Members of President Trump's re-election campaign either never saw Avengers: Endgame — or they did, and could only see similarities between Trump and Thanos, the genocidal villain who wanted to wipe out half of the universe's population.
On Tuesday, not long after House Democrats introduced two articles of impeachment against Trump, his campaign tweeted a video showing Trump's face superimposed over Thanos. "House Democrats can push their sham impeachment all they want," the caption reads. "President Trump's re-election is inevitable." This is a riff on Thanos' famous line from the movie, which he says right before he thinks he's about to kill a bunch of people with a snap of his finger.
In the Trump campaign's clip, after the snap several Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), disintegrate. In the actual movie, however — spoiler alert! — Iron Man was able to defeat Thanos by taking back the Infinity Stones he needed to go through with his plan. Thanos then turned to dust.
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Comic book writer and artist Jim Starlin, who created Thanos in 1973, told The Hollywood Reporter that the tweet irked him. "After my initial feeling of being violated, seeing that pompous fool using my creation to stroke his infantile ego, it finally struck me that the leader of my country and the free world actually enjoys comparing himself to a mass murderer," he said. "How sick is that? These are sad and strange times we are going through. Fortunately, all things, even national nightmares, eventually come to an end."
Avengers: Endgame is the highest-grossing film of all time, and for the few who still haven't seen it — astronauts just back from the International Space Station, people who recently escaped doomsday cults, Trump campaign officials — it is now streaming on Disney+.
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