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Looking over from across the pond (your author here is a quintessential English gentleman. Well... he's English at least), it's hard to be envious of the current U.S. presidential race (and that's coming from someone whose current prime minister wasn't even elected and most people had never heard of, whose previous prime minister was a po-faced, wimpy alleged pig-lover, whose prime minister before that was another non-elected individual with a creepy fake smile and the backbone of an earthworm, and whose prime minister before that was a war-mongering tosser and George W. Bush's lapdog).
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton worry us. There are no two ways about it. One is an evil, power-hungry, entitled, arrogant, possible racist and the other is... wait which one were we even talking about there? Let's face it, they're both awful options.
Clinton is (probably) the lesser of the two evils, however, as she at least possesses a modicum of intelligence and nous. Trump is an uncouth, tactless, clueless lunatic at times - and his hair is an absolute catastrophe - and that has resulted in him being compared to some of the other craziest people in history (both real and fictional). This article will list just fifteen of those equally crazy individuals.
15. M.O.D.A.A.K.
Recently - in July of 2016, to be exact - a comic book villain's introduction led to some very obvious comparisons being made between him and Donald Trump. The villain in question was M.O.D.A.A.K. (Mental Organism Designed as America's King) and he appeared in the Spider-Gwen comics as Marvel Earth-65's version of the infamous villain M.O.D.O.K.
Perhaps more specifically, this was actually Marvel Earth-65's version of Mr. Trump. In spite of the fact that this villain was a giant head in a mechanical body, the facial resemblance to Trump was undeniable - and the fact that he was also a foreigner-hating (he described foreigners as "foreign filth") hand-obsessive made the comparison even more obvious.
Rather satisfyingly, this particular Trump-esque villain was defeated by a black, female version of Captain America. We know exactly what you were getting at here, Marvel!
14. The Joker
Although it doesn't go into specific details about Donald Trump's similarities to the Clown Prince of Gotham, one comparison that has been made about the billionaire presidential candidate cites him as a real world version of The Joker.
The argument is that the lines between reality and pop culture are becoming blurred, and that archetype characters in movies, comic books and so forth - in this case, the villain - are resulting in the creation of real world versions of said archetypes, and indeed the (somewhat worrying) acceptance of such people in the real world. It claims that Trump's nickname - "The Donald" - is like something out of a movie, and that he's an “authoritarian populist” (something that isn't a political category, but more of a movie mash-up of two very popular archetypes).
America (and indeed the rest of the world); If Trump gets elected, you should probably prepare for potential chaos.
13. Lex Luthor
The last comic book supervillain on this list bears a very obvious similarity to Donald Trump (and it's definitely not the hair), in the sense that he's a multi-billionaire businessman who has dipped his toes into the cold world of politics. In fact, when Luthor was reinvented in the 80s - going from a mad scientist and inventor to a mega-rich businessman - DC modelled him on Trump, with artist and writer John Byrne saying "Of course, Donald Trump was our model."
Both men like to name their businesses and properties after themselves (LexCorp, LexCom, LexTel, Luthor Technologies, Luthor Industries, The Trump Organization, Trump Entertainment Resorts, Trump Winery, Trump Turnberry golf course and so forth), both men have similar looking books, Luthor has been president in the DC Comics universe and Trump aspires to be president in the real world, Luthor has killed thousands of people and... well... there's a very real feeling that Trump could end up doing the same thing.
All we need now is for Luthor to purchase an abhorrent wig. Or for Trump to just accept that he's bald.
12. Vladimir Putin
When we refer to Russian president Vladimir Putin as a "lunatic," we actually mean it in a complimentary way. Granted, he's far from perfect (no, really, he's FAR from perfect - and an alliance between him and Trump, as is being touted, would be quite terrifying), but the things that qualify him for certified lunacy are pretty damn awesome.
The man is a former spy who has mastered two martial arts, is best pals with Steven Seagal, has driven formula one cars, tracked polar bears, freed caged wildcats and flown in fighter jets. He's a man of action and one who isn't afraid to back up his words with exactly that.
And yet Donald Trump has the audacity to compare himself to the man. Trump says he sees himself when he looks at Putin and admires him because he, apparently, sees all the qualities that Trump values most highly in himself. Please, Donald, track those polar bears. Get as close as you can to them. There's a good Donald.
11. Hillary Clinton
Rather predictably and inevitably, given that they're direct rivals for the presidency of the most powerful nation on the planet, comparisons - or more contrasts - have been made between Donald Trump and his Democratic Party counterpart, Hillary Clinton.
