(Image: Universal Pictures)

In yet another reminder that we’re now living in 2017, the year when text dragged subtext into an alley and bashed its brains in with a rusty piece of rebar, ScreenCrush reports that President-Elect Donald Trump has now turned to the Purge movies for political inspiration. Trump recently gave an interview to The Washington Post, discussing his trademarked “Make America Great Again“ slogan, and musing on which branded, hat-friendly content he might hit upon for a re-election run. It didn’t take Trump long to mentally saunter over to the obvious choice, floating “Keep America Great” as the ID for a prospective 2020 run. (He then called for a lawyer, mid-interview, to come trademark the phrase, because Donald Trump is the ultimate parody of himself.)


There’s really just one problem with Our Glorious Orange Leader’s latest slogan pick: (Okay, there are a lot of problems, starting with the phrase “Donald Trump 2020 re-election run,” but bear with us for a second.) “Keep America Great” is already the tagline for The Purge: Election Year, the violent 2016 satire about an idealistic female senator being threatened, bullied, and nearly destroyed by her loutish, psychopathic opposition. Now, to be fair, The Purge writers presumably based their tagline on Trump’s original slogan, tapping into the (depressingly justified) anxieties the 2016 election cycle provoked. Still, it’s not exactly a good look for the future leader of the free world to share parallel thought processes with writers who spend their days thinking up new depravities for masked madmen to visit on regular Americans. (That being said, “Keep America Great” will probably be a huge hit among that demographic of voters who view the Purge movies as a how-to guide for proper democracy, not an over-the-top warning shot across its bows.)