The Future President, Donald Trump

I'm not a fan of stunt casting, and Donald Trump has stunt cast himself as a presidential candidate. Mocking a female candidate's face is fine if you are sitting around with friends or performing a sophomoric sketch, but in doing it in a campaign speech Trump became so petty and stupid that he lowered the bar for creepizoids like Ben Carson, who admits to going after people with bats, bricks, boards, and a hammer when he was a kid, and who tried to stab a friend when he was fourteen. He has not been asked how he overcame such behavior yet, nor what keeps him in his seemingly trance-like state now.

When is Ben going to host SNL?

Trump came up to SNL a couple of times when I worked there. He seemed like a nice fellow, gracious, and even humble back then. Yes, he was notorious for publicly humiliating his wife, but what man with huge money and fame hasn't done that at some point in his life? He was a popular New York character. I also met Trump at Telluride when he came backstage to congratulate me on my one-woman show. He was, once again, gracious and complimentary and honored me with more than just the few obligatory lines. He actually had intelligent and genuine things to say. So when he came out as a Birther I was surprised.

I am not a regular viewer of Saturday Night Live. I have not watched a full show in years. I catch up on line. Was I disappointed that Trump was going to host? Yes, but not surprised. The host of Saturday Night Live is still perceived as an endorsement, and what else can it be? If I was currently on the job I'd have trouble making Trump look good or funny or even worse, harmless. That's not the job of any comedy troupe.

But it's really all about ratings, and finding a host can be difficult when who you are looking for has to be trending.

Donald Trump has insisted that the president is not an American, and appeared many times on Fox trumpeting his bogus cause with their top tier ghouls. Now they hate him. Things change. Yes, he's a bigot, of course. And he can't do any of the things he says he can; build a wall between Texas and Mexico and charge it to Mexico or make deals with Putin. He can't "do something" about Muslims. And he can't take back his "rapists" remark regarding Mexican immigrants, legal or not. He can't disown the ungodly morons he's brought out of the woodwork touting his message. He can't be president because the president represents the Free World, not casinos and skyscrapers. He's never been an innovator when it comes to development anyway.

It's disappointing that Trump is doing his thing on a stage that has seen so much real talent over the years. His kind of comedy works best in a debate with the rest of the lightweights he's running with.

But, never-the-less, the applause sign will light up when Trump walks out on the SNL stage and the crowd will cheer, just like they cheered for Howard Beal in Network. The televised Republican debates have been so absurd that if Paddy Chayefsky were alive he wouldn't be able to satirize them.
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Trump is a freak show and that's what SNL is promoting this week.
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Trumps' appearance will not be a shining moment, but it won't be the first one that doesn't glow. He's a lout, a boor, and a jerk, but he's trending. I'm not sure what can be done without insulting him, and do we really make fun of people to their faces now?
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When it comes to Trump's hosting skills this week, I wouldn't expect much. His appearance doesn't really matter, and that's the biggest disappointment of all.

Can we stop right here? Donald Trump's "discovery," if it can be called that, is that the American media is a sucker for anything outrageous. That's it. They aren't covering Trump because he's Trump, they're covering him because he says Mexicans are murderers and rapists and politicians are all losers and Carly Fiorina is ugly. Whatever other virtues and faults Jeb Bush has, he's not willing to say stuff like that—so the media ignores him.

I'd like to see Parker do a follow-up piece that sheds the fiction of Trump somehow discovering a whole new strategy to get publicity. He hasn't. It's the same strategy he's always had to get airtime on entertainment shows. The difference is that most presidential candidates in the past figured they had to act at least nominally presidential if they didn't want to end up as ignored as Alan Keyes. But apparently the political media has changed. Reporters and editors are now as eager as any gossip show to cover obvious buffoonery, and both Trump and Ben Carson have ridden that wave.

Why? Is it just an artifact of struggling mainstream outlets that are desperate for something to pay the bills? Is it a sense that they have to compete with BuzzFeed and HuffPo? Forget Trump and Carson. Someone ought to write about changes in campaign reporting that have made the two of them possible.

Last night, Trump spoke at a rally in Springfield, Illinois. More than 10,000 people attended. It was standing-room-only, floor to rafters. According to the Trump campaign, Trump's attendance shattered a record set by Elton John 37 years ago.

In the view of this Business Insider reporter, many political pundits do not yet appreciate how compelling a speaker Trump is. They also do not yet appreciate how much passion and energy he can inspire. Trump's can-do reputation and the public's disgust with normal politicians and politics as usual are fueling a startling degree of fervor in his supporters.

