Donald J Drumpf

Donald J. Drumpf is a parody character created by the television personality John Oliver in a segment of his show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which is broadcast on the HBO television network. In the first few hours after broadcast the search term "Donald Drumpf" gained tremendous popularity. Oliver claims Drumpf was the former name of the Trump family in the 1600s.
Etymology
On the February 28, 2016, episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, John Oliver created the hashtag , referencing that Trump's ancestors had the last name "Drumpf". He also registered the web domain www.donaldjdrumpf.com, which sells parody items replacing "Trump" with the "Drumpf" brand. Immediately after the segment, web searches for "Donald Drumpf" went viral. By Super Tuesday, "Donald Drumpf" surpassed "Ted Cruz" and "Marco Rubio" in Google Searches.
According to the The New York Times, Oliver took precautions to dispel the notion that the Trumps' last name had been changed in the more recent past. A writer for the Boston Globe said that if the Trumps had not changed their surname, they may have been less successful in America.
Oliver stated that "Drumpf is much more reflective of who really is." Oliver said that if viewers wanted to vote for "the charismatic guy promising to make America great again," they should "stop and take a moment to imagine how would feel if just met a guy named Donald Drumpf." Oliver called Trump "a liar," saying that the latter had "a string of broken business ventures and the support of a former Klan leader, who he can’t decide whether or not to condemn."
Oliver told viewers to use the word "Drumpf," saying, "Drumpf is much less magical. It’s the sound produced when a morbidly obese pigeon flies into the window of a foreclosed Old Navy. Drumpf: It’s the sound of a bottle of store-brand root beer falling off the shelf in a gas station minimart."
Immediately after the broadcast segment, web searches for the term "Donald Drumpf" went viral. By Super Tuesday, "Donald Drumpf" surpassed "Ted Cruz" and "Marco Rubio" in Google Searches.
Merchandising
A website promoted by HBO sells authorized Donald Drumpf merchandise including baseball caps designed to parody the "Make America Great Again" slogan. Individual artists are now selling their own versions of the slogan "Make Donald Drumpf Again" on a variety of t-shirts, coffee mugs, posters and hats.
Personification
The parody character gained a Twitter account which was not entirely new, as it had been active since May 2013, tweeting in at least 2015, before Oliver's segment of February 2016. Donald J. Drumpf @RealDonalDrumpf is followed by more than 27,000 users and has been highly active with tweets of personal attacks coming out every few minutes. The parody character even got into a tweeting battle with Donald Trump himself. Self reported as "A 100% classy Donald Trump parody account. Operated under the actual family name Drumpf."
NameSake
Twitterbot DeepDrumpf is a computer program created by MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) postdoc candidate Bradley Hayes who mimics Donald Trump's "simple" speech patterns. The bot was named after the parody character Donald Drumpf based on Bradley's inspiration from the broadcast.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu