There’s political propaganda, and then there’s the president of the United States uploading a video of himself dropping sh*t on his own citizens. When America is already rigged with questions of power and democracy, the latest stunt from Donald Trump feels less like a meme and more like a mirror.

In his latest post on Truth Social, the self-proclaimed non-king shared an AI-generated video of himself flying a fighter jet labeled “KING TRUMP,” that went around dropping what appears to be sh*t on protesters chanting “No Kings.” The 15-second video, set to Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” (because of course it is), shows Trump wearing a golden crown and smirking from the cockpit.

He then flies around what appears to be the Times Square in New York City, and releases brown plumes over a crowd of demonstrators holding signs like “No Kings in America.” The clip ends with the message, “Hail to the King.” And if that sounds like satire, hold your breath because it isn’t. It came straight from Trump’s verified account, and was reposted by the White House feed within minutes.

The AI video is one of several outrageous vidoes the Trump administration has been sharing online since the No Kings protests erupted nationwide. Another shows Trump in royal robes wielding a sword while Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, kneel before him. Vice President J.D. Vance even joined in with his own crown, just to make sure everyone understood the dynasty branding.

But this latest one, where the president literally bombs his own citizens with excrement, may be his most on-the-nose metaphor yet. As one user on X put it, “The first honest thing Trump has ever posted. Him shitting on American democracy and not caring.” Another added, “Oh, for the love of God. The so-called leader of the free world posts an AI-generated image of himself piloting a ‘KING TRUMP’ jet while shitting on protesters chanting ‘No Kings.’ Because nothing screams ‘secure democracy’ like presidential coprophilia.”

For a man who swore just this week that “I’m not a king,” Trump sure spent a lot of time digitally crowning himself. He has presented himself as an autocrat literally dumping on America from above. While he may think his “King Trump” video is a joke, but for a government that already treats dissent like treason, it’s less satire and more blueprint.

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Kopal

Staff Writer

Kopal primarily covers politics for The Mary Sue. Off the clock, she switches to DND mode and escapes to the mountains.

“An Anti-Fascist Movie at a Fascist Moment.” That’s the headline of one review of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which has been greeted as a movie attuned to the America here and now.

Yet, as almost everyone has noted, the film is cagey about what moment it’s in. In one of his many terrific comic scenes, Leonardo DiCaprio, playing a former revolutionary turned stoner named Bob Ferguson, struggles to answer the question, “What time is it?” He can’t.

One Battle After Another begins in a recognizably near-contemporary America, but one that is already pursuing the mass detention of migrants. After this prologue, the film jumps ahead 16 years to what appears to be the present, but, as we’ll see, one crucially different from our own. In terms of its animating energies, though, One Battle After Another is a blast from the 1960s; specifically, the ‘60s of free love, personal liberation, and revolutionary violence.

The prologue belongs to Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), a black leader of the armed revolutionary French 75 cadre. For Perfidia, political violence has an unmistakably sexual charge. She wants to have sex with her partner in love and revolution, Bob Ferguson, while the explosives they’ve planted are bursting above them. The causes she’s fighting for are a bit unclear, but her commitment to freedom in all its forms is not.

Anderson borrows an episode from familiar 1960s headlines when the French 75 rob a bank to fund their cause. The robbery plays out, at least until shots are fired, as high-style, performative self-expression. The revolutionaries proudly decline any masks or disguises, and one of them (Shayna McHayle), standing atop the tellers’ counter in thigh-high boots, makes sure everyone knows who’s robbing them: “My name is Jungle Pussy!” The moment is vivid and funny, but the battle cry is not exactly “Viva la Revolucion!”

The terrific, defining image of Perfidia shows her joyfully standing in a field, taking target practice and firing bursts from an automatic weapon at her imagined ideological enemies, whoever they may be. She is also immensely pregnant, which will set the stage for the second part of One Battle After Another.

Before we get there, though, we encounter Perfidia’s nemesis, Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn). While the sexually liberated Perfidia lives to free herself and others, Lockjaw is on a mission to lock people up. His sexuality, which is center-stage from the beginning, is compulsively driven by themes of domination. The battle is joined: Perfidia’s project of political, personal, and sexual liberation versus the sexually repressed Lockjaw’s campaign of political oppression.

We’ve met Lockjaw before. He would fit seamlessly into that 1960s touchstone, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), with its sexually perverse generals and politicos presiding over nuclear Armageddon. Lockjaw is kin to General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), with his paranoia about “precious body fluids”, and Major “King” Kong (Slim Pickens), who puts a nuclear payload between his legs and rides it to mutually assured destruction.

We find the same equation between twisted sexuality and deadly authoritarianism in other fictions of the decade, like John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and the novels of Norman Mailer and William S. Burroughs. Indeed, some of the most influential social theorists of the ‘60s, like Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, and Norman O. Brown, argued that the roots of fascism lay in sexual repression.

