Trump Photoshopped His Head On Rocky's Body And Nobody Can Explain It
There's not much about Donald Trump's social media game which can surprise us anymore, but superimposing his head on Sylvester Stallone's ripped boxer body comes close.
The President of the United States, because he's got nothing else pressing on his plate right now, tweeted the following image at 2.54am AEST Thursday -- 10.54am Wednesday in Mar-A-Lago, Florida, where he is currently spending the Thanksgiving holiday -- with literally no explanation or context.
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That's Trump's bored, nonchalant face affixed atop the toned, muscular body of actor Sylvester Stallone in his turn as Philadelphia boxer Rocky Balboa.
Specifically, the image is from 1982's 'Rocky III', where Balboa fights 'Clubber' Lang, played by Mr T. It's the film with 'Eye Of The Tiger' as its theme music.
Why Trump decided 10.54am on Wednesday on a holiday in Florida was the ideal time and place to shoot out this bizarre meme mashup to his 67 million Twitter followers, we don't yet know. What he could have possibly been doing as President at that time instead of posting this, we'll never know.
Maybe it was simply a bit of fun to distract himself from the looming impeachment hearings, his lagging poll results, or the possibility that -- on current numbers -- he will be a one-term president after the November 2020 election.
Trump has a penchant for tweeting out random fan-made content. Who can forget the iconic WWE wrestling video where someone superimposed his face on a fighter beating up rivals meant to represent CNN and other media outlets? And just weeks ago, he shared an edited image of himself putting a medal on a dog -- but this one is right up there with some of the weirdest gear this man has ever pumped out.
It flummoxed a lot of people. Even the world-class journalists at The Washington Post couldn't make sense of it -- "unclear why" was their analysis.
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At The Guardian, they simply said "no one knows what to make of it".
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The obvious theories are that Trump sees himself as Rocky, the plucky underdog who keeps winning against the odds. In every film in the franchise, Rocky looks down and out, beat, sure to lose -- but somehow manages to punch his way out of the corner, winning most times, but even in defeat, he's honourable and brave and the crowd favourite.
Not exactly hard to see why Trump might feel a certain affinity with the character -- in spirit, if not physicality.
Trump and Stallone have been linked before, with the pair meeting in 2018 after the actor successfully lobbied for a presidential pardon to be given to boxer Jack Johnson, who was convicted in 1913 of an offence for travelling with a white woman.
Stallone isn't an overly political guy, but he's given his opinion of Trump in a 2016 interview in Variety. Back when Trump was still battling for the Republican nomination, months before he won the White House in the 2016 election, Stallone said "I love Donald Trump".
"He’s a great Dickensian character. You know what I mean? There are certain people like Arnold, Babe Ruth, that are bigger than life," the actor continued.
"But I don’t know how that translates" [and at this point, Variety specifically noted that Stallone laughed] "to running the world."
In any case, Trump's unexpected tweet -- which, at time of writing, he still has given zero extra context to -- totally floored some people.
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Others couldn't resist poking fun.
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Even Donald Trump's adult son, Don Jr, tried honing in on the jokes, taking a swipe at Democratic politician Adam Schiff -- who is leading the charge in the impeachment hearings.
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Weird days. But we've come to expect them.
