On Friday, President Trump pinned a short video clip that had over 2.3 million views of the February 5th, 2019 State of The Union address set to the famous R.E.M. song “Everybody Hurts,” created by Carpe Donktum (@CarpeDonktum) to his official Twitter page. Unfortunately, the left wasn’t very happy about the meme, nor was the 90s has-been band R.E.M, and before the night was over R.E.M.’s publisher (Universal) had asked Twitter to remove the tweet all together due to @CarpeDonktum’s use of their song in the video.
WATCH CarpeDonktum’s “The State of the Democratic Party: Hurting”:
As of early Saturday morning – 15 hours after President Trump originally tweeted the meme – the President’s tweet remains, while the video will no longer play. At times, the tweet states, “The video is not available in your location,” while other times it states, “The media could not be played,” or “This video has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder.” No matter the message displayed, the meme that received over 136k likes and 43k retweets has been blocked by Twitter. It’s also no longer Trump’s pinned tweet.
Shortly after Twitter censored the clip, there was a brief exchange between R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills (@m_millsey) and CarpeDonktum that actually ended harmoniously with both men declaring their love for the First Amendment, despite their opposing views on President Trump.
Mills tweeted: “The assholes @CarpeDonktum created the meme. #PresidentAsshole retweeted it. Measures have been taken to stop it. @jack you need to get on this.”
Mills continued, “So the meme’s fair use. I LOVE the 1st Amendment! Meme away, folks. But that takes nothing away from what a fraudulent con man @realDonaldTrump is. #WorldLeaderPretend”
Carpe Donktum quote tweeted Mills saying, “I am glad we can agree on loving the First Amendment. It is the bedrock of what makes us free. We may have very different opinions about President Trump, but we should all agree on the most basic freedoms that keep us from falling victim to tyranny.”
Mills replies, “Agreed. And sorry I thought you were a group.”
Carpe Donktum clarifies, “I’m just a dude in my living room making videos that people enjoy. Shall we bury the proverbial hatchet?”
Mills agrees tweeting, “Let’s do it. Have fun. Sorry about the asshole part. @CarpeDonktum”
Then Mills felt the need to address the “trolls” tweeting, “Just to be clear, trolls. My feelings aren’t hurt, and I’m sure not “butthurt”. My reachout to @jack was to prevent unauthorized use of a song, not to censor. @CarpeDonktum and I are cool, the rest of you can put your thumbs back up your ass where they were.”
Later, Carpe Donktum quote tweeted Mike Cernovich with some clarifications:
“When it was Tweeted it did not qualify as parody because the song itself was not being parodied. But then REM freaked out and exposed themselves as part of the crying Democrat Group. Therefore, the song IS NOW ALSO a parody of the band. FOILED BY TDS?”
FAIR USE
Many advocates are calling for the Trump campaign to sue claiming fair use was violated when the video was disabled on Twitter:
Carpe Donktum took to Periscope in the early morning hours on Saturday to address Twitter’s decision to censor the video and play some of his most loved original memes:
“Twitter has Censored an Official Message from the President of the United States #StopTheBias”
It’s truly alarming that Twitter censored the video less than 10 hours after President Trump tweeted it out. We all know that the leftists at Twitter are itching for the perfect opportunity to ban President Trump from tweeting and having the ability to reach the American public directly, almost instantly. The censorship of this video brings us one step closer to that becoming an actuality.
Copyright censorship?? Orwell’s 1984.
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