The blue-checkmark mafia were not the only ones triggered by President Trump celebrating the exonerating Mueller report with a “Game of Thrones” meme; HBO has now jumped into the fray with an official statement of rebuke.
As reported by The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra, the president sparked liberal outrage on Thursday morning when he tweeted out a meme gloating over his victory in the wake of the released Mueller report, which showed no evidence he conspired with Russia to rig the 2016 election.
“No Collusion. No Obstruction. For The Haters And The Radical Left Democrats–Game Over,” Trump tweeted with a photoshopped image from “Game of Thrones.”
After a cavalcade of enraged media figures denounced the president’s meme as the work of a madman, HBO finally issued an official statement lamenting the fact their intellectual property was used for political purposes.
“Though we can understand the enthusiasm for ‘Game of Thrones’ now that the final season has arrived, we still prefer our intellectual property not be used for political purposes,” HBO said in an official statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
NBC News White House correspondent Hallie Jackson referred to the president’s meme as a “pre-report release victory lap.”
“As we were watching it, I couldn’t help but think that the President must be thrilled and it appears he is,” said Jackson. “He is tweeting now, a riff off of the popular television show Game of Thrones writing simply, ‘game over.’… This is the President’s pre-report release victory lap, if you will. His administration is clearly trying to set what they believe is the narrative for this even before anybody … has had the chance to see the content of the report itself.”
In a press conference on Thursday morning, Attorney General William Barr exonerated President Trump’s pre-victory lap when he announced the Mueller report found no sign of collusion or obstruction of justice.
“As you know, one of the primary purposes of the Special Counsel’s investigation was to determine whether members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, or any individuals associated with that campaign, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election,” Barr said. “As you will see, the Special Counsel’s report states that his ‘investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.'”
“Thanks to the Special Counsel’s thorough investigation, we now know that the Russian operatives who perpetrated these schemes did not have the cooperation of President Trump or the Trump campaign – or the knowing assistance of any other Americans for that matter,” Barr continued. “That is something that all Americans can and should be grateful to have confirmed.”
According to THR, Trump has used “Game of Thrones” imagery in the past which HBO disapproved of by issuing a statement of rebuke. “Trump first borrowed the HBO trademark late last year when the president delivered a warning to Iran about reimposing all U.S. sanctions that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal,” reports the outlet. “The meme warned, ‘Sanctions are coming,’ a reference to the famous phrase from the series, ‘Winter is coming.'”
At the time, HBO told THR that the meme was a misappropriation of their trademark. “We were not aware of this messaging and would prefer our trademark not be misappropriated for political purposes,” said HBO at the time.
