- Donald Trump adopted a new campaign theme on Friday in Miami
- Came on stage as music from ‘Les Misérables’ played
- Video screen showed a take-off on the 2012 film adaptation’s poster
- It read ‘Les Deplorables’ – and replaced French revolutionary flags with the Stars and Stripes – and a ‘TRUMP’ flag
- Hillary Clinton insulted Trump supporters a week ago by saying ‘half’ of them belong in ‘the basket of deplorables’ and some are ‘irredeemable’
Donald Trump unveiled a new visual campaign theme in Miami on Friday – a mashup of the Broadway musical ‘Les Misérables’ and an epithet Hillary Clinton leveled at his supporters one week ago.
He took the stage, introduced by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, as the ‘Les Mis’ anthem ‘Do You Hear the People Sing’ blasted through loudspeakers.
The video screen behind the podium flashed to an artistic rendering of ‘Les Deplorables,’ complete with USA and ‘Trump’ flags replacing the French colors, and a bald eagle soaring over the revolutionary scene.
‘Welcome to all of you deplorables!’ Trump boomed as thousands screamed ‘Trump! Trump! Trump!’ and ‘We love you!’
The Presidential candidate then went on to revive an old campaign controversy by implying violence against his opponent.
He sarcastically called for Clinton’s Secret Service agents to drop their weapons, “and let’s see what happens to her.”
‘I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm, right?’ Trump said. “Take their guns away, she doesn’t want guns. Take their — and let’s see what happens to her. Take their guns away. OK, it would be very dangerous.’
Trump has previously come under fire for such comments with many saying it it tantamount to advocating violence against his White House foe.
Bastille Day? Donald Trump entered his Miami rally on Friday as the theme song from ‘Les Miserables’ played and the video wall behind the podium flashed to tribute artwork including an insult aired by Hillary Clinton a week ago
They got the joke: Thousands inside the James L. Knight Center cheered when they recognized the play on words
Unforced error: Hillary Clinton said last week that half of Trump’s supporters belong in ‘the basket of deplorables’
Clinton said ‘half’ of Trump voters belonged in ‘the basket of deplorables’ as ‘racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic [and] Islamaphobic’ Republicans.
‘Some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America,’ Clinton said.
His supporters have embraced the Clinton label and worn it as a badge of honor, and in the space of just a few days Trump rally-goers have already begun to sport ‘I am deplorable’ t-shirts and signs.
‘My opponent slanders you as “deplorable” and “irredeemable” – boy that second word is tough,’ he said Friday night.
‘Deplorable’ has become the Trump campaign’s new battle cry as his supporters wear the epithet as a badge of honr.
‘You don’t hear that much. It means you can never come back.’
‘I call you hard-working American patriots who love your family,’ he continued, ‘and really, really, really love your country.’
The man who created the artwork he used Friday, an artist known online as ‘Keln,’ was banned from using Reddit on Saturday, shortly after posting the image there.
He first posted it to a right-wing blog called ‘The Conservative Treehouse.’
‘I made the Les Deplorables meme on @Reddit last Saturday,’ he would later write on Twitter. ‘Been banned ever since. They won’t respond to tell me why.’
He wrote on his blog, NukingPolitics.com, that he suspected Reddit had an anti-Trump bias.
‘Apparently Reddit is even more sensitive than Twitter or Google or Facebook when it comes to anything that does not align to their political thinking,’ he wrote.
‘This is digital book burning people. It is time to avoid these companies. Make them suffer and turn their overpriced stocks into napkins. They have no business doing business.’
Just before the Trump rally began, his Reddit account was reinstated.
He was pleased the Trump campaign used his artwork.
‘Thank you @realDonaldTrump for using my meme to stick it to Hillary and her ilk. #MAGA We are just gonna keep winning,’ he tweeted.
‘I made it, I am glad He used it,’ he added, insisting the Trump campaign had a right to turn his work into a campaign backdrop.
Slightly different: The Trump campaign appears to have taken this image, posted six days ago on Reddit, and moved the words to the top
The real thing: The Reddit artist adapted his work from a poster promoting the 2012 film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical
Trump bashed his Democratic opponent’s stamina on Friday and complained about the same scorched-earth campaign style that carried him through the Republican primary season.
He also mocked her reliance on traditional but expensive broadcast advertisements that were the mainstay of every high-profile political campaign before hte age of the Internet.
‘Clinton’s entire campaign rests on using a single tactic, and it’s not working very well,’ Trump said. ‘She spent hundreds of millions of dollars on phony campaign ads!’
‘We’ve spent practically nothing,’ he added. ‘I’m proud of that … and you know what? We’re doing very well.
‘I think we’re actually leading.’
Clinton, he said, is a low-energy pretender to the Oval Office who has failed to inspire Democratic voters the way he has raised Republicans’ collective dander.
Miami resident Andres Novoa wore a hat reading ‘Deplorable’ to Trump’s rally on Friday night
‘If you vote, we’re winning,’ he said.
‘There’s no way she can beat us because her people have no enthusiasm whatsoever … who could possibly have enthusiasm? What are you getting?’
Wearing a Haitian-American pin given to him during an afternoon campaign stop in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, he boasted of his acumen for creating jobs while blasting Clinton’s track record after pledging to boost New York employment during her 2000 U.S. Senate race.
‘She didn’t do anything!’ Trump boomed.
‘She went home. She went to sleep, okay?’
Source: The Daily Mail
