MeidasTouch

About

MeidasTouch is a Democratic media operation that produces remixes of clips of Republican politicians, particularly U.S. President Donald Trump, to create arguments against Trump's 2020 re-election campaign. The group is operated by Ben, Brett and Jordan Meiselas.

History

According to YouTube, the MeidasTouch channel launched on May 13th, 2010. The group posted their first available video on December 12th, 2013. The video, "Dad SAVES daughter at Knicks – Bulls game! (12/11/13)" received more than 5.3 million views in less than six years (shown below, left).

On March 17th, 2020, the group published their first Trump-related video, a genre they would later become associated with. Their remix in the style of the political comedy television series Veep received more than 1,200 views in less than six months (shown below, right).

On March 25th, 2020, the creators of the site registered the domain MeidasTouch.com.^[1] Two days later, the group tweeted for the first time. They posted a video with the caption "Pro hockey star and social justice leader
@Dreamer_Aliu78 is keeping spirits up with a new viral video challenge he created from home."

Pro hockey star and social justice leader @Dreamer_Aliu78 is keeping spirits up with a new viral video challenge he created from home 🤯💪Read more: https://t.co/8gnZphx7Cb pic.twitter.com/BFcoSxREFg

— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) March 27, 2020

On July 8th, 2020, the group published their most popular video to date, "Creepy Trump." The video recuts a press conference featuring Kellyanne Conway talking about Vice President Joe Biden, Trump's 2020 presidential election opponent, with clips of Trump talking about and touching his daughters (shown below). On YouTube, the video received more than 1.5 million views in less than one month. The video went viral on Twitter,^[2] receiving more than 6.4 million views, 33,000 likes and 29,000 retweets in less than one month.

On July 21st, CNN^[3] published an article about the group's videos. In the article, Ben Meiselas said:

I think you see an excited, motivated (Democratic) electorate out there, and I see a deflated Trump grasping for people to be at his rallies while no one's showing up, and just withering away at these ridiculous press conferences he's holding. Do I think MeidasTouch is responsible for all of that? No. Do I think for most of that? No. But do I think MeidasTouch is playing a small part, as three brothers can, in impacting this election cycle? Yes.

Search Interest

External References