US President Donald Trump has, shall we say, a unique rhetorical style. Equal parts wheedling and aggressive, Trump needs you to know everything is the best, until it is the worst, and that everyone knows it, whatever it is, to be true.
It’s a mode of speech which works, primarily, to bully the target of his ire. But weird things happen when Trump’s enemy is not a reporter or political rival, but viral cells multiplying within and killing tens of thousands of Americans.
It’s hard to embarrass a microbe, so Trump’s recent addresses about coronavirus have been very strange.
On April 10, while announcing a new US government task force to combat the pandemic, Trump veered into discussions of antibiotics and heart operations – neither of which really have much to do with the “brilliant” COVID-19, which is a) resistant to antibiotics on account of being a virus, and b) primarily targets the respiratory system.
This brings us to TikTok gun Kylie Scott, who realised that Trump’s intemperate speech pattern sounded like a drunk rant at the club.
Utilising some pretty remarkable lip-syncing skills, Scott recontextualised the remarks of an avowed teetotaller as the comments of an tipsy dumbass.
@kyscotttur doing great sweetie ##antibiotics ##covid19 ##covid ##quarantine ##intheclub ##drunkwords ##trump♬ original sound – iampeterchao
The clip has gone somewhat viral on TikTok and has been reshared on Twitter, where it’s been circulated among Never Trump accounts like some kind of divine #Resistance text.
Scott’s video probably won’t sway anyone either way come November, but hey.
It’s not the only COVID-19 adjacent content Scott has uploaded, either. Consider this apt breakdown of the kinds of people you’re liable to find rolling into webcam meetings now that meeting in person is a figment of the rapidly-fading past:
@kyscotttthe 8 ppl we all have on zoom ##zoom ##workfromhome ##wfh ##stayhome ##happyathome ##quarantinelife♬ Elevator Music – Bohoman
Ah, content. Even when society is cracking right open, we can rely on someone, somewhere, to distract us with a lip-sync or observational comedy recorded straight into a phone.
