"Donald Trump Is President and You’re Not"
Is it Agitprop, a YouTube Poop, or a Political Documentary? Yes.
Donald Trump is President and You’re Not is a cinematic portrait as bizarre as its subject. It is composed entirely of news clips and public speeches, edited and manipulated by Vic Berger, a satirist known for tweeting short, deep-fried edits of Trump’s shenanigans throughout his administration. In the 2020 general election run-up, Berger collaborated with Vice to create anti-Trump agitprop in the style of a “Youtube Poop.”
“A YouTube poop (YTP) is a type of video mashup or edit created by remixing/editing pre-existing media sources often carrying subcultural significance into a new video for humorous, satirical, obscene, absurd, and profane—as well as annoying, confusing, or dramatic purposes.”
Would I really consider an extended YouTube poop a documentary film? You betcha! Technically, Donald Trump is President and You’re Not is 8 minutes too short to qualify as a “feature-length film.” It is, however, a cinematic text composed of real-world political footage, edited and organized by a filmmaker attempting to articulate their point of view. That sounds like a documentary to me.
As a political documentary, I think Berger’s novel approach results in an unironically valuable cinematic experience. The bizarre style and sensibilities of a YouTube poop give Berger the appropriately unhinged tools to cinematically reconstruct Donald Trump’s warped psyche.
As a documentarian, editing is Berger’s singular tool: there are no “talking heads” and no editorializing. Instead, Berger lets Trump speak for himself, compiling repetitious statements in montages that oscillate between absurdly funny and downright chilling.
One section revealed Trumpian fixations that had slipped my radar during his four years in office. It’s a segment devoted to Trump’s musings on “good genes,” often followed by the qualifying phrase, “if you believe in that sort of thing.” At first, I was flummoxed. Nobody was disputing the basic science of genetics, so what the hell was this man rambling about? However, through repetition (Trump talked about “good genes” a lot), viewers can see his musing mutate from tentative mentions of genetics to something hovering closer to eugenics, eventually praising specific bloodlines outright.
Donald Trump is President and You’re Not is certainly an “acquired taste.” For one, viewers have to be willing to listen to Donald Trump’s voice for an hour. For a lot of people, that’s a dealbreaker. Others may take umbrage with this derisive portrait of the former President. Or, perhaps you prefer your entertainment “apolitical,” whatever that means.
Whatever your case may be, I doubt you’ve ever seen a documentary like this. Through a barrage of sheer stupidity, Berger creates a presidential portrait that is absurd as it is acerbic. If you opt not to watch Donald Trump is President and You’re Not, that is your God-given right as an American, but I think you’re missing out on something special. Vic Berger’s hour-long “YouTube poop” is, in my opinion, very well-suited to document one of the shittiest presidents in American history.
God Bless America!
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Until next week, my fellow film freak, I salute you.
I started watching, but as entertaining as it was, I had to opt-out after a couple of minutes. I'm still suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress from Donald).
Thanks for sharing this insane compilation of an insane, inane person's fixation on genes, manliness, things he does better than anyone, etc. I could only watch about 10 minutes of it, but I love the pacing, use of random horns and crowd noises to add a kind of acerbic commentary on the surreal world we entered any time he opened his mouth. It is a kind of documentary, for sure, but also akin to the stuff that Jordan Kepler did for the Daily Show--it lets them hang themselves with their own words, carefully editing and manipulated for maximum horror.