If you watched Trump’s appearance at the Al Smith dinner last night, you might be forgiven for concluding that he bombed, big league.
The annual charity dinner is sort of a political version of a celebrity roast, albeit one that is a little less vicious and a lot less funny. The main task of any politician speaking at the event is to demonstrate the rudiments of a sense of humor, especially when it comes to jokes directed at them.
Trump failed. Unlike Hillary, who managed to more or less get into the spirit of the thing, Trump’s only decent self-deprecating joke, if you can call it that, was at Melania’s expense, not his own. And he devoted most of his time to nasty attacks on Hillary that didn’t even vaguely resemble jokes, managing to draw actual boos from the crowd in the process.
Naturally, Trump’s most terrible fans think that he totally kicked ass.
On his blog today, white supremacist pickup artist James “Heartiste” Weidmann celebrates Trump’s alleged victory over “the infirm Queen of C*nts, Hillary Rotten Clinton” with several paragraphs worth of overcooked prose:
At the Al Smith charity dinner, Trump laid a trap for the elites and unleashed his vengeance on a gathering of effete plutocrats, smug globalist whores, lapdog media hacks, intellectually inbred urbanites, and the Wicked Bitch herself. …
He nuked the ruling class and the Clinton Machine from orbit and took a piss on their smoldering ashes.
Weidmann continues on in this vein for several more paragraphs, but I imagine you’ve got the gist of his, er, argument already.
Amazingly, Weidmann has managed to find another Trump fan whose, er, analysis of the event is even more histrionic than his own, an anonymous fellow running a blog called Face to Face. Here’s what that dude has to say on the subject:
[T]he time for yukking it up with the Establishment is over. Watch as Trump the court jester begins with his routine of juggling several glistening knives in the air, for the amusement of the white-tie audience, then calmly collects them one by one into his hands, and throws them straight into the chests of the plutocrats and the media.
The courtiers mocked him as a reality TV clown, and struck cruel blows against his little-people supporters whenever they felt like a little entertainment. So the jester decides to put on a show for the court where “Trump acts like Trump” and they’re all laughing along with the act. He convinces them it would be a riot for them to put on wax masks showing elitist caricatures, then begins a fire-breathing routine — only to spit the fire right onto their masks. As the courtiers scramble around the ballroom with their faces ablaze, the jester and his little-people companions storm out and burn down the rest of the palace.
Yipes. I think someone’s metaphoric license needs to be revoked.
If you want to watch what actually happened at the dinner when Trump got up to speak, here are some of the highlights, by which I mean lowlights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knNEwNbhq9o&feature=youtu.be
You can see the whole thing here.
I’m convinced that if he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Trump would be where Roosh or Paul Elam are right now; losers begging for money on the internet from human beings who don’t deserve to call themselves human beings.
Trump not only doesn’t understand the concept of the evening, he doesn’t even manage to be funny. Obviously he absolutely killed it and is the undisputed winner.
I don’t know whence Face to Face dude got his first scenario, but the second is Edgar Allan Poe’s “Hop-Frog”.
@ Austin Loomis
I fondly recall reading that tale in the fifth grade. (….I was a weird kid.)
“Hillary is so corrupt…”
That guy in the back’s face was priceless.
Christ on a bike. Trump is a plutocrat. What else could a billionaire seeking greater political power be? He’s the very fucking image of the elite. When idiots like heartiste look at him, what on earth do they see?
@Pie: I love that expression! I’m gonna start using it…and always picturing the J-man on a bicycle. But would he wear a helmet?
I’m confused, did I watch the same event as those guys? I don’t recall any knives or flame throwers, myself. Maybe I blinked?
Trump doesn’t do humor. He doesn’t seem able to. Probably not his fault. Some people just aren’t funny.
I thought Hillary did well.
Did these guys miss the bits where Trump got booed?
@Pie
A white method to screw over minorites.
