President Trump tweeted a video today from a YouTuber known for winning an Infowars meme contest.
The video, from a creator who goes by Carpe Donktum, primarily mocks the reactions of Democrats who attended this year’s State of the Union. Trump didn’t call out Donktum or Donktum’s channel specifically (although there is a watermark on the video), but far-right personalities like Mike Cernovich and Scott Adams congratulated Donktum on the newfound attention.
Trump has tweeted images and videos that originated with the far-right online community before, sometimes provoking controversy. Trump found himself under international criticism last year after retweeting anti-Muslim videos originally posted by a far-right UK group, Britain First. Prior to that, Trump tweeted a video of himself wrestling the CNN logo. Many critics found the tweet harmful to journalists, including Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The New York Times.
“I think it is unseemly that the president would attack journalists for doing their jobs, and encourage such anger at the media,” Baquet told The Times.
Donktum’s video is less controversial, just cutting up existing footage from the State of the Union in ways that are unflattering to Democrats (as well as occasional Trump critic Mitt Romney). It was a slight departure from Donktum’s typical videos, in which he frequently superimposes the faces of politicians onto cartoon and movie footage to make fun of Democrats. In one video, Obama’s face is placed on top of Voldemort, while the snake Nagini has her head replaced with a globe and the text “globalism America last.”
Prior to his video being tweeted out by the president, Donktum gained some recognition for winning Infowars host Alex Jones’ NPC Meme contest in November 2018. The NPC (non-playable character) meme was popular among the far-right community on sites like Twitter and 4chan. It essentially insinuates that liberals are NPC types who are unable to partake in regular conversations and rely on robotic rhetoric to function properly.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/15/18226716/trump-meme-twitter-infowars-winner