Most non-Americans agree that they're both terrible in their own special ways, while the vast majority of the American population has a favourite out of the pair - with many of them being staunch supporters of either Trump or Clinton.
In terms of their views on certain subjects, it has been highlighted that Trump wants to get rid of Obamacare and Clinton wants to expand it, Trump wants a wall along the Mexican border and Clinton wants a fence, Trump opposed the Iraq war and Clinton voted for it to happen, Trump doesn't believe in global warming and Clinton does... and so on. We could talk about their opposing views all day, but they're obviously different and their position as rival presidential candidates was always going to incite comparisons/contrasts.
10. Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson is harmless enough, but there's no doubting the fact that he's an absolute lunatic - even if he doesn't mean to be. If you're not aware of who Boris is, he's a British Conservative politician, the former Mayor of London, a spearhead of the Brexit campaign, and the current Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. He's also a bumbling idiot (when Arnold Schwarzenegger describes you as "fumbling allover the place", you know something's not quite right).
Here's Boris rugby-tackling a small child, here he is spearing ex-German international soccer player Maurizio Gaudino in the sensitives during a charity game, and here he is getting stranded on a zip wire. The man is an idiot. An utter klutz.
Donald Trump was compared to Johnson after Johnson led the side of the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union - with both men being branded racists for their respective views (Trump's being the stricter border controls in the United States) and both men seemingly attracting the votes of the poorer and less educated members of their respective country's populace. The fact that they both have extremely weird hair probably augmented the comparison, too.
9. Charlie Sheen
One of the most seemingly unlikely comparisons on this list is the bizarre comparison between Donald Trump and controversial actor Charlie Sheen. The only thing they seem to have in common on the surface is their stirring up of controversy (because, believe it or not, Donald Trump ISN'T a heavy abuser of narcotics), but Republican politician Bobby Jindal found another thing they had in common - the word "winning" - and he used it to create an entertaining video about the pair.
The video simply mashed up Charlie Sheen‘s now infamous “winning” catchphrase, while cutting back to Trump talking about himself winning in the polls and so forth. It stirred up quite the reaction on social media.
On a slightly related note, Charlie Sheen has told a story about how Donald Trump improvised a wedding gift when Sheen was marrying Brooke Mueller. He said the billionaire took off his cuff links and gave them to him over dinner. Trump had claimed the cuff links were "platinum diamond Harry Winston" but, after getting them appraised, Sheen found out they were imitations.
8. Henry Ford
A scary comparison - and a rather obvious one, when you think about it - has been made between Donald Trump and another powerful businessman from American history; none other than the Ford Motor Company, and the sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production, Henry Ford.
As obvious as the comparison might be, it's a scary one. Both men could be described as tycoon dilettantes with a "straight shooting" style who mainstreamed repugnant racist views - and that's exactly what has happened to create this comparison.
Like Trump, Ford dithered between which party he even belonged to, but seemed none the worse for wear for his shifting allegiances, his popularity was blamed on mass media, he surged to national attention because of America's deep disillusion with the “serious” candidates, he somehow managed to be an “outsider” and to represent the “common man” despite being incredibly rich, and he was adored by his fans because he was perceived as a straight-talker and a truth-teller.
However, Trump wouldn't have liked Ford if he were alive today, as his net worth would have been something in the region of $200 billion - around forty-five times that of Trump's own.
7. Al Capone
If you're still not convinced that Donald Trump is one f***ed-up individual, you might want to hear how he plans on taking out ISIS, should he become the next President of the United States - because it's a method that resulted in him being compared to the notorious American gangster, Al Capone.
Trump went full mafioso when he said that the only way to take out the Islamic State terrorists was to take out their families. To quote the weird-haired madman: "And the other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families."
So, in order to combat terrorism, Mr. Trump thinks the best course of action is to target innocent people related to those guilty of it. Yup, definitely sounds like Al Capone to us!
6. Benito Mussolini
Now we're starting to hit some of the more worrying comparisons on this list. When your potential president draws comparisons with fascist dictators, you really should be concerned, and Donald Trump has been compared to more than one in his time - in this case, it's Benito Mussolini.
The comparison was made, in this case, when Trump simply retweeted a quote that has long been widely attributed to the former Italian prime minister - the quote in question being "It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep."
When questioned about the retweet, Trump typically shrugged it off and simply said that he wanted "to be associated with interesting quotes." He went on to say "Mussolini was Mussolini... What difference does it make?" and "It got your attention, didn't it?" And if that doesn't highlight to you what kind of man Trump is (a pretty damn awful one) then nothing ever will.
