Film lovers all slapped their foreheads on Tuesday as President Donald Trump belched out an odd tweet, even by his own standards. In it he warned that Democratic governors going over his head to take emergency coronavirus measures couldn’t fool him, because he watches TCM.

In a bizarre statement, Trump warned that Mutiny on the Bounty is one of his favorite films—because “a good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain.”

Of course, whether you’re watching the 1935 Clark Gable–Charles Laughton version, the 1962 Marlon Brando–Trevor Howard version, or the 1984 Mel Gibson–Anthony Hopkins version, this is a frankly baffling take on the story of Mutiny on the Bounty. For added confusion, Trump paradoxically concluded, “Too easy!”

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Some backup, in case you’re unfamiliar with this based-on-a-true-story tale: In 1787, celebrated British naturalist Sir Joseph Banks commissioned a Royal Navy vessel to sail to Tahiti, acquire breadfruit plants (a crop that wasn’t particularly tasty but was cheap to grow and rich in nutrients), and bring them to the West Indies.

The captain of the HMS Bounty at the time was one William Bligh, a brilliant navigator who served under Captain James Cook—but who also, by all accounts, was an arrogant, nasty, paranoid, freakishly obsessive, and brutal man, during a time when the British navy was notorious for impressing people into service against their will and using corporal punishment to keep them in line.

For the trip to Tahiti, Bligh hired one Fletcher Christian as master’s mate. Christian later led a mutiny against Bligh, a rebellion that came in response to the captain’s management style, which was one of near-sadistic cruelty. (The 1984 movie also implies that Hopkins’s Bligh is super jealous of hunky Gibson. Good movie!)

By the time Hollywood told the story, Fletcher Christian and, by extension, the other mutineers, had become dashing adventurers who stood for justice, love, and all that is right in the world. In reality, of course, things were a little different—just as the bonds between the British men and the Tahitian women they loved were likely not as, uh, uncomplicated as the movies show.

Nevertheless, no version—no possible interpretation of Mutiny on the Bounty shows “the mutineers need[ing] so much from the Captain,” as Trump has suggested. When Christian and his men set Bligh adrift on an open boat, they are done with him and don’t give him a second thought. They return to Tahiti, pick up their women, then split for Pitcairn Island, a very real place with a population of about 50. Its people are descendants of Bounty mutineers. (Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall’s mostly speculative sequel novels suggest that life wasn’t exactly a holiday on the island, but at least the mutineers all died as free men, not subjected to Bligh’s brutality.)

The 1935 version of the film does hedge its bets a little bit by hewing to law and order; though it frames Clark Gable’s Christian as dashing, it still recognizes that he is disobeying command. As such, Franchot Tone’s Midshipman Byam (a fictitious character based on one Peter Heywood) is the story’s most righteous man, caught between two factions.

But nothing about Trump’s tweet suggests any kind of close read. It’s more than likely he’s confusing this with some other movie.

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