Although Lockjaw stalks his way to the end of One Battle After Another, Perfidia disappears midway. She announces to Bob that raising their newborn daughter is incompatible with her project of self-realization and political action. She leaves, and with that, the sexual politics turn 180 degrees.

One Battle After Another is now centered on Bob and his daughter with Perfidia, Willa (Chase Infiniti). Now a fugitive, Bob has spent the past decade and a half lying low and getting stoned. He has no work and no partner; the only woman in his life is his daughter, and his only ambition is to keep her safe.

In a nice touch, Bob spends most of One Battle After Another, including its bang-up action scenes, in his bathrobe. He can’t quite get dressed or, for that matter, undressed. Willa, too, is on the sexual sidelines. In her first scene, she is practicing karate alone. Like her mother, she’s a fighter, but her fight is inner and ascetic. Her goal is self-mastery. As for the remnants of the French 75, they have become nuns, the Sisters of the Brave Beaver.

If we are looking for the present American moment in this part of the film, we won’t find it here either. This is an America that still has phone booths and landlines. Instead of burner phones, the revolutionaries of the day use shortwave radios. As an alternative to digital communication, they use a wonky home-grown device that is supposed to play a melody to signal when a comrade is nearby.

One of Willa’s pursuers wonders aloud if she’s the only American girl without a cell phone. DeCaprio’s character spends much of One Battle After Another trying to keep his cell phone charged, running comically from scene to scene with a charging cable trailing forlornly from what the film specifies is a “1G” phone. While we live in a world of instant communication, Bob spends much of this story struggling to make a call.

This is all rather schematic, and none of it is meant to diminish One Battle After Another‘s pleasures. However, if viewers are looking for a take on the political present, where does all this leave us?

One Battle After Another Takes Refuge

For one thing, the film suggests that while the liberationist politics of the 1960s made for a good show – and still do – they don’t have much to offer in terms of how society might better organize itself. Perfidia leaves her family, rats out her comrades, flees the country, and only reappears at the end of the film in a wistful letter to Willa. At the end of all the battles, the father has saved his daughter, and the absent mother yearns for home. We’re left with family, that refuge from the battle.

I doubt anyone regrets the demise of the kind of revolutionary politics depicted in One Battle After Another. The equation of personal and political liberation was glib and, at least from this distance, self-evidently unsuited for any genuine political program. If the film resurrects that brand to tell a story, it’s only to bury it again.

The association of fascism with sexual repression is also glib. Is there anyone who thinks that Donald Trump’s problem is sexual repression? After all, Donald Trump, like his shadow twin Jeffrey Epstein, is a child of the 1960s. They, like most of America, got the ’60s message of sexual liberation, purged of any political content. The great prophet and profiteer of ’60s sexual liberation was Hugh Hefner, and Trump in his youth was the Playboy bachelor nonpareil. Hefner stands at the beginning of the mass commodification of sex that daily demonstrates that the worst kind of domination can go hand in hand with a shallow “whatever gets you off” ethos of personal liberation.

The political violence of the 1960s radical left is dead, but political violence is not. The January 6th insurrection against the US Government may be the most consequential act of political violence in the history of the Republic, especially given the Trump administration’s endorsement of its goals and methods. Unlike comparable historical events such as the Haymarket Riot (1886), the Tulsa Race Massacre (1921), or Kent State (1970), the violence at the nation’s Capitol on January 6th, 2021, was viewed in real-time or on video by nearly every living American of voting age.

While that is unprecedented, the real revelation has come in the aftermath, with the recognition that there is no consensus understanding of what everyone has watched.

In contemporary America, the revolution will be televised and live-streamed. The real battle, however, will be an endless contest, fought on millions of screens, over the meaning of what we’ve seen.

If Paul Thomas Anderson is one beat behind, we all are.

“Worst American government I’ve ever had the displeasure of living under.”

Ljeonida Mulabazi

Posted on October 3 2025 6:00 pm CDT

The U.S. government might be shut down, but its meme machine is working overtime. In what some are calling a new low for political discourse, both parties are slinging AI-generated memes to win over voters—and trolls.

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It started with Donald Trump’s team posting a barrage of AI-edited videos showing Democratic leaders like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero and mustache.

The clips suggest Democrats want to throw a “medical money party at the undocumented,” as Stephen Colbert sarcastically put it.

But the president’s allies didn’t stop there. Vice President J.D. Vance doubled down in a public statement, saying, “If Hakeem Jeffries helps us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop.”

Colbert, naturally, responded on The Late Show with a satirical sketch and a promise of his own: “If you resign as VP, I won’t keep showing that every chance I get.”