Another thing pundits fail to appeciate about Trump, in this reporter's view, is his potential appeal to moderates — the folks any candidate from either party will have to appeal to to actually get elected. Some of Trump's policies — fixing US infrastructure, keeping Medicare and Social Security, eliminating the "carried interest" tax loophole — are apostasy to many on the right wing of the Republican party. Meanwhile, they appeal to many mainsteam voters.

In short, this Business Insider reporter believes that Trump's candidacy is still being underestimated.

But the big takeaway: What happened to Donald Trump? Aside from a swipe at Fiorina for interrupting, he wasn’t his usual bad-boy self.

I have a theory that the Trump presidential campaign is a lot like a New York baseball crowd: There are some not-into-it wealthy people who pay a small fortune to arrive late and leave early; others who live and breathe the game; still others who think their ticket entitles them to slur the ballplayers and their maternal ancestry.

In the 24 hours culminating with the FBN/WSJ debate, Trump published an op-ed on Chinese monetary policy in the Wall Street Journal, questioned Ben Carson’s integrity, and pretty much kept his temper and ego in check while the cameras rolled.

In the last week, he has filed candidacy papers in New Hampshire and hammed it up on "Saturday Night Live."

Groucho Marx observed: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

On Tuesday night, Trump persisted with the wrong remedies (a Mexican border wall that will never happen).

But in Milwaukee, Trump didn’t go looking for trouble. Maybe it was the low-key line of questioning. Or it could be that after four encounters, Trump’s getting bored with the routine – and even himself.

Did I mention John Kasich is an ass? In the Fox debate he tried to dismiss Donald Trump, a man who created a multi-billion dollar company, as a kid on immigration policy. Kasich was condescending and rude in a way Trump had not yet been to him.

But Trump threw it back in Kasich’s face.

Trump talked about Eisenhower and immigration, pointing out that everybody liked Ike and this is what Ike did. He then dismissed Kasich’s economic success as not a product of Kasich’s genius, but of finding oil in the state. Kasich came unhinged. He had the irritating feel of a hemorrhoid on the butt of humanity and Trump gave Kasich no latitude.

It was dazzling, put Kasich in his place, and was a sterling moment for Donald Trump. I found myself cheering Trump at the moment. It was awesome

Donald Trump’s proposal to use a “deportation force” to deport millions of undocumented immigrants is unrealistic, President Obama said in an exclusive interview today with ABC News’ Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos.

“The notion that we’re gonna deport 11, 12 million people from this country -- first of all, I have no idea where Mr. Trump thinks the money’s gonna come from. It would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars to execute that,” the president told Stephanopoulos in an interview at the White House.

“Imagine the images on the screen flashed around the world as we were dragging parents away from their children, and putting them in what, detention centers, and then systematically sending them out,” the president said. “Nobody thinks that that is realistic. But more importantly, that’s not who we are as Americans.”

You can't deport everyone for a lot of reasons hawkeye.

1. The cost is prohibitive. $100 billion/year for three years will fit on the credit card
2. Mistakes will be made and US citizens will be deported which should be unacceptable to any US citizen. Mistakes always happen, this is reality
3. It violates the rights of people, both citizens and non citizens. THe collective has the right to see that the laws are followed, there is always a conflict between individual rights and collective rights, sometimes individual rights loses
4. It will require a national ID to prove citizenship of every US citizen to come close to happening. We should have that anyways, bit this can be done without that
5. Police will be able to ask for papers of anyone they suspect of not being a US citizen. Great idea
6. Some families have children that are US citizens but the parents may be here illegally. What do you propose to do with US citizens that are not yet 18 if you deport their parents? They can go with the parents, they can be made wards of family or friends and I would also give these kids a government stipend, or they can become wards of the state. Parents decide.
7. It will overwhelm the court systems which means the deportation would have to ignore current law. The program would have its own courts, paid for out of the $100 billion, there would be little to no impact on the regular courts, which FYI are already overwhelmed..
8. You would have to detain everyone until they get a requested hearing and there are not enough places to do so without violating their rights.
See answer #3

And on and on and on.


There is no cost/benefit analysis that will show you can deport everyone and do it without mistakes. We can get most, and we can minimize the mistake by running the program well. I am not one of these people who thinks that government work always does and always must suck

I've heard that when Trump is elected.....

Stop holding your ear against your anus and you'll stop hearing that kind of crap.

@bobsal u1553115,
Quote:

Stop holding your ear against your anus and you'll stop hearing that kind of crap.



Is this even possible?