for the video to be found; it's from a bunch of brave meme warriors calling themselves "TheGeekzTeam," whose entire oeuvreinvolves digitally superimposing various Bad Liberals' faces (or media logos) onto bad guys in action movie clips, so a fake Trump figure can murder them. That's literally it, again and again, as a "best of" clip makes clear. It is the funniest thing ever, and True Believers just eat it up. This particular example was uploaded in June 2018 in response to crybaby liberals complaining about Donald Trump taking kids away from ILLEGAL ALIENS, as if they're even real people. So here it is,at least until it's pulled by YouTube(we downloaded a copy, ick). Needless to say, if you don't like R-rated movie violence, don't watch the video. We had to chop it into two parts.

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Yr Dok Zoom doesn't mind gratuitous movie violence, as long as it's necessary for the plot. But when it's wrenched into a propaganda context, crudely manipulated to make it Rachel Maddow being shot in the face, or Barack Obama slammed into a pulpit, breaking his neck, it's aimed at riling up the yahoos, who love fantasizing that someone would really do it. Like maybe the Action Hero who demands a golf cart to travel a few hundred feet at international conferences.

We'll hand the summarizing duties to the nice folks at Gizmodo:  

TheGeekzTeam digitally placed Trump's head over the main character of The Kingsman as he shoots his way through a church. The fake Trump can be seen killing a number of politicians, including Adam Schiff, John McCain, Maxine Waters, Bernie Sanders, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama. Wealthy liberal activist George Soros is also killed in the video and some of the people in the video received pipe bombs from the so-called MAGA Bomber, Cesar Sayoc, back in October of 2018 .

The Trump character also shoots a number of people with news outlets superimposed on their heads, including logos for CNN, Politico, the Washington Post, NPR, and ABC News, among others. Trump can also be seen shooting news figures like Rachel Maddow and Mika Brzezinski.

It's a tremendously bloody scene, to say the least.

The clip ends with "Trump" triumphantly driving a stake through the head of a figure labeled "CNN," like a boss, hooray. Then the video shifts to the evidence that the Liberal Media has a hypocritical double standard: a clip of Barack Obama, during the 2014-2015 influx of Central American refugee kids and teenagers coming to the border, saying that families shouldn't let their kids make the dangerous journey because they'd be sent back, and isn't that exactly what Trump was doing? (Spoiler: It was not. )

The organizer of the conference told the Times he was shocked, shocked that such a thing would somehow pollute their pro-Trump festival of love and peace, explaining it was part of an exhibit of memes, you see:

"Content was submitted by third parties and was not associated with or endorsed by the conference in any official capacity," said the organizer, Alex Phillips. "American Priority rejects all political violence and aims to promote a healthy dialogue about the preservation of free speech. This matter is under review."

Gizmodo did a bit more looking into the matter itself, and found the claim that the video was "unauthorized" a "curious thing to say," given how the video was part of a "Hall of Memes" occupied by winners of an awesome online contest sponsored by an outfit called Meme World, whose contest page says up front the group "partnered with the American Priority Conference." The Meme World crowd includes luminaries like wingnut cartoonist Ben Garrison and a dude who goes by "Carpe Donktum," who was one of those poor oppressed meme warriors invited to Trump's big White House sobfest on the online oppression of conservatives.

The contest had nifty top prizes, including airfare and lodgings at the resort, plus a "VIP yacht party" and, for best video, a "$1000 gift card" to god knows what -- the contest didn't say. Surely not Amazon, we bet. Gizmodo explains,

"You get to meet the AMP Team and Carpe Donktum. You will also be featured in the Hall of Memes at the venue," the Meme World organizers explained on their website . Other prize levels included tickets to the Florida event, and also mentioned the chance to meet Carpe Donktum.

The Hall of Memes appears to be where the violent mass shooting video was screened, though it violates Meme World's own contest rules. According to Meme World, "Submissions will be rejected if they contain RACISM, SEXISM, NUDITY, SEXUAL CONTENT, or EXPLICIT VIOLENCE AGAINST A SPECIFIC PERSON OR GROUP OF PERSONS."

In a Twitter video of the Hall of Memes, you can see the Kingsman parody playing in one corner, as Reason reporter CJ Ciaramella noted once the Times story hit.

There’s a big empty room here with TVs and projectors playing videos by that “carpe donktum” guy https: //t.co/O87stQDfrc

— CJ Ciaramella (@CJ Ciaramella) 1570807729.0 

The Hall of Memes was mostly empty, so we can believe none of the headliners saw it -- why would they do anything they weren't paid for?

It's not really clear why the ultra-violent video made it into the glorious display of other great videos featuring rightwing heroes' heads on clips from movies (that is literally what all the winners were), since it doesn't appear to have been among the winning videos at all. 

The organizers of AMPFest have posted a great big statement on the event's homepage, explaining the video was "unauthorized" and shame on the Fake News New York Times for reporting on that instead of all the important speeches of substance from great people like Dinesh D'Souza:

We like the part where the statement doesn't acknowledge that the "Hall of Memes" was definitely an official part of the conference, even if the festival partner Meme World ran the video without explicit "authorization."

On Twitter, reporter Scott Stedman says the video was posted by an account "connected to Russian intelligence," if linking to a suspected Russian troll operation means "connected to."

NEW: The graphic video of Trump shooting people inside a church was posted by an account connected to Russian intel… https://t.co/hUQk7tmWqK

— Scott Stedman (@Scott Stedman) 1571021626.0 

We're waiting to see more on that, but we'd note that there's a thriving domestic troll market that's happy to pursue dumb conspiracy theories all on its own, although mocking any Russian interference in 2016 is definitely part of their schtick too. Stedman doesn't yet appear to have found any indication that the content was created by anyone but US video trolls.

Update: Carpe Donktumconfirmed to the Washington Post  that the video was created by one of his Meme World pals, whose identity he wouldn't reveal because what if the poor arteest were harassed by violent libs?

The main thing to take away from this is that your average Donald Trump fan is a gentle soul who gets very very upset by Kathy Griffin holding a bloody foam head, a production of Julius Caesar where Caesar is dressed like Trump, or that monster Sam Bee calling Ivanka Trump a feckless cunt. The real terrorists are the liberals, which is why they need to be slaughtered again and again in videos that are mere fantasies driven by the perfectly understandable frustration they feel at the fake news media.

Any actual pipe bombs sent by Trump supporters are regrettable but utterly unauthorized. There is no such thing as stochastic terrorism, just the occasional lone wolf who likes shooting up the enemies of Real America in a mosque, synagogue, or Walmart, and who leaves a manifesto full of ideas from the wingnut MemeOSphere. Why do you hate free speech?

In conclusion, both sides do it, and we can hardly wait for David Brooks to once again lecture all of us, especially "the left," about the need to be civil.

[ NYT / Gizmodo / Wired / Update:  WaPo ]