‘Hey, Donald Trump, I Wanna Know Why … ‘ Song

On August 15 2022, an Imgur account shared a video from Twitter of a large crowd singing a catchy song with lyrics that began, “Hey, Donald Trump, I wanna know …” (to the tune of “Hey, Baby”):

Video shared to Twitter originated on TikTok, and a clickthrough attribution noted that the footage was posted no earlier than November 2020. That earlier tweet shared a caption with the August 2022 Imgur post — “This must be heard around the world”:

In both clips, a large crowd gathered in front of a building in daylight. It appeared that all or most of those gathered began singing:

Hey, Donald Trump, I wanna know why you’re such a cunt.

A small TikTok watermark indicated that the clip on Twitter originated with TikTok user @caligirl525525. The TikTok post was originally shared by that same account on October 25 2020, captioned:

United we stand, divided we fall!!!! ???????????? #fyp #foryou #foryourpage #biden2020 #trump2020 #vote

original sound – Luis Gomez

Clicking the “original sound” link led to a TikTok collection of all videos using the audio used in @caligirl525525’s viral video. On that page an “original” (or first video to use the audio) was listed first on the page (and marked as first.)

It was also shared to TikTok by user @drunkie in June 2020, but with a different visual component than the viral 2022 version:

@drunkie Don’t be shy sing along ????#blacklivesmatter #blm #fyp ♬ original sound – Luis Gomez

Google Trends data indicated an uptick in searches for “Donald Trump song” and “Hey Donald Trump I wanna know” starting on August 16 2022. But even the June 2020 TikTok clip was not the original; a very similar version appeared on Reddit’s r/unitedkingdom on July 14 2018.

That post linked to a January 30 2017 YouTube video of the same name. But the footage appeared to originate with a tweet from the same day by an account called @satanseyebrows, threaded under a tweet about an anti-Trump rally in Brighton (the one in the UK):

In the comments of that tweet, an editor asked if the original poster filmed the clip. They responded:

I filmed it, however can’t take credit for the actual chant

On February 1 2017, Yahoo! News published a brief piece about the Brighton anti-Trump rally (and the creative riff on a football chant). The outlet reported that the rally took place on January 30 2017:

The crowd arranged a version of the quintessentially English song, “Hey! Baby,” a melody that has become a popular football chant. However, this adaptation contained zero themes of sportsmanship.

A viral August 15 2022 video depicted protesters in daylight, purportedly singing “Hey, Donald Trump, I wanna know why you’re such a cunt”; the clip’s recirculation coincided with the aftermath of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. Although the singing did take place as suggested by the audio, its popularity on TikTok decoupled it from its original source. It appeared that the footage was captured by Twitter user @satanseyebrows on January 30 2017, at an anti-Trump rally in Brighton, UK. The chant was popular, but the audio was re-paired with various video clips on TikTok’s platform, leading to the viral iteration in August 2022.