Doody Can’t fail
How it all works, at present
[A close, dimly lit room. At a round table in a pool of light sit DONALD TRUMP, wearing a garish robe of the sort a prizefighter in a 40s movie might wear, and RUDOLPH GUILIANI, wearing a three-piece pinstriped Brooks Brothers suit with wide lapels. GIULIANI has a gigantic rocks glass full of whiskey; TRUMP has a Big Gulp. In the shadows we can barely make out a scraggly looking BARTENDER in a red vest and white shirt behind a small, pressed-wood-paneled bar.]
TRUMP: What I gotta do. I thought for sure when I said the plane was AI they’d all say I went nuts.
GIULIANI: [Giggling] It’s what the kids call cringe!
TRUMP: You’re what the kids call cringe.
GIULIANI: That girl you got at the Times, she didn’t help.
TRUMP: She can’t help herself. Always gotta go on and on and on that it’s a strategy like I’m Napoleon.
GIULIANI: It is a strategy though.
TRUMP: Hey, I don’t need a strategy to win a bet with you. You still bet on the Yankees.
GIULIANI: [Giggling] Always! They’re my boys.
TRUMP: [to the BARTENDER] OK, where we got that next thing? Philly?
BARTENDER: Uhhhh…. Veteran’s Field in Hirsute, Oklahoma.
TRUMP: OK, you watch. This time Thursday they’re all gonna say I’m nuts.
[CUT TO: TRUMP on an outdoor stage with the usual goons behind him. He is still wearing the prizefighter’s robe. He addresses a mid-sized cheering crowd. He pretends, absurdly, to box.]
TRUMP: A hard right to the body. Ba boom. [Drawing himself up] Seriously though, folks, how about that bitch Kamala?
[Big cheer.]
Whatta bitch, huh. I’ll tell you something, folks, things are not what they look like, there’s something wrong there. You know that name, Kamala. KA-MA-LA. That’s not her real name. You know what it is, the real name? Li Lin Chou. What kind of a name is that? You know what it is? It’s Chinese, that’s what it is. She came here in, as a young girl, a bitch even then, in the boatlift from Red China. Don’t look it up, it won’t be there, they’re covering it up. But it’s the truth, folks, they smuggled her in, in a, a, one of those baskets they cook rice in, a rice basket. Jumps up out of the basket —
[TRUMP pulls the corners of his eyes up, makes pidgin Chinese noises for a full ten seconds. Crowd is silent.]
She’s a Chinese sleeper agent. Li Lin Chou. That’s why Sleepy Joe made her Vice President instead of one of those other boons. [TRUMP pretends to box] A left to the jaw, a hard right to the body.
[CUT TO: The close, dimly lit room. Same clothes, scene, BARTENDER etc, though TRUMP is now taking little snorts from an inhaler of The Formula and has a towel around his neck. He and GIULIANI are looking at an old cathode ray TV set on an old-fashioned wire table, watching MAGGIE HABERMAN and some other awful person on a news show.]
MAGGIE HABERMAN: But this is the thing with him, you know, he creates his own reality, and though we try say, hey, this is not reality, for millions it really is and I think we have to acknowledge the power and the authenticity of that.
OTHER AWFUL PERSON: I understand when you asked him about it later he made flatulence noises into the phone.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: [Proudly] Well, we have a special kind of relationship.
[TRUMP throws GIULIANI’s glass at the TV, but it doesn’t reach and crashes to the floor.]
GIULIANI: Perfectly good Scotch!
[TRUMP lumbers toward the set.]
OTHER AWFUL PERSON: The campaign has had Li Lin Chou bumper stickers made up —
[TRUMP knocks the TV over, breathes heavily, snorts.]
TRUMP: OK, double or nothing.
[CUT TO: TRUMP on an outdoor stage with the usual goons behind him. He wears a traditional suit.]
TRUMP: Just a second, folks.
[As the crowd roars, TRUMP pulls down his pants and underwear, shits in his hand and throws it into the audience. He then wipes his hand on J.D. VANCE, standing nearby.]
TRUMP: Me make poopies!
[Cheering redoubles. CUT TO: The close, dimly lit room. TRUMP and GIULIANI dressed at before, watching a wide-screen TV with chicken wire strung in front of it.]
MAGGIE HABERMAN: He's a poet warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes you’ll say “hello” to him, right? And he’ll just walk right by you. He won’t even notice you. And suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say, “Do you know that ‘if’ is the middle word in ‘life’?”
GIULIANI: [Giggles] I’ll take it in small bills, Donnie!
TRUMP: [Staring at the screen] I don’t have any money.
GIULIANI: [Giggles] Me neither!
[GIULIANI makes a “another round” gesture to the BARTENDER who starts pouring The Macallan into what looks like a fishbowl.]
TRUMP: What I don’t get is — how am I losing?
MAGGIE HABERMAN: The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.
NYT the next day: "Harris's continued refusal to fling her feces at her supporters indicates a lack of presidential seriousness."
Bravo, Roy. As outlandish as this is, like all good parody it only stretches the truth a little without taking it into Never-Never Land. Trump could come out at a rally drooling and wearing a bib, then recite The Itsy Bitsy Spider, and start hurling his own shit at the crowd like monkeys in the zoo, and the NYT would say something like “A Frustrated Trump Displays Anger Over His Slip In The Polls, As His Supporters Enthusiasm Remains High.” Then they’ll send even more reporters to diners in Ohio to see if the shit-flinging episode changed any votes.
How are they still doing this? Nine years in, and the NYT can’t grasp the simple fact that Trump supporters are going to stick with him, or at least say they are sticking with him, no matter what? I know the NYT wants him to win, but they’ve reached and surpassed the point of self-parody.