Discussion Main / Trumplica

I was wondering if Lindsay Bluth from Arrested Development counts. I'm reluctant to add her in because her Trumplica status was accidental. She's born to a wealthy family and while she did not initially have plans on inheriting the family business (construction) and did a bunch of failed business ventures, she planned on running for President on the platform of building a wall between America and Mexico (this predated Trump's candidacy by a few years) and adopted a boufant looking hairstyle (it was actually to imitate her mother's).

I'm wondering if this should be split into examples pre- and post- presidential career.

• Spider-Man (PS4): The Starter Villain Wilson Fisk, better known as The Kingpin, is given some of this treatment, as a Corrupt Corporate Executive a building named after him, Fisk Tower, where the game starts out. Though contrary to initial reports, it takes the place of the Time Warner Center, not Trump Tower. The same game also gives this treatment to Norman Osborn, currently the Mayor of New York.

I pulled these for shoe-horning. Kingpin has been a Corrupt Corporate Executive for decades, and having a building named after him is nothing new. Seems like a stretch.

As for Norman, even supposing he is an example, he's a Zero-Context Example.

Removed:

• Joni Thrombey from Knives Out is a rare female example of this trope, and somehow manages to combine elements of the Trumplica with the Bourgeois Bohemian. While she claims to have left-wing political policies, talks like a Valley Girl, and engages in stereotypical New-Age Retro Hippie hobbies, she's an avaricious Social Climber and wealthy heiress who prioritizes keeping herself rich and promoting a recognizable corporate brand above all else despite claiming to despise modern consumerism and ego. She also proves to be just as vicious as her arch-conservative in-laws in attacking her late father-in-law's Hispanic immigrant nurse, Marta, for personal gain. Joni even looks a bit like Trump, having bleach-blonde hair and obvious spray-on tan.

Just being greedy and a self-promoter doesn't make her a parody of Trump. She's a pretty standard play on a Bourgeois Bohemian New-Age Retro Hippie in the era of social media "influencers" who profit off of their glamorous lifestyles and personal branding. There's nothing specifically Trumpish about her.

Removed also:

• President Shinra of Final Fantasy VII, who predates Trump's presidency. Design-wise, the original game depicts him as a blonde Fat Bastard, although the remake changes his design to look slightly slimmer and less Trump-like. Shinra is a Corrupt Corporate Executive obsessed with his own personal enrichment, and runs a company that harvests the planet's life energy despite the fact that it'll eventually lead to its destruction. His son Rufus also shares some similarities with Trump, not so much in terms of design but more through his inheritance of wealth and entitlement to such.

I already cleaned this up a lot but upon further thought I don't think it counts at all. Three points to make here:

1. The only real correlation is they're both businessmen and are thought of in a very negative way. But that's just Corrupt Corporate Executive, which is not the same thing as this trope.

2. They're both businessmen-turned-presidents, but as the example itself mentions, the game predates the Trump presidency by almost 20 years so that hardly seems like an intentional comparison.

3. The fact that the remake also changed Shinra's design to be less Trump-like, changing his hair from blonde to silver and making him thinner, further suggests to me that the similarities between them were unintentional, whereas I feel like this trope is about purposeful comparisons.

Basically, I feel like the original editor read the article linked at the beginning of the example, thought it made a good point about Shinra being like Trump, and decided to add it, but it just comes off as shoehorning to me.

Removed:

• Pokémon: Ghetsis Harmonia, Big Bad of the Unova games, is a downplayed example, with Unova being based on New York. He has the horrendously garish fashion sense and very pale weird-looking grayish-green hair, and is easily one of the most malignantly narcissistic characters in the series. He has the It's All About Me attitude, and everything he does is for his own personal enrichment and not for any sort of "greater good". One difference comes from the fact that rather than putting himself in the limelight and plastering his name all over anything, Ghetsis attempts to seize power through Puppet Kings, first his abused adoptive son N, then his top scientist Colress, and finally by acting as The Starscream to Team Rocket leader Giovanni (much like how Trump worked with authoritarian leaders of foreign governments mostly in his self-interest).

I'm calling it not an example. Aside from the example basically admitting in the last half that it's not an example, there's really only three legitimate points I can see here.

1. Ghetsis has a flamboyant hairstyle. I'm discounting it though, because it's not significant in the context of the game. Pokémon is a series that often indulges in Anime Hair, and even in this game Ghetsis' hair is actually less flamboyant than his own minion Colress.

2. They're both narcissistic. But narcissism is a very common trait among villains like Ghetsis, and is not by itself enough for me to say that he was based on Trump.

3. Ghetsis worked with Team Rocket, and Trump has had business dealings with some unpopular foreign leaders. Again, though, this is hardly something that's unique to either Ghetsis or Trump.

So basically you have three very tenuous links between the two, and the rest of the entry openly admits they're not really the same.

Also, Ghetsis' cause (which is admittedly a fake cause) is environmentalism, which isn't really one of Trump's agendas.

If anything, I would argue that Ghetsis is a send-up of fundamentalist leaders Hiding Behind Religion as a means to boost their own profit and power but who don't actually believe in the things they preach, what with him setting his son up as some sort of messiah, and dressing his grunts up like medieval crusaders. The "religious cult leader" angle is very blatant, while any connection to Trump is really coincidental at best.