White House Condemns Violent Trump Parody Video
The White House is condemning a violent parody video which depicts a likeness of President Donald Trump in a church shooting and stabbing his political opponents and journalists.
Trump, according to White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, was expected to view it Monday, "but based upon everything he has heard, he strongly condemns this video."
Re: the video played over the weekend: The @POTUS@realDonaldTrump has not yet seen the video, he will see it shortly, but based upon everything he has heard, he strongly condemns this video.
— Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) October 14, 2019
The video was viewed last week at Trump's Doral Miami resort in the state of Florida during the American Priority Conference, which was organized by supporters of the president.
In a statement, the conference organizer explains the video was shown in a side room at the event and was not seen, sanctioned or approved by organizers.
"#AmpFest19 always has and always will condemn political violence," according to the statement.
The video, whose screening at the event was first reported by the New York Times, includes the logo for the president's 2020 re-election campaign but was not produced by it, according to Communications Director Tim Murtaugh.
The video, which includes a doctored version of a scene from the 2015 action film "Kingsman: The Secret Service," shows Trump's face superimposed on a killer's body inside the Church of the Fake News as he shoots and stabs targets, such as former U.S. presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton; his 2016 rival for the presidency, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Democratic Party lawmakers; Republicans including Senator Mitt Romney and the late Senator John McCain; MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and others whose faces are replaced with logos of Black Lives Matter and news organizations, including BBC, CBS, CNN, NPR and the Washington Post.
"Sadly, this is not the first time that supporters of the president have promoted violence against the media in a video they apparently find entertaining — but it is by far and away the worst," CNN said in a statement. "The images depicted are vile and horrific."
The White House Correspondents' Association is also condemning it.
"All Americans should condemn this depiction of violence directed toward journalists and the President's political opponents," said the association's president, ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl. "We have previously told the President his rhetoric could incite violence. Now we call on him and everybody associated with this conference to denounce this video and affirm that violence has no place in our society."
Former White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, now a Fox News contributor, was among those who attended the conference.
"I wasn't aware of any video, nor do I support violence of any kind against anyone," she told the New York Times.
Video content creator Logan Cook, better known as "Carpe Donktum," who met with Trump in the Oval Office in July, names TheGeekzTeam as the creator of the controversial video meme.
"The Kingsman video is CLEARLY satirical and the violence depicted is metaphoric. No reasonable person would believe that this video was a call to action, or an endorsement of violence towards the media," according to the content creator's statement.
"MemeWorld stands behind TheGeekzTeam and will REMAIN supportive of him in the future," added Carpe Donktum, identifying himself as the owner of the pro-Trump MemeWorld website.
A Donktum tweet of a clip this past April of a video showing former Vice President Joe Biden creeping up behind himself to sniff his own neck was reposted by Trump.
The Carpe Donktum Twitter account was briefly suspended Monday.
"I'm back on Twitter," said Cook in a six-minute video.
"I was down for maybe an half an hour … I was suspended for copyright infringement" stemming from a clip of a song in a video posted in February 2018, according to Cook, who did not mention the Trump meme parody video controversy.
The three-minute Kingsman parody video was first posted by TheGeekzTeam in July 2018 on YouTube and has received more than 172,000 views.
The creator responded Monday to the fresh controversy about its content by posting to Twitter a video of the CNN logo exploding.
