Donald Trump's video taken down following R.E.M.'s complaint to Twitter
Donald Trump, the President of America, is a man who is hard to ignore and harder to shut up. However, R.E.M., the band that almost broke up a decade ago, managed to do exactly that when they complained to Twitter and got one of Trump's tweets taken down for using the band's song without prior permission. Read all about what went down, here.
trump’s video getting taken down for a copyright violation, which in turn rallies the masses to cry about twitter censoring conservatives is about the perfect way to end this week pic.twitter.com/CpUpfgYv17
— siraj hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) February 16, 2019
Trump took to Twitter on Friday, February 15, to mock his political opponents right after he had to declare a national emergency to build the wall on the US-Mexico border since it appears that Mexico is not going to pay for it as Trump had earlier promised. Eschewing the subtleties of wordplay or alliterations to belittle his opponent's names, Trump posted a gloating video.
The video showed some of the greatest moments from Trump's recent State of the Union address. The President went on to juxtapose this with images of Democratic leaders who were looking sad. In the background, a classic song by R.E.M., an American rock band, titled Everybody Hurts could be heard playing. This drew ire from the band who went on to complain to Twitter.
The members of R.E.M. took none too kindly to the President using their music to gloat and reunited briefly to get Trump's video taken down. CNBC reports that they filed a copyright infringement suit, which forced Twitter to delete Trump's video. Further, R.E.M. went on to troll the President as well before the infringement claim had come through, forcing Twitter's hand.
World Leader PRETEND!!! Congress, Media--ghost this faker!!! Love, R.E.M.
— R.E.M. HQ (@remhq) February 15, 2019
This is not R.E.M.'s first tiff with Trump. During his presidential campaign, Trump liked playing the band's apocalyptic hit It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine). In response, R.E.M. had sent a cease and desist notice and former frontman had tweeted, "Go f*** yourselves...Don't use our music or my voice for your moronic charade of a campaign".
