President Donald Trump’s Department of Education (DOE) was forced to delete a social post after it appeared to compare his administration to Nazi Germany.
According to The Independent, the official X account of the DOE, which is led by former professional wrestling impresario Linda McMahon, posted a short clip from the 2017 film Darkest Hour in which Gary Oldman won an Oscar for his portrayal of Sir Winston Churchill.
Oldman’s Churchill declares in the scene, “You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth!”
The DOE captioned the post, “No one does it like us,” followed by a tiger emoji, aligning the Trump administration with the big cat.
However, social media users quickly identified that Winston was referring to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in making that statement.
Social media reacts to DOE post
The blunder did not go unnoticed as social media users quickly pointed out the blunder.
One user wrote in response, “Not only is this not a real Churchill quote, the ‘tiger’ Churchill is referring to is Adolf Hitler.”
“Aside from the fact that this video nakedly compares Trump to Adolf Hitler what does it have to do with education? I guess whoever is running the department’s social media could use some, maybe that’s it,” said another.
Third one commented, “The department of education being so profoundly illiterate as to not know what this scene is referring to is just beautifully poetic.”
One user replied to the post, "The tiger to which churchill is referring is adolf hitler/nazis, so we can all agree trump is appropriately being compared to them. Also, I assume you're all f**king idiots & didn't realize that, which makes it all the better this is coming from the department of education."
"The department of education being so profoundly illiterate as to not know what this scene is referring to is just beautifully poetic," one person noted.
Following the backlash, the department of education deleted the post and a spokesperson told the Daily Beast that the video based on trending sound on TikTok was created and posted by staffer who did not understand the context of the video.
