Independence Day star Bill Pullman has responded to a viral tweet published by President Donald Trump on Saturday, in which Trump’s face is superimposed over Pullman’s fictional President Thomas J. Whitmore as he makes his iconic rallying speech against alien invaders. In the 1996 action-disaster movie that also starred Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, military veteran Whitmore — a former F-16 fighter pilot in the United States Air Force who served during the Gulf War — uses his experience to personally lead a counterattack against the hostile race of extraterrestrials after delivering his famed speech to assembled military forces as they ready for war on the Fourth of July.
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“My voice belongs to no one but me, and I’m not running for president — this year,” Pullman told The Hollywood Reporter.
The edited clip, which also inserted Donald Trump Jr., Ted Cruz, and Fox News personalities Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson into a scene from the Roland Emmerich-directed blockbuster, inserted the president’s face over the actor’s body but with Pullman’s voice.
In eight hours, the clip shared by the president has been viewed nearly nine million times and has received over 166,000 “likes” and nearly 54,000 retweets.
“Good morning. Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world, and you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. Mankind, that word should have new meaning for all of us today,” Pullman’s Whitmore says in his speech, most of which is included in the edited video. “We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interest. Perhaps it’s fate that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom. Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution, but from annihilation.”
Pullman’s voice continues, “We’re fighting for our right to live, to exist, and should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice, ‘We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on, we’re going to survive. Today we celebrate our Independence Day!’”
