Conversation with Gene Weingarten: Did Trump Break Political Comedy?

A back-and-forth with the longtime Washington Post humorist

Photo courtesy of Bill O’Leary.

Normally, when I have a “guest” on I Might Be Wrong, it’s just me doing a bit (except for Paula Fox — she’s real). But today, I really do have a guest — Gene Weingarten! Gene was the Washington Post’s syndicated humor writer for 20 years, and now he’s on Substack, where he writes the excellent political-comedy newsletter The Gene Pool. He has written six books and is the only person to have won two Pulitzer Prizes for feature writing. He dropped out of NYU with only three credits remaining, which seems a bit like traveling to the moon and then not bothering to get out of the lunar lander.

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Jeff: Hey Gene! I'm excited to talk to you, because we both do political comedy, but you manage to do it without using the f-bomb every six words (HOW???). And you were in the game back when Ford was tumbling down the steps of Air Force One and when Bush 41 was touring Asia puking on various heads of state. Maybe I'm viewing political comedy's past through rose-colored Groucho Marx glasses, but those days seem like more fun. 

So: Let's talk about Trump, because that -- unfortunately -- is our job. Trump is a maniac who does something ridiculous every day, which creates an unprecedented content overload. I don't write a lot of stuff riffing off of Trump's latest shenanigans these days because it feels like I've said everything I have to say about the guy. It also feels like everyone has their opinion about Trump, nobody is going to change, and no-one is learning anything new. I find it all very not-fun. How do you feel?

Gene: I disagree, Jeff!  Respectfully! Trump is endlessly funny, and often in engaging new ways, precisely because of his idiocy and, and mostly his transcendent character flaws and his almost comical evil. He is Snidely Whiplash. He is Ernst Stavro Blofeld. He is Pennywise. He is Voldemort.  How, for example, is being exposed for serial farting oneself to sleep in a courtroom not funny, even if it isn't true?  

Now follow me here, but please don't lecture me on the infantilism of toilet jokes.  As it happens, farting is the ancient paradigm of humor, its Rosetta Stone, its Fertile Crescent.  The first known written joke comes from early Sumerians — roughly 1900 B.C. Here it is: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: A young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”

Sure, there’s problematic syntax and a daunting double negative, but the humor sustains, even after millennia. It is about pretension: Our pretensions of being civilized and dignified and not beasts of the field. And yet.

The sourcing of the Trump rumor seems solid, and multiple, but even if it is made up, it is a toot — sorry, a hoot — because the absurdity of Trump the person invites Trump the caricature. On social media, people have come up with delightful nicknames: Dozo the Clown, the Nodfather, Don Snoreleone, and of course, the Godfarter. There is an action figure for sale on eBay, possibly a joke: Pull-My-Finger Trump.

There are pitfalls to making fun of Trump, I’ll grant you that. It can be done badly or lazily. Almost every Trump impersonator — most ignobly, Alec Baldwin — resorts to the simplistic smoochie mouth, as though every second of the orange man’s life is spent kissing the air. But good parody is … good.

Some people make the case that there is no humor to be found in someone so malign and so existentially threatening to our country. To that I say, nonsense. Some fine humor arose over Hitler in the early 1940s, and it helped diminish him in the public eye and raise public morale. And was funny. Consider this. And it seem to involve a fart!

To me, a more intriguing question is whether Trump himself has a sense of humor. Whenever I say I think he does, I get aggrieved, righteous blowback from readers who refuse to even entertain the idea. What do you think?

(Oh, and by the way, I applaud your subtle implication that I am as old as a fossilized trilobite skeleton. I am. )

Jeff: I'm glad we have an area of respectful disagreement! People don't want to read two people agreeing with each other: They want to read two people politely and rationally explaining why the other person is a dangerous idiot who should be fed to crocodiles.

First, about the farting (wow, the level of this dialogue devolved IN A HURRY!). I'm not going to deny that an ex-president farting himself to sleep in a courtroom is funny; that would be the comedy equivalent of denying the heliocentric universe. However, I see the humor as an axiomatic truth, and tales of Sumerian wives shattering their husband's femurs with bouts of ancient flatulence don't play into it. After all: If the ancient Sumerians sacrificed two people to Nabu The God Of Writing on day six of the Akitu Festival, would you do that, too? I'm sure we can agree: Two people is excessive.

I think that everything you say about why Trump is funny was true at one point. I remember the heady days of 2016; I remember writing jokes off of Trump's myriad gaffes, which seemed like manna from comedy heaven after eight years of a president so straight-laced he makes Jimmy Carter look like Iggy Pop. I was one of the writers on John Oliver's "Drumpf" piece, which -- according to entertainment media headlines at the time -- DEMOLISHED and DESTROYED Trump's chance of being president. But Trump became president, and that's the problem: Comedy (though difficult to describe) has something to do with introducing a threat and then removing it. The threat never went away! Trump's still out there, menacing our election integrity and seeking a level of immunity not even held by Anu The Sky God (to bring the Sumerians back into it). I won't say this makes comedy impossible, but it harshes the comedy buzz.

