Update: After looking into the site’s registration date and the supposed timeline of The Trump Organization’s cease and desist letters, Gizmodo has serious doubts about the veracity of this story, which appears to be a massive troll. We’re sorry, and we’ll do better.
Y Combinator’s Sam Altman recently called Trump “the Silicon Valley candidate” because of his disruptive nature. But maybe it’s really just because he’s a troll who recognizes the power of a cat meme.
A 17-year-old only identified as Lucy tells The Hollywood Reporter that her website, trumpscratch.com, attracted the attention of the White House after receiving only about 1,200 visitors. She built the site as a joke while she was applying for web developer jobs back in February. It allows users to hit Trump in the face with cat paws while the rickroll music plays. Yeah, it’s basically a meme singularity.
On March 1st she received her first cease and desist letter from Trump’s lawyers. They claim that she was infringing Trump’s “internationally known and famous” trademark. The idea being that he really only sells two things: his name and bullshit.
So, Lucy says she changed the domain name to kittenfeed.com and assumed this nonsense was over. But soon she received another letter demanding that she remove a link to an anti-Trump t-shirt on Amazon. She complied and added some scratches to Trump’s face as you hit him as well as text that reads, “Trump seems tough at first, but he gets weaker with every scratch.” She hasn’t heard anything from them since. The White House hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment.
“I really just want people to be aware that this is a president who’s clearly more concerned about what people think of him than doing things of substance,” Lucy tells THR.
Trump’s inability to let the tiniest slight go is legendary. But this is ridiculous. And the Streisand Effect is in full swing. The site’s now up to 219,000 visitors and rising.
It’s certainly possible that the President’s lawyers are just doing this on their own while he focuses on feuding with Arnold Schwarzennegar. But even then, this is ridiculous. CNN reported tonight that “the FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” One would think his lawyers would have plenty of bigger issues to tackle at the moment.