THANKS, SNL, FOR THE COMIC RELIEF IN TRUMP DARKNESS
It’s official. The talk among FBI leaders two years ago questioning Donald Trump’s competency was right on the money.
If you had any doubts, make yourself watch Trump’s 50-minute rambling announcement Friday of his “national emergency” declaration to build a wall, and then take a look at his rambling Twitter feed for the past 48 hours or so.
What you’ll see is a former TV reality show star who, as president, doesn’t understand the difference between a comedy show like “Saturday Night Live” and the news.
Alec Baldwin, donning his Trump wig and pout, on Saturday satirized the president’s sing-song delivery of his national emergency announcement on Friday.
On Sunday, Trump out-Trumped himself, tweeting: “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!”
Four minutes later, Trump tweeted in all caps: “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
The truth is that Baldwin actually made Trump look saner and smarter than he is. One commenter noted that perhaps the problem is that Trump doesn’t understand the meaning of “collusion.” It is, after all, a three-syllable word.
Things got worse later Sunday with former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s “60 Minutes” interview. Among other things, McCabe talked about discussing with other FBI officials whether there would be enough consensus among Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove the president from office.
That sent Trump into another tail spin.
“Wow, so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged. He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught…..,” Trump tweeted. “There is a lot of explaining to do to the millions of people who had just elected a president who they really like and who has done a great job for them with the Military, Vets, Economy and so much more. This was the illegal and treasonous “insurance policy” in full action!”
To that, Nicole Wallace, an MSNBC talk show host and a former member of the Bush White House, tweeted, “Because if it’s president’s day, you’re reminding all of us you belong where @SenBobCorker said you belong: #adultdaycare”.
A CNN opinion writer has since questioned whether Trump’s SNL tweets could be “laying the ground work to declare another national emergency to silence SNL. Aside from the absurdity of the idea, it also violates the First Amendment right to free speech, as the American Civil Liberties Union was quick to point out.”
But the CNN piece also notes that an Ipsos poll in August found that 44 percent of Republicans believe Trump should be able to close news outlets for “bad behavior.” Does anyone think Trump would silence Rush Limbaugh or “Fox and Friends”? Both, by the way, called the McCabe talk of the 25th Amendment an “illegal coup” attempt.
Illegal? It comes straight from the U.S. Constitution. But Trump wants “retribution.”
The writer of the CNN piece, Dean Obeidallah, notes that he worked on the production team at “SNL” for eight seasons “at a time when the show comically filleted Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But never did either of them publicly complain the comedy was unfair. They understood that political comedy is part of the fabric of this nation — even when they were the target of the jokes.”
Baldwin, on Monday, questioned whether the president’s tweet put him or his family in danger. After all, CNN and a number of people the president has tweeted negatively about were sent package bombs not very long ago.
The clear “ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE” is Donald Trump himself.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump/Russia probe, set in motion by Trump’s firing of Jim Comey because Comey was investigating “the Russia thing,” has resulted in court decisions that found that at least four former Trump aides lied about contacts with Russians during the 2016 election.
To date, at least 34 people — including about two dozen Russians — and three companies have been charged as a result of the special counsel’s investigation into 2016 election tampering.
Thank goodness for “Saturday Night Live.” We have to have some comic relief in all this darkness.