My "Unified Reich" T-shirt is raising many questions that are answered by my "Unified Reich" T-shirt

Image via FineScale Modeler.

Trump's mind going totally blank, you really have to watch it: 

I don’t know if Trump’s teleprompter went out or if he just had a Glitch McConnell episode, but pausing for a full 33 seconds mid-speech for no reason is really weird.pic.twitter.com/IiPJW7iK6d

— TrumpsTaxes (@TrumpsTaxes) May 19, 2024

The background music is the original audio, a track Trump has been using for a couple of years, at rallies and in campaign videos. It's been identified as "WWG1WGA"—a reference to the QAnon slogan "Where we go one, we go all" (when the song comes on in the rallies, Q aficionados in the audience make the Q index finger salute), by a tech house composer known as "Richard Feelgood"—

Richard Feelgood is a compelling Electronic and Tech House artist from Enschede, Netherlands. Feelgood has established himself as a leading figure in the electronic music industry thanks to his distinctive style and contagious beats. His work skillfully combines aspects of electronic music with the rhythm and energy of tech house, creating a distinctive and dynamic sound that captivates listeners.

—but the Trump campaign has denied this, insisting that the song they are using is a royalty-free track called "Mirrors" by Will Van De Crommert. Van De Crommert, who is not from Enschede but Minneapolis and lives in LA, agrees that it's his, but adds importantly that "Feelgood" has stolen his recordings, that Trump is not authorized to use them, and that he does not support Trump or QAnon in any way.

The fact remains that in his address to the National Rifle Association Trump seemingly forgot where he was—in his speech or in his life, who knows?—for 33 seconds before he was able to pick it up and launch back into his standard spiel, the tale of national decline that he likes to accompany with this spooky-sounding music. It's not a Mitch McConnell–style freeze, he's clearly uncomfortably aware that something is very wrong, he just takes an incredibly long time to figure out what he needs to do about it. Something is definitely in decline, and I don't think it's necessarily America.

Then there's this:

Yes, the great cartoonist has been attending the hush-money coverup trial, and this is his report from today's session. I'll bet Trump does that a lot, going into standby mode when there's not a camera or an audience (or a TV playing where somebody might mention his name), but he's finding it harder to keep it under control. 

Then yesterday there was this "Truth" which you can check out for yourself at NBC:

This is a campaign video decorated with fake newspaper images while the voiceover reads some imaginary headlines from after Trump is reelected and offers some subliminal ones, like the one at lower left, which is really hard to read if you haven't heard what it says,

INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED
DRIVEN BY THE CREATION OF A UNIFIED REICH

The text is taken from Wikipedia's World War I article, where it referred, of course, not to the US but the German Empire (or "Second Reich" as the Nazis called it, the one that didn't pretend to be holy or Roman, while the Third was the one that didn't pretend to have a royally born Emperor).

I'm not going to claim to be "outraged" by this evidence that Trump has Nazis working in his creative department, looking forward to the establishment of a Fourth Reich in 2025, because I more or less assumed it, but what the hell? What's wrong with them? 

Mocking up that newspaper clipping was a lot of work, starting with the sourcing of the text. Thinking of using a text that makes these specific references was a lot of thinking. This little craft project was kind of a big project, to very little purpose I can imagine, other than as a kind of joke for the cognoscenti, not a dog whistle in the sense of a secret signal to action, more like a special frat handshake. 

What it's going to remind me of is the effort that went into the creation of "Richard Feelgood" (whose other titles include "I am Q", "Battle for the World", and "White Hat Victory"). That was a lot of work too, stealing the songs from Van De Crommert and making up a backstory and website for them and posting them to Apple Music and Spotify without getting caught. What would people do this for? Partly because it's funny, I suppose, fooling all the grownups who don't suspect you're a Nazi, or do suspect it but can't prove it.

Maybe it grows out of a gaming habit, the online equivalent of what boys used to spend hours doing back in the day, gluing and painting model planes and the like, disciplined and meticulous and essentially pointless. Maybe Trump's boys—Dan Scavino, Stephen Miller, Boris Epshteyn, Kash Patel—are all 12 or 14 years old at heart, building their secret society while the old man dodders and nods. That's not meant to suggest it isn't dangerous, especially if they're armed.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

Update: Philip Bump at WaPo points out that the video was made with stock footage, and links an ad for the company that sells it, which just happens to feature the same footage;

A person who does motion graphics and video editing work emailed with a link to the stock footage used in the video Trump shared. This person noted that they’d used the same template recently, noting that the designer of the Trump video had apparently not swapped out the filler text included by default.

Bump thinks that proves it was an accident, but these accidents, like the Hillary with Star of David on a bed of greenbacks, or the swastika tweet, or the Mussolini quote, do happen an awful lot.  Also, did Scavino or somebody steal the footage from the ad instead of paying for it?