Brad Parscale is an idiot
Keeping up with the festivities of May 4th, which has popularly become known as “Star Wars Day” on social media, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, decided it would be a good idea to cash in on the recent display of fandom by referring to the Trump 2020 re-election campaign as the Death Star in a tweet:
“For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star).” he tweeted. “It is firing on all cylinders. Data, Digital, TV, Political, Surrogates, Coalitions, etc. In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time.”
The tweet included a GIF of the infamous space station from the Star Wars film franchise demonstrating its full firepower by blowing up a planet. The problem, which was quickly pointed out by Joe Biden’s campaign, is that the Death Star itself gets destroyed at the end of the movie, and Biden aide Andrew Yates was quick to respond with a clip of the Death Star being blown up to remind Parscale of what happens to it. It quickly became a trending topic on Twitter, for reasons that Parscale probably wasn’t hoping for.
On the other hand, when you consider that the evil empire prided itself on the ability of the Death Star to destroy an entire planet, something that the Trump administration’s contempt for regulations and scientific evidence is already doing, perhaps it’s actually a pretty apt metaphor. There’s also the likelihood that it’ll be destroyed by a determined and far-reaching coalition of voters who already identify with the Resistance.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making