President Donald Trump’s latest scandal has Twitter users wondering if he’s been channelling a certain “Austin Powers” supervillain.
The president privately discussed a number of extreme measures to prevent migrants from crossing the border, including shooting people in the legs to slow them down, and building an electrified wall with spikes on top and fortified with a moat stocked with snakes or alligators, according to a report Tuesday in The New York Times. Aides reportedly sought cost estimates for these schemes.
The report was based on interviews with more than a dozen White House and administration officials directly involved with the president this past March, during a week in which he’d ordered advisers to completely close down the entire US border with Mexico ― and tweeted that he was planning to do so “next week.”
Within hours of the report’s publication, “Dr. Evil” was trending on Twitter, as many users pointed out a resemblance between Trump’s request and the villain’s iconic demand for “sharks with frickin” laser beams attached to their heads” in the 1997 “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” film:
Check out Twitter’s thoughts on Trump’s moat below: