Donald Trump officially took the oath of office yesterday at 12:00 p.m. eastern standard time, his right hand raised as he pledged to uphold the Constitution, and subsequently delivered his Inauguration Day speech. President Trump borrowed heavily from his platform message during his campaign rallies, and in what Time magazine writer David Von Drehle described as “16 mostly harsh, mostly confrontational minutes,” painted a grim picture of a crumbling republic, beset by political corruption and the enemy of global trade and the speech immediately drew comparison across the internet with an unlikely fictional character-Batman villain, Bane.
Donald Trump delivers his Inauguration Day Speech as 45th President [Image By Saul Loeb/AP Images]
Bane first appeared in DC Comics in 1993, but the specific incarnation of Bane that had Twitter erupting over Donald Trump on Inauguration Day was one portrayed by Tom Hardy in Christopher Nolan’s 2012 The Dark Knight Rises. Almost immediately on social media, people were buzzing about the similarity to one of Trump’s early lines and a scene from the film featuring super-villain Bane delivering a speech in fictional Gotham City. By 3:00 p.m., even major market media like People magazine were tweeting about it.
In the final film of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy starring Christian Bale as The Dark Knight, Batman is defeated and exiled, and Gotham City is besieged by a terror group led by Bane, a hideous and menacing figure who, played memorably by Tom Hardy, speaks the Queen’s English eloquently through a Vader-esque, mechanical breathing mask, with a chilling effect. In the scene in question, Bane is announcing his rule over the city, while releasing hundreds of prisoners from Blackgate prison and he delivers an ominous speech on the steps of a municipal building.
By 4:00 p.m. yesterday, Paul Schrodt of Business Insider was reporting the similarities as, “not exactly the same, but it’s close to what Bane…. says of Gotham when he holds the city hostage and removes its police and powerful officials.”
Comparing The Two Lines
The words uttered by Bane in his message of domination go like this
“We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you, the people.”
The eerie resemblance delivered by President Trump early in his inauguration speech were in these lines.
“Today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another — but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the people.”
Tom Hardy, the man behind the Bane mask in The Dark Knight Rises [Image By Jon Furniss/AP Images]
Trump went on to say that for too long, a small group of people in Washington, DC (presumably the political insiders and career politicians the President had long demonized on the campaign trail) had “reaped the rewards of government, while the people had borne the cost.”
For Bane, the Gotham City ruling class, the corrupt police department, and biased judicial system were the enemy from whom he was now liberating the people. For President Trump, his Inauguration Day speech drew a stunning similarity to not only the tone of Bane’s infamous Batman diatribe but nearly a word for word sentence in common.
Though Donald Trump does not share Bane’s disdain for law and order or criminal justice, the two echoed sentiments that it was time to be rescued from the clutches of governmental corruption, and only a force as powerful as them were capable of putting things as they should be.
Trump had claimed to be crafting his own speech on social media last week, but it’s customary for presidents to enlist the help of speechwriters, as is rumored lately that policy strategist Stephen Miller may have contributed.
