Folks, he’s done it again. It’s been a little more than a week since President Donald Trump embraced a sporting discipline from foreign shores over c
Folks, he’s done it again. It’s been a little more than a week since President Donald Trump embraced a sporting discipline from foreign shores over customary American athletics…and now he’s turning on his base again. This time, he’s aligning himself with the newest iteration of Superman—yes, the same movie that many of MAGA’s loudest voices are furiously boycotting. It’s another curious move from Trump, one that many might argue is intended as a distraction from his administration’s creeping authoritarianism. But the fact remains that he—or, rather, his workplace social media account—is presenting him as an allegedly “woke” undocumented immigrant. It sure is perplexing!
Pundits on the right have likely been preparing their arguments against James Gunn’s Superman long before it was released. Between the Gamergate-like obsession some conservatives have with comic book properties and Gunn’s longstanding public contempt for Donald Trump, there was probably no way the up-to-date DC film could have pleased red America unless it was basically Sound of Freedom with capes and x-ray vision. So when Gunn described his film’s protagonist as an “immigrant” who expressed “kindness” in a recent interview, the Fox News chattering class lined up to castigate the movie—using language very similar to those of Nazi leaders opposed to the “mortal code” demonstrated in 1940s-era Superman comics, as Anthony Breznican noted for Vanity Fair this week.
Gunn has brushed off the criticism, saying he doesn’t have “anything to say to anybody” about the MAGA-world response. His younger brother, actor Sean Gunn (who appears in the film as Maxwell Lord), was more caustic, Variety reports.
“My reaction to [MAGA outrage] is that it is exactly what the movie is about. We support our people, you know? We love our immigrants. Yes, Superman is an immigrant, and yes, the people that we support in this country are immigrants, and if you don’t like that, you’re not American. People who say no to immigrants are against the American way.”
It would certainly be nice to believe that Trump, stung by the younger Gunn’s words, scrambled to place himself on the right side of comic character history—and that that’s why the White House’s shared an altered version of the up-to-date movie’s poster across its social media channels depicting the convicted felon as the Kryptonian refugee.
But it’s far more likely that the president saw which side was winning, and went with it. According to The Hollywood Reporter, despite the MAGA boycott of the movie, Superman is already a box office smash. A follow-up message posted by the White House Friday night seems to confirm that Trump chose clout over conservatism, writing, “Nowhere in the Constitution does it say we can’t post banger memes.” True, but if those memes seem to undercut the arguments of your biggest fans, they do seem odd to choose!
Others seem to agree that Trump’s apparent affinity with the caped crusader is an odd match, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, who (like Gunn) noted “Superman was an undocumented immigrant” in response to Trump’s altered image.
Not to second-guess Newsom’s social media team—which certainly has its work cut out for it—but Superman’s origin story is pretty well known by now. But fewer people, perhaps, are aware that within DC lore, Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor eventually became president, one that many fans argue was more competent and less problematic than our current one. That might be a more fruitful vein to mine if both sides insist on continuing down this tiresome, tiresome path.
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