Bill Pullman has told Donald Trump to keep his memes to himself, after he re-shared a “deep fake” video from the 1996 flick Independence Day. In the clip, which was posted to Twitter by a supporter on May 14, Trump’s head was superimposed on the body of Bill’s character, President Thomas J. Whitmore. Others were also superimposed into the crowd, including Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, Jr., and Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. Bill clapped back at the president: “My voice belongs to no one but me, and I’m not running for president — this year,” he told The Hollywood Reporter on May 17.
Just one day earlier, Trump was heavily criticized by former US President Barack Obama who gave a commencement address via video chat to recent high school and college graduates. “More than anything, this pandemic has fully finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said in a clip, which was streamed online as part of the “Show Me Your Walk H.B.C.U. Edition” virtual ceremony. “A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”
In the speech, which read read like an indictment on Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, he also emphasized the unique power that the class of 2020 have. “No generation has been better positioned to be warriors for justice and remake the world,” he said. “Let’s be honest, a disease like this just spotlights the underlying inequalities and extra burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country,” he said. “We see it in the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on our communities, just as we see it when a black man goes for a jog and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning.”
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Obama also added, “So rather than say, ‘What’s in it for me?’ or ‘What’s in it for my community and to heck with everyone else,’ stand up for and join up with everyone who’s struggling — whether immigrants, refugees, the rural poor, the LGBTQ community, low-income workers of every background, women who so often are subject to their own discrimination and burdens and not getting equal pay for equal work.”