When Saturday Night Live debuted in 1975, they also premiered Weekend Update, their longest running skit. The first host of Weekend Update was Chevy Chase, a man so hated by the rest of the SNL cast that he was unwelcome on the show for years after leaving. Chevy Chase would begin his Weekend Update bit each week by saying, “I’m Chevy Chase…and you’re not.”
Fast forward 41 years, and another TV star manages to piss off not just his TV costars, but also his international peers, and he ups the ante by telling a Time magazine interviewer, “I’m president…and you’re not.”
One can only surmise that both Chase and trump made both self-affirming comments with nothing but contempt for their audience.
Setting aside the five words that will probably end up defining trump’s presidency until he does something even more appalling and memorable (which will most likely happen tomorrow, if history is any indication), let’s take a look at what is also making Time’s interview with trump memorable—that being trump’s strange defense of all the whopping piles of bullshit he’s dropped on all of us.
When asked about his accusations that President Obama wiretapped trump Tower, trump responded that he read about it in a newspaper, and saw it on Fox News.
When asked about his claim that he saw thousands of people celebrating in the streets on 9/11, trump responded that he read about it in a newspaper.
When asked about his claim that Ted Cruz’s (another universally hated man who has the added distinction of having a face made out of oatmeal) father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kenney, trump responded that he read about it in a newspaper.
Here’s a question Time neglected to ask.
If trump believes the media is dishonest, and lies, and reports fake news, and is the enemy of the American people, then why does he rely on them as the source for his wildest and most outrageous lies?
In case you missed it…
The day after he speed-walked from the Capitol to the White House to whisper in trump’s ear that he might have been caught up in some government surveillance after all, California Republican Devin Nunes had to come out today to say that, despite his breathless hustle to the Orange House to inform the tangerine king that his enemies were spying on him followed immediately by a press conference where he confessed that he shared investigative information with the target of that investigation, he actually had no way of knowing if trump or anyone associated with him or his campaign were actually surveilled.
Anyone else wonder what Nunes told trump? Do they still record all conversations in the Orange House?
And finally…
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
This was the response Sean Spicer gave to a reporter who asked him if donald trump would want to know if Paul Manafort had worked for a Russian oligarch before becoming trump’s campaign manager. This came on the heels of Sean Spicer trying to laugh off suggestions that donald trump should have known that his campaign manager had been employed by an influential member of an adversarial nation.