President Trump loves to anger the entertainment industry by appropriating its materials for his own propaganda. In November, he angered “Game of Thrones” fans, but probably not Iran, by tweeting a photo of himself with the caption, “Sanctions are coming.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2018
Now he’s ruining “The Dark Knight Rises,” and Warner Bros. isn’t happy. On Tuesday Trump tweeted a video showing various left-wing celebrities (Rosie O’Donnell, Amy Schumer) and politicians (former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton) in between shots of himself supposedly making America great again — as he meets with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un (upon whom he hasn’t exactly been tough).
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they call you racist,” text reads. “Your vote proved them all wrong.” Amid the glorious display of lib-owning, Hans Zimmer’s “Why Do We Fall?” swells in the background.
By Tuesday night, Warner Bros. had contacted Twitter about copyright infringement over the song from the score of “The Dark Knight Rises.” Twitter took down the video, and YouTube removed the fan-made clip it appears to have come from.
“The use of Warner Bros.’ score from The Dark Knight Rises in the campaign video was unauthorized,” a spokesperson told BuzzFeed before the video came down. “We are working through the appropriate legal channels to have it removed.”
Besides his copyright infringement, Trump should never have used the song in the first place. He probably believes his success parallels a storyline from Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. But to compare your presidency to a superhero’s plotline is weird at best and, well, embarrassing at worst.
In “Batman Begins,” the first film of the “Dark Knight” trilogy, Alfred asks Bruce Wayne, “Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.” The song “Why Do We Fall?” plays in the third film as Wayne repeatedly tries to scale a wall so he can return to save his city.
In “The Dark Knight Rises,” the song can give you goosebumps. In a Trump tweet, it can remind you that the president is no good with copyright laws, or with rhetoric, either.
