Trump too far out even for Hollywood

EWASHINGTON ven for Hollywood, which can reduce the White House to rubble with one blast from an alien spaceship, Donald Trump is too over the top.

If he were a fictional character running for president, a movie about him probably would bomb, a TV series would get the hook, and a book would quickly disappear from the shelves.

Masters of make-believe from Hollywood and publishing say the real-life Trump, a flesh-and-blood character who wasn’t conceived inside a Hollywood writer’s room and didn’t spring forth from a novelist’s imagination, is running right through all the red lights of believability — and still upstaging his fictional counterparts.

“You watch the story unfold and the moment you think, ‘OK. He can’t go any farther than that,’ he goes farther than that,” said Ward Just, for whom politics is often a backdrop for his quiet novels about the human fallout of lives built around secrets and power.

And he’s getting the ratings. His rallies are standing room only. His fans are passionately devoted. And he did, after all, win the Republican primaries.

So take a bow Mr. Would-Be President Trump — although there is probably no need to tell you to do that — you’ve eclipsed Frank Underwood, Selina Meyer, Josiah Bartlett and a host of other fictional occupants of the Oval Office. The only limitations on their behavior were what their creators thought might seem too outrageous for audiences to accept.

Indeed. In Hollywood’s hands, the president of the United States can be a conniving murderer, such as Kevin Spacey as President Underwood in “House of Cards.”

He can be a square-jawed action hero who single-handedly dispatches a team of Russian terrorists after they have hijacked Air Force One, as Harrison Ford so neatly accomplishes as President Marshall in the movie named for the plane.

The nation’s chief executive can also be its chief goofus — think of Julia Louis-Dreyfus as President Meyer in “Veep” — or a leader who so personifies liberal benevolence that you would think there were feathered wings stuffed under his bespoke suit. We’re talking about you, President Bartlett, as portrayed by Martin Sheen in the quintessential televised political drama, “The West Wing.”

Then there’s Trump, the soon-to-be-crowned Republican presidential nominee, a boastful, serial exaggerator with no qualms about alienating pivotal voting blocs with racial and misogynistic insults. He stiff-arms his party leaders, is unfamiliar with issues and turns national tragedy into a self-congratulatory hug.

And yeah, he also bragged about the size of his male equipment — not your everyday campaign issue.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

DAVID GIESBRECHT/NETFLIX In Hollywood’s hands, the president of the United States can be a conniving murderer, such as Kevin Spacey as President Frank Underwood in Netflix’s “House of Cards.” But masters of makebelieve from Hollywood and publishing say the real-life Donald...