Often, the premise of a Trump joke is "You won't believe what he just did!" To me, this is a faulty premise: I will absolutely believe what he just did. Nothing is beyond the pale. Did he grope a female member of his legal team during cross-examination? Eat a bald eagle? Encounter the ghost of Larry Flynt at a Hooters and promise to make him Secretary of Defense? I'm inventing wacky hypotheticals, but they might be real by the time we publish. And that's the second problem: The only Trump "take" that makes sense to me is "this guy is a weirdo", and how could anyone not know that at this point? I think that everyone knows that, but unfortunately, half of the country is into it.

We agree that Trump has a sense of humor: He likes to put people down. He's like Don Rickles if Rickles had meant everything he said. So, yes, he has a sense of humor, though it's not one that I find particularly funny (except for calling Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas" -- I think she earned that one). How would you say Trump's humor compares to past presidents? Nixon crushed on Laugh In, and Reagan once starred in a movie opposite a chimp, so he couldn't have been entirely straight-laced. Where does Trump fit in?

Gene: Of the presidents I have seen in my unconscionably long sentient lifetime (alas, starting late in Eisenhower’s second term), I think Trump is less funny than Obama and Kennedy, but funnier than all the others. It is an admission I am not thrilled to make, but I think it’s true. Even those presidents reputed to be funny — Clinton, Reagan — mostly relied on stiff political fare, and did not seem to have spontaneity.

Trump is better than that. Watch this clip of him at a rally, describing what had happened to him during a trip to West Point. The first 2:20 is pretty damn glib and funny, and — believe it or not — self-deprecating. He can bring it when he wants to.

Just a couple of days ago, Trump got endorsed by Bill Barr, his former lickspittle attorney general who incurred Donald’s lifelong wrath by refusing to pursue groundless investigations into his claims of widespread voter fraud. Trump has vilified Barr ever since. After the endorsement, Trump posted this on his Truth Social site:

“Wow! Former A.G. Bill Barr, who let a lot of great people down by not investigating Voter Fraud in our Country, has just Endorsed me for President despite the fact that I called him “Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy. … Based on the fact that I greatly appreciate his wholehearted Endorsement, I am removing the word ‘Lethargic’ from my statement. Thank you Bill.”

Callous and cruel and graceless and ungrateful, but undeniably funny.

I get the impression that for all his thin-skinned, blusterous, grievance-filled infantile rants, for all his believable vows of revenge, and his palpable efforts to dismantle democracy — behind it all, he is bootlegging a smile. He knows what he is, and who is audience is, and he finds it a riot. As it were.

I think there is a horizontal effect of the caricature that Trump has made of himself — truly hilarious clueless headlines, like this from The Seattle Times: “Trump respects women, most men say in poll results.”

Aren’t women the only valid judges of this issue? This is like taking a poll of white people only, and asking whether racism still exists in America.

(Just for the record, sixty-nine percent of women said no, he does not respect women.)

How are we gonna wrap this up, Jeff? Ask me something hard.

Jeff: Trump is definitely good in front of crowds. I’ve always felt that Trump — though the LeBron James of bullshit — is nonetheless authentic. That is: He is actually the guy that he appears to be in public. Probably the only scandal that could dent Trump at this point would be if it turned out that in private, he eats leafy greens and reads Proust.

I do think, though, that some of what you’re identifying as Trump being funny is actually the Republican Party being funny about Trump. It’s (darkly) funny how servile they are; they keep propping him up even though he’s obviously never going to give anything back. Except for probably a tax cut. I guess the deal is that Trump can do whatever he wants to the Republican Party in exchange for a reduction in the top marginal rate – I wonder if they at least have a “no kissing on the mouth” rule.

I guess my corker of a wrap-up question is this: Why do we exist? Not, like, as beings (though if you know the answer to that, please share), but as political comedians? Why are these two things blended together? One could argue that there should just be politics, which in its ideal form is a rational discussion of issues, and in its actual form is a way for everyone to act out their worst impulses. And then comedy would be an entirely separate thing, since it is essentially just an exercise-free way to release endorphins, and is – as you point out – inherently fart-based. Is it perhaps time for politics and comedy to go their separate ways?

Gene: Your first question first. We exist as beings for the same reason dung beetles and the naked mole rat (which looks like a penis with teeth) exist: To perpetuate the species. That’s it. Nature is no more benevolent or compassionate than that. In the meantime, we follow religions, join social clubs, fall in love, root for our favorite sports team, have hobbies, watch porn, all as a means of distracting ourselves from the potentially paralyzing knowledge that we will someday die. (See Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, Simon and Schuster, 1974).

And that’s why comedy and politics must still belong together, Jeff. One of the most effective ways we distract ourselves from the fear of death is through laughter. Humor lets us giggle past the graveyard. And there is no subject more deserving of knifing satire than is politics, a field steeped in affectation and hypocrisy and prevarication — three of the big four most fecund areas for mirth. (The fourth is farting.) After 9/11 I wrote that “when people are filled with grief, they need to cry. When people are filled with fear, they need to laugh.” Still true. And I, for one, am currently petrified.

Jeff: I clicked on that naked mole rat link, and you're right: penis with teeth. No other way to describe it. Since you're right about that, I'll assume that you're also right about everything else. Good talking to you!

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