Twitter Wants Donald Trump Digitally Replaced In Home Alone 2
On January 8, 2021, soon-to-be former President of the United States Donald J. Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter following the outbreak of violence and murder, carried out in his name, that occurred during a domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol. The action followed a similar banning of Trump by Facebook. According to a tweet from @TwitterSafety, "After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
Since then, Trump has been either restricted, or banned, from a host of digital platforms including Twitch, Shopify, Reddit, YouTube, and Snapchat. While a number of Trump's followers announced that they were departing from Twitter in the wake of these announcements, there were many other people who saw this as a great opportunity to assess what other places Trump could be digitally removed from.
One possibility that has come up a number of times, recently, is his cameo in 1992's classic Christmas sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. In case you don't remember Trump's presence, it occurs in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sequence whereupon a lost Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) enters the Plaza Hotel in New York City for the first time, and asks a stranger where the lobby is. The stranger, who turns around and reveals himself to be Donald Trump, answers "Down the hall and to the left."
The moment is no more than a few seconds, but fans of the film (and of burning Trump) are wondering: Can't Disney digitally replace the soon-to-be-excised former leader of the free world?
Digital removal — and the actor people want Trump replaced with
Disney+ is already known for making (sometimes baffling) digital edits to the films streaming on their platform. There's a scene in the Tom Hanks comedy Splash, for instance, where Darryl Hannah runs naked into the ocean. In the original version, Hannah's butt is exposed. However, on Disney+, the actress's hair is digitally lengthened to cover her proverbial modesty.
So, if Darryl Hannah's butt can be removed, then why not Trump, too?
For example, back on January 6, 2021, author of The Last Day Andrew Hunter Murray tweeted, "He should be tried, imprisoned, and digitally removed from Home Alone 2." In the days since, this sentiment has been repeated across social media, and even garnered headlines on publications like The Independent, with some people (such as comic book writer Dan Slott) recommending Trump be replaced by a very particular actor — Christopher Plummer. The Plummer recommendation doesn't come out of nowhere, either. In 2017, Plummer replaced actor Kevin Spacey as J. Paul Getty in the Ridley Scott film All the Money in the World. If Plummer can replace a disgraced actor, then why not a disgraced former politician?
Alternatively, it would certainly be easy to simply cut Trump's scene from Home Alone 2, altogether. In fact, Canadian broadcast network CBC did exactly that back in 2014 (via The Guardian) long before Trump was inserted into the White House. The current requests are not so much about Trump's removal, though, and more about embarrassing him as much as possible — and it's hard not to imagine that Home Alone 2 director Chris Columbus might not mind, either. In an interview with Insider, the director said Trump bullied his way into the film by saying "The only way you can use the Plaza [Hotel] is if I'm in the movie."
Will Trump actually be removed or replaced in Home Alone 2? It's unlikely, but imagine if it did happen — and then, maybe, his cameos in Sex and the City, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Nanny, and all the rest could vanish, too.