Trump uses ‘Full Metal Jacket’ clips to portray his ideal military

Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attends a town hall, moderated by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center and Fairgrounds in Oaks, Pennsylvania, on October 14, 2024. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP)

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is embracing perhaps Hollywood’s most memorable drill sergeant to portray his vision of a hardened military and mock the Biden administration’s embrace of the LGBTQ+ community serving openly.

Trump’s recent rallies have featured a video with clips of R. Lee Ermey as Marine Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 classic Vietnam War film “Full Metal Jacket.” Ermey’s character was known for his vulgar and at times racist outbursts as he taunts and bullies recruits.

Those clips, captioned “THEN,” are juxtaposed against clips of people expressing support for LGBTQ+ rights and drag performers, captioned “NOW” and “THE BIDEN HARRIS MILITARY.”

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The video ends with a shot from the movie, a scene before the recruits were sent to Vietnam, captioned with “LET’S MAKE OUR MILITARY GREAT AGAIN.” The video was shown at several Trump rallies before he posted it on social media on Saturday.

Trump often rails against the growing acceptance of transgender people, including the use of pronouns and transgender women in women’s sports, drawing some of the biggest applause lines at his rallies by pledging to restrict them.

Trump earlier this month hailed the performance by Ermey, who served in the Marines as a drill sergeant before acting.

“He was supposed to get the Academy Award,” Trump told his audience in Wisconsin, saying he was denied the honor because “he wasn’t part of the establishment.”

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In using the movie to illustrate Trump’s ideal military, the campaign borrowed from what is recognized as an anti-war film. Never mind that the film is about Vietnam, for which Trump received medical deferments, despite having attended high school at New York Military Academy.

Vivian Kubrick, the late filmmaker’s daughter, said she believes her father would have embraced Trump and forgiven his use of an anti-war film to make his point about building a powerful military.

“That’s primarily what FMJ is about, the shocking and complicated paradoxes of human nature,” Vivian Kubrick wrote Sunday on the social media platform X.

“And thus, on this tooth and claw planet, you need a very strong military — so I’m going to stick with the idea that FMJ footage was used primarily because of its powerful, realistic portrayal of boot camp, juxtaposed with the entirely demoralizing and inappropriate injection of WOKE ideology into the USA military,” she added. “Which I agree with myself and which I’m certain my father would have agreed with.”

Ermey’s “Full Metal Jacket” co-star Matthew Modine, who played Private Joker in the film and is in some of the clips included in Trump’s video, saw things differently.

“Ironically, Trump has twisted and profoundly distorted Kubrick’s powerful anti-war film into a perverse, homophobic, and manipulative tool of propaganda,” Modine told Entertainment Weekly.