Ronny Chieng breaks down both sides

Over on The Daily Show, Ronny Chieng tackled the so-called meme war from both directions. He mocked Democrats for their weak responses, including a “Kitty Explains” meme blaming the GOP for the shutdown. “Wow, that was also not good,” he said. “Still better than whatever Batman villain Chuck Schumer is turning into.”

But Republicans, Chieng argued, aren’t faring any better. “The sombrero meme is undefeated,” he quipped, pointing to Ted Cruz’s version of the meme slapped onto 44 Democratic senators. “Once Ted Cruz joins in on something, it’s dead.”

By

Rachel Leishman
Aug 7th, 2025, 11:33 am

With its sharp wit and creativity, it’s no surprise that Rick and Morty has a lot of fan-favorite characters, and now one of them is finally getting a true spin-off on Adult Swim. The idea of giving Andre Curtis (Keith David) his own series is a great idea, as his episodes rank as some of the best in the series. What few things we know about President Curtis sound promising, from the basic premise to the main cast, and the use of political satire has been a surprising strength in the main series so far. The amount of possibilities for the story appears infinite, and it might be a fun and creative way to take a declining series and make something fresh and unique.

President Curtis Has Long Been a Fan Favorite Character in ‘Rick and Morty’

Over twelve years and eight seasons, Rick and Morty has had plenty of popular side characters, and one of the funniest was the President, who made his debut in “Get Schwifty” during the second season. Thanks to a longtime voice actor like Keith David, he became instantly memorable, and one could not help get the feeling that he served as a reference to Barack Obama, who was President at the time. Although the series rarely brings back supporting characters, there was clearly more that the show could do with him, and it was not very long before we saw him again.

In Season 3, Rick and Morty decided to make the President a recurring character, now with a clear personality and name. As his rivalry with the Smith family grows, he is shown to be nearly as juvenile and egotistical as Rick (Ian Cardoni) can be. He also remains one of the few people able to rival Rick in terms of abilities, with the government having a comical amount of sci-fi tech at their disposal. In terms of humor, his storylines account for some of the best in a great series, with special mention going to the Thanksgiving special and Season 6 finale. The fact that many of these episodes occur in the weaker later seasons makes them all the more impressive, and it’s surprising that such a spin-off idea took so long to manifest.

What Do We Know About the ‘President Curtis’ Spin-off?

When it was announced at San Diego Comic Con last weekend, the reveal of a President Curtis series took nearly everyone by surprise. So far, we do not have a release date or episode count, but what we do have speaks volumes. Behind the scenes, Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon will serve as one of the showrunners, with executive producer James Siciliano as the other. The official plot summary from Adult Swim says the show will feature “the Commander-in-Chief and his eccentric staff as they tackle the kind of crises that Rick Sanchez could never be bothered with — from interdimensional diplomacy to paranormal investigations and unexplained phenomena.”

The only other thing we know so far is the main cast, but what we have feels encouraging. Aside from Keith David himself, we have Jim Rash, a friend of Harmon from his old Community days. Rash has actually had a small role in Rick and Morty in season 2 as Glaxo Slimslam, the marriage counselor who tries to help the Smith family, and has been in a few adult animated cartoons over the years. The other cast member is Stephanie Beatriz, most known for starring in Brooklyn Nine-Nine as Rosa Diaz. From BoJack Horseman to Hazbin Hotel, she remains no stranger to adult animation, and there is every reason to think she’ll thrive in this role. We don’t yet know the characters these two are playing or who else could make an appearance, but given how many guest stars Rick and Morty has earned over the years, it’s safe to say many actors would be eager to sign on, and that talent is not far away.

Related

‘Rick and Morty’s Season 8 Finale Just Changed the Show (and Rick) Forever

“I took my wife out of my head! I’m going through a lot!”

President Curtis Will Give ‘Rick and Morty’ a Breath of Fresh Air

It’s not exactly a secret to anyone that Rick and Morty has struggled in recent years, and there are plenty of ways the show could regain its lost momentum. Part of this can be through exploring new ideas or returning to old ones, but a true spin-off is something the show has never considered until now. Yes, we’ve had an anime and short films about the Vindicators after their adventures with Morty (Harry Belden) in season 3, but this is really the first separate series we’ve gotten as part of that universe. Not only could it bring in a new kind of audience, but it might also maintain the old one in an era where anticipation feels like it has waned over time.

As for where the show could decide to go, the possibilities for President Curtis remain as endless as the original show. Throughout his episodes in the main series, there is plenty of world building surrounding the many alien threats the US has faced, and the hidden ways the government can counter it. Attempts at political humor in those storylines, like poking fun at previous presidents, have been comedic gold in a series beloved for its witty dialogue, and America has plenty of history for them to play with and laugh at. Of course, there is never a simple formula for success, and the spin-off could end up dead on arrival like any unfunny comedy, but the ingredients are present for a great show if the idea is executed properly.

President Curtis does not yet have a premiere date, but will air on Adult Swim in the U.S.