Ridicule Follows Campaign Clip Showing Trump as Supervillain

What's next for President Trump after his turn as Rocky Balboa? Avengers supervillain Thanos, apparently. "House Democrats can push their sham impeachment all they want. President Trump's re-election is inevitable," the Trump War Room said in a Tuesday tweet that shares a new campaign ad in which Trump's face is imposed on Thanos from a scene in Avengers: Endgame. "I am inevitable," Trump/Thanos says in the clip, viewed 3.5 million times as of Wednesday morning, before a snap of fingers. Instead of the expected destruction of half of all life in the universe, the action wipes out a group of Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, as they announce impeachment articles.

While the campaign says critics need to find a sense of humor, per the Washington Post, plenty of Twitter users say the attempt at a joke misses the mark. For one thing, (spoiler alert) Thanos is not at all inevitable, as the next scene in Avengers: Endgame shows. "You've made Trump a supervillain and depicted him in the scene where his plan to kill everyone in the universe falls apart due to his arrogance and incompetence," Princeton history professor Kevin M. Kruse wrote, per USA Today. Thanos co-creator Jim Starlin spoke up, too. "After my initial feeling of being violated ... it finally struck me that the leader of my country and the free world actually enjoys comparing himself to a mass murderer," Starlin posted to Instagram, per the Post. (Trump's Game of Thrones meme wasn't a hit, either.)