For TV comedians, Trump era produces both laughter, tears
President Trump has been the gift that never stops giving for late-night television comedy. The punch lines almost write themselves for a vainglorious leader who can’t seem to help himself from saying things that are downright foolish or outright false: about his real and perceived enemies, about the magnitude of his election victory, about the brutal dictators he admires, and his utter hypocrisy in his indulgence of executive orders and golf outings that he begrudged his predecessor. He has made “Saturday Night Live” must-see TV again and kept weeknight audiences laughing through the monologues.
Then came the showstopper, when the laughter turned serious.
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel last week delivered perhaps the most devastating — almost certainly the most widely circulated — critique of the efforts by Trump and congressional Republican leaders to repeal the Affordable Care Act signed by President Barack Obama in 2010. Kimmel spoke of the valiant medical effort that saved his newborn son, who had arrived with a severe heart defect. He fought back tears as he told the story, and he called out Republicans who were on the brink of approving legislation that undermined Obamacare’s guarantee of coverage for pre-existing conditions.
“If your baby is going to die, and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make,” he said. “I think that’s something that, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right?”
The power of Kimmel’s monologue was evident in the muted response of a White House otherwise prone to overreaction to the slightest criticism. Not a peep from the president on Twitter. Other administration officials, from press secretary Sean Spicer to budget director Mick Mulvaney, were subdued and respectful. Mulvaney gamely contended that a provision in the GOP’s alternative health care bill would allow states to pursue their own best plans to treat high-risk patients such as baby Kimmel.
Video of Kimmel’s monologue went viral, shared by millions, and discussed around watercoolers across the land. It will no doubt help assure the issue of pre-existing conditions will continue to loom large as the debate shifts to the U.S. Senate.
As usual, there was no shortage of clever one-liners about Trump in the past week.
NBC’s Seth Meyers questioned Trump’s decidedly shaky grasp of the cause of the Civil War and the legacy of slaveholder Andrew Jackson. “You know, at this rate the only way Trump is going to get a second term is if he is held back.”
“Late Night’s” Conan O’Brien questioned Trump’s White House invitation to Philippine dictator Rodrigo Duterte (“first time Trump has ever said the words, ‘Rodrigo, come to America’ ”) and Trump’s suggestion that he would be honored to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (“Trump said, ‘He’s my kind of guy: He’s crazy, he’s overweight, and he has a ridiculous haircut. We should get together. It’s time we talked.’ ”).
Not all of the Trump skewering has been clever or funny.
Stephen Colbert received deserved flak from conservatives for his diatribe against Trump on the CBS “Late Show” Monday. He had a succession of shots that were harsh but within the bounds of political comedy (“Sir, you attract more skinheads than free Rogaine . ... You have more people marching against you than cancer . ... You talk like a sign language gorilla who got hit in the head”). Then Colbert went a step too far with a slap at the Trump-Putin relationship that included a lewd reference to oral sex.
Colbert should have had the decency to apologize. He stopped short, though he did express regret for his choice of words that were “cruder than they needed to be.”
“I had a few choice insults for the president . ... I don’t regret that,” Colbert said. “He, I believe, can take care of himself. I have jokes; he has the launch codes. So it’s a fair fight.”
So what’s a president to do when he becomes the butt of late-night jokes? If Trump were a student of history — which is clearly not his strong suit, see: Civil War — he would look to two of his predecessors for guidance. The antidote is to have the self-confidence to laugh at oneself, to cite another of Trump’s missing traits. In short: Play along to get along. After being mocked as a world-class klutz by comedian Chevy Chase on “SNL,” President Gerald Ford actually opened the show — hosted by his press secretary, Ron Nessen — with a recorded message from the Oval Office in April 1976: “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”
President George H.W. Bush invited “SNL” comedian Dana Carvey, whose spot-on caricature of Bush’s mangled diction was becoming a show staple, to entertain White House staff at a 1992 Christmas party. Bush graciously praised Carvey for “brightening our lives, giving us a little joy.”
As for Trump: no such room for selfdeprecation. Alec Baldwin, whose impersonation of Trump is so spot-on that it’s sometimes hard to decide who is mimicking whom, revealed that the president has declined invitations to appear on the show. Trump has called “SNL” and its parodies of him “unwatchable” and “not funny at all.”
The ratings suggest otherwise. The president who loves to talk about his numbers is a godsend for the resistance who can’t help but laugh — or cry — at the absurdity of it all.