I have a hard time listening to DJT at the best of times, and listening to him at all now is a drain, nearly a year into the most bizarre presidency ever. Therefore I almost didn’t bother with Alex Baldwin’s parody which would have been a pity. I later learned (via NYT Book Review editor Pamela Paul interviews Kurt Andersen) this book was written in collaboration with novelist Kurt Andersen, who knew Trump back in the day. Andersen and Baldwin manage to channel DJT to an extraordinary extent, using DJT's actual words, sentence constructions, and speech idiosyncrasies for reconstructions and deep dives into his psyche.
This is deeply funny and unsettling stuff. Racist, sexist, religionist attitudes leach into his writing ("talking is the new writing"), surely not intentionally—he seems so completely ignorant of it. He makes juvenile jokes about Japanese names and the extent of Japanese disquiet over the cancellation of T.P.P., and expresses a kind of shocked surprise at how much the African American security people earn to protect him, especially after that discrimination suit they won…He blissfully mispronounces Philippine proverbs throughout the work, rendering them in his version of Tagalog, and mangling the translations.
Actual DJT tweets and quotes run into plausible extensions which elaborate his
“The chapter you just read was written personally by me, Donald Trump…this entire book, the words and sentences and the larger sections…the paragraphs, the chapters, all mine…and it's the best...”By the end of the book, DJT is willing to ship Melania back to Yugoslavia ("I didn’t realize she’d come in illegally…" and "she's 50 years old this year") and he poses himself in front of a camera waving at the departing plane carrying his third wife while, written into the script, a single tear falls silently in the closeup. Sad.
"The president has unlimited Presidential Pardon Power (PPP), which means I could even pardon myself…PPP…"DJT seems only to love his now 11-year-old son, Barron. He’s "so smart,""he’s like an adult now." One of the riffs I enjoyed most was about Paul Ryan, who looks
"like a smiling vampire…always glances at himself in windows and mirrors…it’s kinda gay…that afternoon Paul Ryan definitely looked untrustworthy. When I have strong instincts, they always mean something."When you get to the part on North Korea, you will understand the depth of his delusions.
"I’ve never been to North Korea, I never took a course…but discussing it strongly for ten minutes, not with some CIA analyst or some State Department know-it-all, I now totally, completely, absolutely understand…that’s how CEO’s do it."And his conflation of vote tallies:
"I won sixty percent of the electoral vote which is the same as Reagan and FDR…won of the popular vote."Arghh.
These two men take the time to make us see the absurdity in DJT’s utterances…they go through all of it…right through his hiring family for jobs hardened professionals have trouble handling, to our foreign relations, the collusion, the shallowness of businessmen’s understanding of cultural relations, the voting…”It Finally Felt Real Like a Movie” is a chapter title, but it does tend to put the whole thing in perspective.
I suggest we take every opportunity to laugh while we can, all the while building up energy to take this clown down. Even if you think you are tired of all things Trump, these men have done a brilliant job of it, so have a listen, or a peruse. Laugh with friends at enemies. The audio is produced by Penguin Audio, and this book has a Whispersync option, a good choice for this title. Published by Penguin Random House.
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