5. Stalin and Pol Pot
Sticking with the evil dictator theme, it's a two for the price of one entry here, as another pair of examples of people that Donald Trump has been compared to are the communist former leaders of the Soviet Union and Cambodia respectively, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot.
The comparison to these two maniacs came due to Trump's threat to deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States of America. A Washington Post article simply said “He would round up and deport 11 million people, a forced movement on a scale not attempted since Stalin or perhaps Pol Pot.”
Stalin, of course, conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale that profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. It's estimated that, between 1941 and 1949, nearly 3.3 million people were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. By some estimates up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition.
The Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia, with Pol Pot at the helm, demanded and then forced the population to leave the cities and live in the countryside. Phnom Penh, for example - which was populated by 2.5 million people - was quickly nearly emptied and the roads out of the city were clogged with evacuees. Imagine if Trump causes a similar situation. Ugh...
4. Adolf Hitler
Oh God. It was inevitable wasn't it. Sticking with the evil dictator theme, Donald Trump has indeed found himself being compared to THE WORST MAN IN HISTORY. But can you honestly say that you're surprised by that?
The comparisons began when Trump started asking voters to raise their right hand and pledge to support him - creating an image that some have argued evokes the rise of Adolf Hitler and the infamous Nazi salute - particularly when you couple in the fact that he regularly spits out a sharp rhetoric toward minority groups, such as Mexicans and Muslims.
High-profile individuals who have specifically compared Trump to Hitler include comedian Louis C.K., former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Anne Frank's stepsister Eva Schloss, and Republican former Governor of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman.
All Trump could say in response to being compared to the man who was once referred to as the "Bohemian Corporal" was "I don't know about the Hitler comparison. I hadn't heard that, but it's a terrible comparison. I'm not happy about that, certainly." Well, believe it or not, Donald, in spite of everything, we wouldn't actually expect you to be...
3. Charlemagne
Rather inexplicably, Donald Trump has attracted a lot of support from Christian voters - which, rather predictably has, in turn, put many other Christians up in arms - and this has drawn comparisons with another political bully from history who was anointed by Christians.
That political bully was Charlemagne AKA Charles the Great - the former King of Italy and the first Holy Roman Emperor - and the comparisons are worrying, even if they are over-baked, to say the least.
Charlemagne was a no-nonsense man who wasn't afraid to get tough with the church’s enemies and who could protect his empire from barbarian invaders. With the church on his side, he would restore Rome to its ancient glory. Does that sound familiar to you? He also ordered the execution of 4,500 prisoners, incidentally.
Trump wants to keep out immigrants, build a wall between the United States and Mexico, and "make America great again." While he hasn't (yet) killed en masse, the rest of the comparison makes a fair amount of sense.
2. Biff Tannen
Okay, so we thought we'd end this particular article on a lighthearted note with a couple more silly entries - all that talk of mass murderers has knocked us a little bit sick. Cue the comparison to Biff Tannen.
Biff Tannen is a character - and the main antagonist - from the Back to the Future movie franchise, and he was played by Thomas F. Wilson in all three movies (as well as the animated series, the theme park and the video games). Trump garnered comparisons with Tannen for a number of reasons; his appearance (just look at Tannen's hair), the fact that he opened up a 27-story casino, the fact that he used his money to influence U.S. politics, the fact that his fortune wasn't truly earned (Trump started out in business with a massive family inheritance and Tannen used a sports almanac from the future to make bets on results) and the fact that they're both generally extremely dumb, lacking in common sense and are extremely uncouth.
Interestingly, this comparison has been validated by none other than Back to the Future writer Bob Gale, who has actually said that the villain was based on Trump - particularly in Back to the Future Part II.
1. Lord Voldemort
We round off this list with another "fun" entry in the form of Harry Potter's arch-nemesis, Tom Marvolo Riddle AKA Lord Voldemort (played by Ralph Fiennes in the movies). The comparison to "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" came after Donald Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris and California - and they came from none other than J.K. Rowling herself.
The author of Harry Potter - and thus the creator of Voldemort - knows the character better than anyone and actually suggested that Trump was WORSE than the Dark Lord, tweeting "How horrible. Voldemort was nowhere near as bad."
Voldemort dedicated a large portion of his life to killing Harry Potter in a similar way to Trump dedicating his to destroying Hillary Clinton. He also hated "Mudbloods" and "Muggles" in much the same way Trump seems to hate various groups of non-Americans.
So, as "fun" as the comparison may be, it's actually pretty disturbing as well.
Sources: The Telegraph, LA Times, The Guardian, BBC, Washington Post, CNN
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