RESOLVING THE LEDGER
This is one outlet's own report from The Independent — the article as it was filed.
DOE misinterprets ‘tiger’ quote from Oscar-winning 2017 film ‘Darkest Hour,’ forcing it to delete social media clip after backlash
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President Donald Trump ’s Department of Education (DOE) has been forced to delete a social post in which it appeared to inadvertently compare his administration to Nazi Germany .
The official X account of the DOE, which is led by former professional wrestling impresario Linda McMahon , posted a short clip from the 2017 film Darkest Hour in which Gary Oldman won an Oscar for his portrayal of Sir Winston Churchill.
“You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth!” Oldman’s Churchill declares in the scene.
The DOE’s post was captioned, “No one does it like us,” followed by a tiger emoji, aligning the Trump administration with the big cat.
However, as any high school history student could have identified, Sir Winston was referring to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in making that statement, arguing that the appeasement strategy previously attempted by his predecessor, Sir Neville Chamberlain, had failed and that Britain had no choice but to fight on.
The blunder did not go unnoticed. “Not only is this not a real Churchill quote, the ‘tiger’ Churchill is referring to is Adolf Hitler,” one person wrote in response.
“Aside from the fact that this video nakedly compares Trump to Adolf Hitler what does it have to do with education?” said another. “I guess whoever is running the department’s social media could use some, maybe that’s it.”
Another user commented : “The department of education being so profoundly illiterate as to not know what this scene is referring to is just beautifully poetic.”
The post has since disappeared from the DOE’s page. The Independent has reached out to the department for comment.
Trump himself is no stranger to comparing himself to pivotal figures from history – and was once gifted a replica of Churchill’s signature Homberg hat by British media personality Piers Morgan – but would surely draw the line at being associated with Hitler.
That said, New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan recounted an Oval Office meeting with the president in their recent book Regime Change in which he mused that his superior global reach made him a mightier leader than some of history’s greatest conquerors, from Alexander the Great to the Caesars.
“They didn’t have airplanes, right? You couldn’t travel around,” he told the reporters, claiming to be more powerful than: “Napoleon. Hitler. Mao. Stalin.”
He did concede that those men “maintained power though fear” and asked: “Who would ever do a thing like that? Right?”
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