Donald Trump’s ‘Yuge Image Problem: He’s a Walking, Talking Joke

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Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:58 pm

Donald Trump does not like to be made fun of, but it is proving almost impossible not to crack jokes about a man – and an administration – as laughably incompetent as his.

Last Week Tonight‘s John Oliver put it like this in speaking of Trump’s inauguration lies: “We have a president capable of standing in the rain and saying it was a sunny day.”

Oliver goes on to say “Donald Trump lies” is clearly not a “fresh observation.” If that were the extent of it we could just laugh and shake our heads and walk away. But it’s not.

As one acute observer has noted of the Trumpcapades:

Seriously, what the actual fuck is up w these Trump Admin ppl. They are the most smug, smarmy, cartoon villain-y ppl I’ve EVER seen. EVER.”

Testify, sister. You’re not alone. What could be more cartoonish than an orange-headed Groucho Marx claiming he has unquestioned political power?

In that vein, Twitter has turned into an endless series of one-liners, if not from the primary source, Trump’s own account, then from his critics. Guantanamo prosecutor Col. Morris Davis got off a good one last night in response to a Fox News tweet about a missing Adolf Hitler impersonator:

It’s a cheap shot, sure, but Trump himself claiming he has unlimited political power is the reason it is funny.

Trump has made himself into a caricature through his efforts to pretend to be somebody he so glaringly is not and the goings on of his administration seem more satirical than real. Saturday Night Live does not even need comedy writers at this point; they just need direct quotes.

In fact, when Davis asked Morning Joe and MSNBC to “Name one thing @realDonaldTrump and @GOP Congress have done that’s been a tangible benefit to average Americans,” it caused Princeton University’s Steven Strauss to respond,

Dead State‘s Sky Palma proves you don’t have to tell a joke about Trump to destroy him; you only have to point to a fact, and you don’t even have to mention Trump’s name:

Ana Navarro nails Trump for his administration’s butchering of English, rivaling that of George W. Bush by taking illiteracy administration-wide:

To the same typo Keith Olbermann quipped, “Well, there were translation problems from the original Russian.” Another cheap shot but Trump again has only himself to blame.

Sky Palma went the other way, but you can also nail Trump based on actual facts, as John Oliver proved when he said of Trump, “He is making real policy out of fake facts.”

If you want proof from Trump’s own Twitter feed, serial liar Trump just praised his advisor Stephen Miller for his round of lies Sunday by saying Miller did a “great job” of representing him. You can’t get more unintentionally forthright than that.

That makes us laugh, and perhaps it should, but Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin points to a far less funny if incredibly serious problem with the administration:

Oliver quipped, “It has been so busy that it’s gotten to where the most terrifying sound is your phone buzzing with a news alert,” and he’s right.

As CNN editor Zachary Wolf put it in all seriousness, “This is what makes covering Donald Trump so very difficult: what does he mean when he says words?”

This is a skill we teach children: “use your words,” we tell them in elementary school, but a functionally illiterate serial liar like Trump is still struggling.

Which only serves to highlight the fact that if Donald Trump is a joke, he is a very dangerous joke, because we cannot afford to have a walking, talking joke in the White House.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson
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