Follow up: It was a joke.
For Many, ‘Bloom County’ Creator’s Trump Joke Doesn’t LandBerkeley Breathed, the artist who created the comic strip “Bloom County,” said he just wanted to have a little fun with President Trump.
But not everyone was in on the joke.
Mr. Breathed posted a letter to his Facebook page on Thursday purported to be from a lawyer representing Mr. Trump. The letter, dated May 22, warned Mr. Breathed to stop using the president’s image without permission for “commercial exploitation and promotion.”
“Please note that permission or release of trademark represented by Donald Trump or members of his family have not been granted, nor will they be,” the letter said. It said Mr. Breathed would have his “(censored word) in a sling before lunch,” undoubtedly not a common term of professional legalese, unless Mr. Breathed stopped.
In a follow-up post, Mr. Breathed wrote in a letter of his own that he was “just having fun,” but would stop using Mr. Trump’s image, because “while it’s a good time to make American great again, it’s not a good time to be sued.”
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The letters rocketed around the internet. By Friday afternoon, CrowdTangle, which tracks social media activity, showed that the original Facebook post was seen by three million newsfeeds and generated 78,000 interactions — people sharing, commenting or otherwise reacting to it. Many of the people who shared the post on social media seemed to take it seriously.
Morer and morer:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/bloom-county-trump.html