@ Pie
The Trumplings are the people John Steinbeck referred to when he said the “proletariat in America do not see themselves as the poor, but as temporarily inconvenienced millionaires”
They do not see Trumpf as an elite, but as one of them. Even if he was born into the upper class, he overcame that shame and successfully pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Any fact to the contrary is just Not True.
@Violet
Yes, a helmet of thorns.
How many of those Catholics booing Trump will vote for him anyway, because of the candidates’ respective positions on abortion?
Like, he had some good lines, but his delivery was ass. He’s got it when he’s off the cuff. It’s deplorable, but still comedic. He can’t do it when he’s reading. It’s unnatural to him. Then he got to the part when he just started talking about corruption and I quit
Meanwhile, she’s pretty OK at it. She’s no Barack, and she could use a coach, but not bad. The best jokes were the slow burners. It’s quiet for a second as everyone in the room realizes what ’45’ means. I look forward to her 1st correspondence dinner
A very wise “friend” of mine said this last night.
At least in these two cases they went with option A
Trump obviously isn’t funny, but he either didn’t know or didn’t care that while this was technically a roast, it’s not the kind where you step to the mic and start telling “The Aristocrats”.
More proof that men just can’t be funny.
Can you imagine trying to explain self-deprecating humour to Trump?
Trump is not a member of the “elite”. By which they mean “ultra-rich ultra-liberal socialist jooooooz who control the world and seek to enslave the inherently superior white male”. He’s a guy who wrecks things everywhere he goes, including sometimes himself. In their eyes, he’s a nuclear warhead pointed straight at the corrupt system that the “elites” use to keep their stranglehold over the world. Once he fucks their shit up, things will “revert” to their “natural state” where they are on top.
That’s why they’re fans. At least some of them, anyway. His being booed by the “minions of the elite” is more “evidence” that they’re right.
Giphy delivers:
Ouch… watching the two candidates, one’s strained humor, the other’s complete lack of humor, seeing the audience shifting and squirming in their seats, forcing laughter at the slightest hint of an actual joke…. The Captains of Industry and the Kings of Society in their ties, tails, evening wear, just wanting to go home.
Your jokes and delivery are bad when a roomful of charitable priests won’t give you a pity laugh.
I don’t think Trump probably can be self-deprecating. I watched the whole thing and thought he was going to be for a minute, but he went for his wife instead (and it was a genuinely funny line). Even if he had the ability before he’s so under pressure now that he can’t be – he’s in serious danger of having concrete evidence that he’s failed at something, that’s why he’s scrambling so hard to say the election is rigged (it isn’t, however voter fraud does happen).
What’s more alarming than one puffed up and grumpy son of privilege are all the people who think he’s some kind of bona fide dark triad genius. I’m not going to argue for or against his diagnosis of narcissism, sociopathy and Machiavellianism (is that last one even an actual psych thing?) but I can’t believe that there are people out there who think this combination which basically describes selfish fucks with hearts full of hate and the will to use that hate is a GOOD thing and the more the selfishness and destructiveness the better. I don’t doubt he’s a hatin’ and selfish fuck, but they keep projecting these psychobabbly qualities onto him and saying how wonderful it is and how good it will be for the country. As if the concept of the servant leader is a bad thing.
I’m not surprised his over-inflated ego was too massive and fragile to make a few jokes at his expense. Has anyone else heard about how he changed around jokes at his comedy central roast? Not making them less insulting or anything though, just making any mention of his wealth bigger. Like, whenever there was a joke that had a number related to his money, he made them double it. He didn’t seem to mind people saying terrible things about him, just as long as everyone knew how rich he was.
@Dr Thang – I just now read about that http://theweek.com/speedreads/654458/does-donald-trump-have-sense-humor
and there’s a very interesting article in the Atlantic about Donald Trump’s inability to laugh – especially at himself:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/does-trump-know-how-to-laugh/501875/
TRUMP: “Hillary is so corrupt…”
AUDIENCE: “How corrupt is she?”
BRETT SOMERS’ ANSWER: something something bazooms