The world's scrabbling for second place: satirical videos spread

SBS World News Radio: Shortly after Donald Trump's inauguration as US President on January the 20th, a Dutch television show made a video mocking his 'put America first' slogan. Now everyone is.

The world's scrabbling for second place: satirical videos spreadThe world's scrabbling for second place: satirical videos spread

The world's scrabbling for second place: satirical videos spread

Throughout his presidential campaign, US President Donald Trump vowed to 'put America first.'

And at his inauguration, with the world watching on, he assured the American people his commitment would continue into his presidency.

It was that message that inspired the Netherlands to produce this:

"This is a message from the government of the Netherlands. Dear Mr. President, Welcome to this introduction video about the Netherlands. It's going to be a great video. It's going to be absolutely fantastic."

The voice belongs to American comedian, Greg Shapiro.

In the parody video, the Netherlands is willing to accept that America must come first, but campaigns for a Dutch second place:

"We built an entire ocean, OK, an entire ocean between us and Mexico, nobody builds oceans better than we do, this ocean is so big you can even see it from the moon and we made the Mexicans pay for it."

It didn't take long for other European countries to follow.

Germany made the bold move of referencing Hitler.

"Great leader, so smart, great hair, great suit. He made Germany great again. The media totally loved him, wrote only nice things about him, great guy, total winner - his book, a best-seller. It's true. Steve Bannon absolutely loves him. Germany hosted two World Wars in the past 100 years. They were the best world wars in the world. And we won both of them, bigly. Anyone who says anything else is fake news."

While the Swiss promoted the country's independence.

"You don't like the EU? We hate it too. That's why we invented Brexit. Switzerland was never a part of the EU. Never. Brexit should be called Shwexit or Swixit or Helevexit, or Switzerleave - I just came up with that, brilliant!"

It wasn't long before the videos made their out way of Europe, with Morocco quick to jump on board.

"We've heard that you'll be choosing a European country as second, but that would be a total mistake. Huge mistake. Europe is weak, total losers. With all the refugees and immigrants that have invaded their lands, at this rate, Europe will become part of Morocco soon. Haters say that Morocco is small, like your hands, total lies, we're actually huge."

Countries like Kazakhstan, China - even Iran followed.

"Iran, Iraq, and different countries, crazy - I know! That is what we are really afraid of, that you mix up the names and do something to us by mistake. In fact, that is how we believe we ended up on the travel ban list. You're sitting there, in the middle of the night, typing the executive order on your phone. You write Iraq, your phone says do you mean 'Iran?' Then you're confused, you write both just in case, better safe than sorry."

And let's not forget Australia, with satirical TV show The Weekly's contribution addressing that phone call.

"We in Australia are so, so sorry about that dumb deal our loser Prime Minister, who's a total disaster by the way, very unprofessional, sad. The worst phone call you had all day, worse than China, making you take in some very low energy refugees, but look, you don't like Malcolm? Neither do we. He's fired, boom, you give his party six weeks, they're gonna replace that bum, anyway."

 

 


Share
4 min read

Published

Updated

By Abbie O'Brien


Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News daily and direct to your Inbox

Sign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Download our apps
SBS News
SBS Audio
SBS On Demand

Listen to our podcasts
An overview of the day's top stories from SBS News
Interviews and feature reports from SBS News
Your daily ten minute finance and business news wrap with SBS Finance Editor Ricardo Gonçalves.
A daily five minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability
Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS
SBS World News

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service
Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world
The world's scrabbling for second place: satirical videos spread | SBS News