The US President Donald Trump has recently been released after spending nearly three days in the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Although still under treatment, Trump has been making several claims about how COVID-19 wasn’t as bad as expected and comparing it to the flu.
Trump’s campaign account, TeamTrump recently tweeted a video featuring San Francisco 49ers’ Brandon Aiyuk scoring a touchdown after leaping over a Philadelphia Eagles’ defender.
The meme involved superimposing Trump’s face in the place of Aiyuk’s and COVID-19 in the place of the defender from Philadelphia Eagles.
The video was however taken down as it was reported by the copyright owner of the video. “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner,” reads a message slapped on the tweet which is now removed from Twitter.
Whether Trump was trying to downplay the effects of the virus or is trying to show how he remained unscathed by it, the copyright owner did not seem to be OK with what was being done with their video.
Even though the meme is derivative and would likely hold up to fair use scrutiny in court, the shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach of the DMCA allowed the meme to be automatically removed.
It is worth noting that the video that was taken down also contained a small clip from ITV News report. It is not yet clear as to who reported to Twitter: ITV News or The NFL, bringing the video down.
President Trump has faced several copyright claims against memes in recent times.
