"Donald Trump's jokes are never just jokes. However crude and nasty his attempts at humor might be, they offer a more accurate picture of his actual politics than his official statements. On Wednesday, Trump posted on Truth Social, a platform he founded and owns, an AI-generated image fusing a famous scene from the film Apocalypse Now (1979) with the president's current threats to send the National Guard into Chicago."
"In the movie, Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore (memorably played by Robert Duvall) leads a psychopathic helicopter attack on a Vietnamese village. Kilgore thrills in the slaughter of civilians, saying, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." In Trump's post, the president's face is superimposed on Kilgore's body, while helicopters napalm America's third-largest city. Riffing on Kilgore's words, the caption reads, "I love the smell of deportations in the morning...""
Trump uses provocative imagery and tasteless jokes to reveal political impulses. He posted an AI image on Truth Social merging Apocalypse Now's Napalm scene with threats to deploy the National Guard in Chicago. The image superimposes his face on Lt. Col. Kilgore and shows helicopters napalming the city with the caption, "I love the smell of deportations in the morning." The post references a dubious renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Public denials framed as 'cleaning up our cities' contrast with celebratory imagery. The MAGA movement's rage against multiracial urban America underlies calls to use troops and enforce harsh immigration measures.
Read at The Nation
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