Death Star Trump Campaign

About

Death Star Trump Campaign refers to a tweet made by President Donald Trump's campaign manager Brad Parscale in May 2020 comparing their campaign to the "Death Star," the empire's space station in Star Wars. The tweet was mocked online by those opposed to Trump, by explaining that the Death Star was destroyed.

Origin

On May 7th, 2020, Brad Parscale, Trump's 2020 campaign manager, tweeted, "For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star). It is firing on all cylinders. Data, Digital, TV, Political, Surrogates, Coalitions, etc. In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time" (shown below). The tweet gained over 21,700 likes and 7,500 retweets in a day.

Precursor

In March 2018, references to the death star correlating to Trump's presidency began being made after the introduction of the United States Space Force. On March 13th, 2018, Twitter user @RogueNASA retweeted the @CBSNews tweet regarding the space force and said "We’re getting a Death Star. Calling it now" (shown below). The tweet received over 12,000 likes in two years.

Spread

On May 7th, 2020, Parscale replied in the original thread saying, "I didn’t give our campaign the name, Death Star, the media did. However, I am happy to use the analogy. The fact is, we haven’t used it yet. Laugh all you want, we will take the win!"^[6] The reply accumulated over 9,900 likes and 2,400 retweets in a day. That day, Twitter user @BarbMcQuade asked "Who chooses to portray themselves as the Death Star?" to which Twitter user @JoyceWhiteVance^[4] replied "Bad emperor-wannabes" which received over 5,400 likes in a day (shown below, left). That same day, Redditor jcepiano reposted a tweet locking the statement to r/facepalm^[5] and received over 50 points (87% upvoted) in a day (shown below, right).

On ay 7th, Twitter user @AndrewBatesNC responded to the original tweet with a GIF of the death star blowing up captioned, "11/3/2020" (shown below). The tweet accumulated over 7,200 likes and 1,700 retweets in a day. The Daily Dot,^[3] The Hill^[1] and Deadline^[2] published articles on Parscales tweet.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References