Netflix Wants People To Stop Asking If They Have The Gorilla Channel After Fake Trump Book Excerpt Goes Viral
Netflix is getting in on the Gorilla Channel joke now, too.
On Thursday, excerpts from the tell-all book about the Trump White House started to flood the internet, sharing bizarre details like Trump’s schemes to sleep with his friends’ wives and his frequent fast food and television binges. Twitter user @pixelatedboat decided to get in on the fun, making up a fake excerpt from the book claiming that Donald Trump was fixated with a fictional television channel that only featured gorillas fighting.
The report claimed that Trump was disappointed upon moving into the White House to find that his television did not receive the Gorilla Channel.
“To appease Trump, White House staff compiled a number of gorilla documentaries into a makeshift gorilla channel, broadcast into Trump’s bedroom from a hastily-constructed transmission tower on the South Lawn,” the fake excerpt read. “However, Trump was unhappy with the channel they had created, moaning that it was ‘boring’ because ‘the gorillas aren’t fighting.’
“Staff edited out all the parts of the documentaries where gorillas weren’t hitting each other, and at last the president was satisfied,” the excerpt continued. “He kneels in front of the TV, with his face about four inches from the screen,” the nonexistent insider continued, “and says encouraging things to the gorillas, like ‘the way you hit that other gorilla was good.'”
Many people were fooled by the fake excerpt, Politico noted, including a number of Trump’s most prominent critics on Twitter.
By Friday night, Netflix decided to get in on the fun and made a public plea for people to stop asking about the Gorilla Channel.
please stop calling our customer service hotline to ask if we have The Gorilla Channel
— Netflix (@netflix) January 6, 2018
The viral fake played off the huge popularity of Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Ever since bits of the book started to leak earlier in the week, it created a firestorm of press coverage as reports latched onto the salacious bits. One passage detailed how Trump would scheme to sleep with the wives of his friends, even enlisting his secretary to call the friends and coax them into sexual banter while the wife listened on.
Another round of applause for at least these 4 blue checkmarks who thought the Gorilla Channel was real….@ericgarland @funder @samanthamaiden @shadihamid
Great work @pixelatedboat! pic.twitter.com/LALxGiFRmN
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) January 5, 2018
Other passages detailed how Melania Trump cried on election night and did not want to be in the White House, and how she and Donald Trump very publicly fought at his inauguration.
While the bit about the Gorilla Channel may have been faked, the viral joke has lived on and still going viral on Friday night. Some wondered how long it would take an enterprising network to actually create the Gorilla Channel, and whether Trump might actually enjoy it.
