A cartoon parody of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump has gone viral on the Chinese internet.
On Saturday, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire from a rooftop with an assault rifle during Trump’s presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing the Republican‘s ear. A stray bullet killed one man and seriously wounded two others.
An animated reimagining of the attack was uploaded on Monday on the Chinese video-sharing platform Douyin from the account “Toilet Paper Kitten.” The 24-second clip, which includes dialogue apparently taken from a Japanese anime and Chinese subtitles, shows a muscular, square-jawed parody of Trump as he stumps in the western Pennsylvania town.
An animated version of Crooks can be seen peering down the scope of his AR-15-like firearm as he lies on a nearby rooftop. “Stop moving, damned old man,” he says as he struggles to get a bead on a dancing Trump.
A figure decked out in stars and stripes with an Uncle Sam hat catches an incoming bullet and saves Trump, now shown to be missing a portion of his right ear. Trump, blood dripping down his face, raises his fist as Secret Service members rush him off stage and the American flag flies dramatically overhead.
The video has been widely played across multiple Chinese social media platforms as well as on X, formerly Twitter, where it racked up 19 million views on one of the accounts that shared it.
“Toilet Paper Kitten” has shared various other animations, which like this one were illustrated in the style of the popular Japanese anime series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.
This screen capture of a Chinese parody of the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump shows the former president raise his fist after a bullet grazed his ear. The video, created by animator “Toilet Paper Kitty,” has gone viral on Chinese social media.
Douyin
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign with an emailed request for comment.
Chinese netizens have taken a keen interest in the shooting. Soon after the incident, images of his blood-smeared face inspired T-shirts and other merchandise on e-commerce sites in the country.
Conversations about the attempt on Trump’s life and how it reflects an increasingly divided American society and democratic system “in deep trouble” have also been common on the Chinese internet in recent days, nationalistic media outlet the Global Times reported on Sunday.
Hu Xijin, a media personality and former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, wrote on “China‘s X-like microblogging site Weibo that the failed assassination would earn Trump more voter sympathy, putting him “one step closer” to returning to the White House.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Sunday conveyed President Xi Jinping‘s sympathies over the shooting.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.