Channel 4 hands the mic to Trump impersonator for ‘Trump v The Truth’

By on Thursday, September 18, 2025

Channel 4 turned confusion into commentary with a viral promo push for Trump v The Truth, which aired last night.

The UK broadcaster deployed a Donald Trump impersonator (Lewis MacLeod) and satirical copywriters to ‘hijack’ both its social media and continuity announcements, dropping parody-laced soundbites and warnings like “DO NOT WATCH” — all delivered in an unmistakably Trumpian cadence.

The stunt sparked chaos across Channel 4’s social feeds with viewers questioning whether the account had been hacked.

A campaign built around misinformation to frame a documentary that claims to spotlight over 100 untruths uttered by the former US President.

The first post of the day read : “TONIGHT ON THE FAILING CHANNEL 4 (EVEN WORSE THAN ITV) THEY ARE SHOWING MORE THAN 100 ‘UNTRUTHS’ TOLD BY YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT DONALD J TRUMP. THIS IS FAKE NEWS BY THE MSM AND AN ATTACK ON YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT (DONALD J TRUMP)! DO NOT WATCH AT 10PM!!!”

The diatribe continued…

“Across the day, a Donald Trump impersonator will take over… to deliver untrue information,” Channel 4 confirmed in a statement, explaining the continuity takeover as a “sobering reminder” of the dangers of disinformation from once-trusted voices.

The stream of tweets garnered 5M+ views and even drew the attention of California Governor Gavin C. Newsom.

Alongside the posts and voiceovers, the campaign drew praise from marketing watchers and viewers alike, many of whom quickly saw through the chaos to the strategy beneath.

One user called it “genius marketing,” while another added: “This is superb by Channel 4.”

We spoke to Aaron Gillies from Channel 4’s social team about the campaign..

How did the idea come about?

“We wanted to support the linear TX of Trump V Truth on social in a truly socially native way. We had cutdowns of the show, and we published the continuity recordings that had taken over the channel itself, but we really wanted to add something extra, something that would cut through and something that would speak to the nature of the programme as well as hooking in our audiences. What’s more socially native than speaking the very unique social language of the president of the USA whilst he lands in the UK? So we wrote dozens of copy options, and stressed out our lawyers as much as we could. We initially published just on Threads, as the Channel 4 brand has a really good following and audience base on the platform and where we use a particularly colloquial tone, but after we saw that the posts were receiving upwards of 10K likes in about an hour, we expanded this to all of our platforms, including X.”

Tell us about development phase?

“Initially the stunt idea had no copy only options, and was a completely different beast entirely. However, we decided to pivot to an entirely new strategy at the last minute, which we can do in social (Less than 24 hours before the linear TX). We pitched the idea, got all stakeholder approvals and executed the idea in less than a day.”

How did you manage the risk of viewers misunderstanding the campaign or taking it at face value?

“This was part of the beauty of the campaign. Our audiences self moderated as it did create a lot of confusion. A lot of people thought we had been hacked. A lot of people praised the channel for it’s obvious marketing strategy. The comments were overwhelmingly positive and our audiences educated each other, or as much as they could, I think some people still think it was a hack.”

What kind of internal coordination was required between C4 depts teams to pull this off smoothly?

“A lot of coordination was required, as this is a risky execution and we needed to ensure that brand safety and reputation was top of mind in all activity. We required sign off from our chief executives, our linear commissioning team, legal, compliance, marketing, and 4Studio senior stakeholders.”

What kind of response have you seen so far — from viewers, critics, or internally at Channel 4?

“The response has been wildly positive. We’ve seen several media outlets picking up the activity, and we even got a retweet from Gavin Newsom the Governor of California, which I think means our campaign landed beautifully. We of course got some push back online, with some calling the execution lame and outdated, but sentiment has been very positive.”

Did the confusion online play out as expected, or were there any surprises

“The biggest surprise was our X account getting locked for a few hours as the platform thought we had been hacked. This was a shame as we missed out on a period of engagements during peak traffic times.”

For a show interrogating the media’s role in truth-telling, it’s a fitting, if chaotic, build-up.

catch the show here

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