I did not immerse myself into The Donald Trump Show, a specaial called: Trumpapalooza. I did not bother to read Five Take Aways from what is billed as GOPer two-day midterm convention–a festival supposed to tout the Trump’s accomplishments before the 2026 elections. Actually I am tired of the zany antics of this president. It would be funny if it were a sitcom. But it is not.
The one big thing I did hear from this new episode in Season 6 of The Donald Trump Show is he is going to give me $5,000 if the GOP holds the majority in Congress, not necessarily a golden ticket to a chocolate factory. It is more of sweeting the midterm elections using fee speech and money. It is an old take on Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. It is easier than getting people drunk enough to vote for you.
When it comes to Trump I find myself like Lucille Ball and Ethel Mertz in an I Love Lucy episode that aired way back on September 15, 1952. First, before I go any further, I must say I did not see this episode when it aired in prime time. It is a classic I Love Lucy called Job Switching. I saw the show as a kid when Lucy was a perennial morning re-run on local TV. It was Friends or The Big Bang Theory of its day.
But back then it was a time of Black and White TVs. It was in time before morning news and celebrity talk shows. It was time with three network channels and maybe one or two local independent stations. And it was a time way before a 24/7 nonstop news cycle feeding us endless drivel.
“….And a man talks on the radio
He’s telling me more and more about some useless information supposed to fire my imagination…” (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction Rolling Stones
My sisters loved the Lucy show. So in the time of limited screens and limited content to pick from; I had two choices: either watch Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory or go outside. I am sure my sisters felt the same way when The Three Stooges came on. I feel this way with Trumpapalooza. I feel like I am the Loo-zah.
For those of you who are not familiar with the episode in question Lucy and Ethel take jobs wrapping chocolates while their husbands Ricky and Fred do housework. It is a classic theme often depicted in sitcoms: who has the tougher job? The theme is nothing new. Shakespeare uses a variation of this theme in various plays and Mark Twain wrote a novel called The Prince and the Pauper.
According to mashed.com‘s description Lucy and Ethel’s work day begins “With a bellowing “Let’r roll,” the conveyor belts starts up. At first, Lucy and Ethel think they can handle it, dutifully wrapping the chocolates. But they quickly realize they’ve overestimated their own abilities. But their jobs are on the line — not to mention the bet with their spouses — so Lucy and Ethel go to battle with the chocolates the fastest way they know how: stuffing them in their mouths and into their clothes. Lucy turns to Ethel, whose mouth is so crammed with chocolates she cannot speak, and declares “I think we’re fighting a losing game!” As the chocolate rate gets faster and faster, it becomes manifestly clear that they cannot possibly keep up — but their workplace fiasco makes for truly memorable comedy.”
When it comes to what Trump says, in many ways, makes me feel like Lucy or Ethel’s inability to deal with all that chocolate. They can’t eat it, they can’t stuff it in their pockets and they sure can’t wrap it. By sending more obnoxious, ignorant and incompressible ideas down the conveyor belt in the news cycle Trump is overloading the public’s ability to comprehend what is real and fake. It comes so fast we don’t know how to handle it. We can’t eat it and we can’t stuff it in our pockets.
The real paradox is that in order for Trump’s chocolates to come down the conveyor belt the news media becomes the chocolate shop pushing this crap on the public. The news media is not responsible for all the chocolate.It comes from a man who sues media outlets and complains constantly about the news media pumping out fake news–when he is the purveyor of most of it.
All of this reminds me of a quote attributed to the comedian WC Fields: “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.” And I would add plenty of it.
You would think at some point in the consuming public’s need to know would tire of the constant supply of bovine excrement being heaped at our feet. You would think that the economics of supply and demand for this idiotic rhetoric would kick in and reach equilibrium. You would think that at some point along the demand curve the public’s craving for his diatribe would have some effect on the supply side of tainted chocolate coming from Trump and his cohort. Obviously not.
Or maybe it has. Maybe what we are witnessing is a drop in the quality of gas coming out of the bag. I thought Trump “jumped the shark” two years ago in the Presidential debate with Kamala Harris when he said: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats…,They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
“No one in this world, so far as I know… has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people”–H.L. Mencken
But I was wrong. Just when you thought you hit the ceiling (or bottom) of ludicrous public discourse we were hit with memes of Trump as Jesus, the Pope and the late Hulk Hogan. We have seen Trump toting assault weapons and leading naval ships in modern rendition of “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.”
What upsets me the most is not Trump’s bombastic style, what I cannot understand is how the American public is still consuming this nonsense. As a viewing nation our IQ must deflating as our attentions span lives on cheap sugar. At what point do we realize we cannot keep inflating Trump’s ego. We need to turn off his confectionary conveyor belt of tweets, memes and map changes. We need to stop listening and looking for some sort of meaning in all this. Unlike Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory, there is no Trumpa Bar with a golden wrapper. Trump kept that one for himself.
