If you had a pulse and operable thumbs this weekend, then surely you saw the widely retweeted clip of a young girl calling former Pizza Hut commercial actor and current POTUS Donald Trump a "disgrace." If not, enjoy now:
The clip was shared without much context on Twitter over the weekend, garnering hundreds of thousands of retweets and new posts, with some people seemingly convinced that was indeed the actual Trump in the clip. "You're a disgrace to the world," the young girl says, immediately causing an uproarious response from an unseen studio audience.
So what is actually happening in this clip? Let's take a look:
Of course that's not the real Trump in the video.
Clearly, this is a Trump impersonator. The President Show star Anthony Atamanuik, to be exact:
The satirical series, which premiered on Comedy Central in April, also stars former Colbert Report writer Peter Grosz as Vice President Mike Pence. The series will hopefully "push the Fourth Estate to reassess how they cover [Trump]," Atamanuik toldEsquire last month.
The young girl's reaction, however, is quite real indeed.
In a series of tweets Sunday and Monday, Atamanuik said the young girl in the clip is not "an actress" and that the fantastic "disgrace to the world" line was not planned. "Just to be clear, she wasn't an actress," Atamanuik said. "She got off a bench and walked over. Her line was so good, but totally spontaneous."
So this entire thing is fake? WTF?!?!?
No, calm down. The young girl's comments, as explained above, were real and unplanned. Is that really Trump? No. Does that make the clip any less compelling? No! Still, a few headlines have decided to characterize the entire clip as "fake," a characterization with which Atamanuik isn't too pleased:
Yeah, but is the real Trump truly a disgrace to the world?
To paraphrase a previous disgrace to American politics, you betcha!
