Amazingly, Ben Domenech called this yesterday, anticipating the exact line that ended up in Trump’s address. And now the debate will rage for all time: Was it a happy coincidence or did Steve Bannon stick it in there as a sort of “easter egg”? Normally politicians try to avoid explicit echoes of evil fictional characters, but Bannon seems like he might relish his and Trump’s reputations as dark princes of populism enough to have added the Bane reference just to mess with the media’s heads.
With due respect to the president, Bane’s speech was better:
“Today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people,” Trump said.
That’s rather spot-on quote from The Dark Knight Rises, when Bane tells Gotham City, “We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you, the people.”
On the other hand, Trump’s speech may have been broadly darker than the Batman supervillian’s:
Words Donald Trump said for the first time in any U.S. inaugural address pic.twitter.com/35FAQMgktj
— Post Graphics (@PostGraphics) January 20, 2017
Two clips for you here, one of the Bane echo and the other of a protester trying and failing bigly to cope with the reality of a Trump presidency. One conspicuous omission today: For a speech that was so thick with populism, it was strangely light on material about the blood-sucking cabal of international bankers and media who are hollowing out America from the inside. Maybe he’ll get around to that in his second inaugural.
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) January 20, 2017
An anti-Trump protester screams 'no' as Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th US President pic.twitter.com/qmsaFmMSkr
— ITV News (@itvnews) January 20, 2017
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