While we all hold our breath and wait for the 126 Republican congress-critters and 17 state attorneys general — valiant defenders of the Constitution — to suffer any consequences for trying to overthrow a presidential election (*), I came across this item.
“Barack and Michelle are reportedly producing a comedy series for Netflix ‘based on the chaotic transition of power when Donald Trump became president in 2016’. The show, titled The G Word With Adam Conover, is a collaboration between the comedian and the former first couple’s Higher Ground Productions, based on Michael Lewis’s book The Fifth Risk, which was born out of a September 2017 Vanity Fair article. The book covers the historic chaos and mismanagement that occurred in the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Energy during the handoff between the administrations.”
I spotted that story the same day Julias-Louis Dreyfus showed up on Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast’s podcast, “The New Abnormal”, and where she was asked for million and first time if the Trump presidency had out-lunaticked, out-venaled and out-bungled anything they ever imagined when and her writers was shooting “Veep?” Short answer — yes. Team Trump, meaning Jared and Rudy and Ivanka, etc., has performed so far beyond (I mean, below) what “Veep’s” writers could dream up there’s talk of reviving the show based on a new lower bar for what audiences are prepared to believe about … the President of the United States.
Then there is Noel Casler, a professional “talent wrangler” who worked on “The Celebrity Apprentice” and is now flagrantly violated his Trump-mandated Non-Disclosure Agreement with tales of Trump’s chronic incontinence, his plastic girdle, Adderall addiction, halitosis, sexual predation, personal grooming, functional illiteracy and vain-glorious laziness. Stories that rival anything “Dumb and Dumber” imagined, much less ‘Veep”.
Being an admitted (former) coke-snorting rock ‘n roller, Casler’s stories don’t carry quite the credibility of say, Maggie Haberman at The New York Times. But as he points out in this interview, Trump is still president. For another month Trump can still sic The Justice Department on anyone who dares say he wears Depends. Casler also reminds us that the edges of all these stories have circulated for years and that at this point only the most delusional Trump cultist finds it hard to paint in the numbers and accept that as bad, as ludicrous and buffoonish as everything is that we can see right now, what is waiting to be told is even more clownish.
Or, as Lori Levine, one of Casler’s interviers says, “Wait a minute. Can we get back to the shitting his pants story?”
Understanding that journalism is a delicate balance of reporting-while-maintaining-access, I have no trouble — zero — believing that people like Haberman or any of the Washington Post’s White House team or CNN’s have terabytes of files of stories of Trump’s more personal dysfunctions. Stories they’ve chosen to withold until after he’s safely gone. I mean, from the Times’ perspective, is presidential incontinence a legitimate story? Heaven’s no! You can imagine the editor’s meeting on that one. The Times does not run “shitting your pants:” stories.
The accepted tradition of journalism is to ignore “private” behavior. LBJ took heat once for pulling his dog’s ears. But no one in real time — while he was in office — told the story about Johnson forcing staffers to watch him relieve his bowels or whipping out “Jumbo” to make a point about who was the biggest dog in the kennel. Likewise, JFK had to be long dead and buried before we were told he was obsessively nailing everything in skirts while supposedly guiding us to The New Frontier.
Times of course have changed, post Bill and Monica and The Blue Dress. But unlike Clinton, Trump has been so derelict in his duty, so sociopathic in his disregard for pandemic suffering and death and so complicit in protecting Vladimir Putin, his only reservoir of good will is with ‘Murica’s sad Lost Minority, the torch-and-pitchfork MAGA crowd. You knw, the bellowing mob forever pissed at the way big city elitists have played them for chumps all their lives.
Point being, even if the Biden administration decides to pass on a prosecution, or even a Truth Commission on the Trump years, popular culture is well positioned to take all the drugged-out, scatological, grifting gold that Donny and the gang have given them and make a fresh fortune out of it.
Among the 81 million in this bubble it requires no suspension of disbelief.
(*Will never happen. In fact they will proudly remind voters about it next election.)