The Gorilla Channel

During the first Trump Administration, there was the “tell-all” book from Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury. Because the book was filled with incendiary details, it was pretty easy to parody, and one such joke from user @pixelatedboat (who also gifted us with “Milkshake Duck”) claimed Donald Trump was obsessed with “The Gorilla Channel”:

The joke took off for two main reasons. First, for how much Trump believes whatever is on TV in front of him, and how much TV he watches. He’s bragged about his TiVo use, “executive time” was basically code for “he’s watching television,” and he called into Fox News so much that at one point they had to cut off his rambling. He's also incredibly gullible, once believing that his friend Vince McMahon was killed during an obvious Monday Night Raw wrestling stunt. Trump’s obsession with television even became a running joke on Last Week Tonight, where the only way to possibly get information to Trump was through fake ads starring the Catheter Cowboy that run during Fox and Friends. He is a creature of television, made by it and also able to speak to it, as brilliantly analyzed in James Poniewozik’s must-read book Audience of One.

The other reason people saw truth in the joke is how much Trump loves violence and wants to see it imposed on those he sees as lesser than. This has been a long-running theme in Trump’s life, dating back to at least his call for the death penalty for The Central Park Five. Dating back to his first campaign for President, he happily cheered on violence in the crowd and mused about “Second Amendment people” should Hillary Clinton win office. During his time in office, he reportedly suggested shooting protestors and migrants in the legs. He also loves the movie Bloodsport (and hey, fair; it’s an entertaining watch), and, to return to “The Gorilla Channel,” he tasked his son Eric with fast-forwarding to the violent parts.

Ten months into the second Trump Administration, we are now living The Gorilla Channel. The rise of AI deepfakes and the removal of anyone inside the Trump Administration to contradict him has led to the overt manipulation and policy goals centered on grotesque, violent spectacle. For the past week or so, Trump has said that Portland, Oregon, is a “warzone” and that store windows are boarded up with plywood. However, when the Governor of Oregon, Tina Kotek, told Trump that Portland is fine, he had a rare moment of clarity.

“I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.”

There is an entire media ecosystem that wants to give Trump his vision regardless of real events. Even outside of the normal right-wing echo chamber, mainstream publications like CNN were willing to indulge this fantasy like an article about Trump possibly employing the Insurrection Act, but with a photo from the L.A. riots in 1992 rather than present-day Portland. While the Insurrection Act was employed during those riots, a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that photo was referring to the current “warzone” Trump seeks to evoke.

Of course, this idea of major American cities being lawless hellscapes with images ripped from John Carpenter’s Escape from New York is useful for Trump’s authoritarian aims of using the state against his perceived enemies. Those in his cohort are more than happy to try and create that violence for him, with ICE agents running rampant through the streets and those on the right wing looking for any excuse to go to war with those they deem liberal. There is a real hunger for violence, not just from Trump, but from large swaths of the GOP. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton wrote an article during the George Floyd protests demanding that the President “Send in the Troops,” and last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi openly lied about the assassin of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, claiming that he was a left-wing actor despite the mountain of evidence that the assassin was politically conservative. 

The Conservative movement isn’t interested in building anything, but they are spoiling for a fight, which falls in line with Trump’s avowed desire to see such violence. He’s the leader of the party, and he sees violence as a way of projecting his power. The whole stunt a couple of weeks ago, where he and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spoke to generals, was about a desire to fire on U.S. citizens. "This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it's the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control," said Trump, and added that he thinks U.S. cities should be “training grounds for our military.” 

Every act of protest is perceived as an opportunity for violent conflict. Leading GOP politicians are already claiming that this Saturday’s No Kings 2 protest is a “Hate America” and “pro-Hamas” rally from “the antifa people,” but also that the protestors are paid because I guess they really hate America, but unless a check shows up in the mail, they’ll stay home. Regardless, the GOP thinks any grievance against them, whether it’s ICE kidnapping children, cutting Medicaid, or the economic chaos of tariffs, is not only illegitimate but must be met with force.

Because the President demands his content. He needs to hover over his phone and see the images of chaos where he can pretend he’s the strongest, smartest, best-est boy; it even says so on his hat. But to entertain an entertainer, his handlers need to whip up some violence. And now that there are no more “adults in the room,” he’s braying for more bloodshed. He wants ICE, police, the national guard, and anyone else with a gun to fire into a crowd. It’s from a movement that valorizes Kyle Rittenhouse and shrugs when an assassin doesn’t neatly fit into what they want their villain to be. For all that pundits like Ezra Klein want to call for the end of political violence, they refuse to see that an entire political party is motivated by violence. It’s an animating force, bubbled up from the darkest recesses of one man's fevered imagination to now brew in the Oval Office.