August 17, 2019
Hillary-Trump Debates: The Audition Tapes
This is a re-play of something I wrote during the 2016 election. The premise is that the Clinton campaign is auditioning stand-ins for Trump to rehearse the 2016 debates with.
Note that Louis CK not yet disgraced, and in any case I the last paragraph of that one is really unclear. You see, he’s snapping back to the question, and talking about how Trump treats workers.
Also, the Anthony Wiener reference is, thankfully, dated now.
I have to say that I’m a little proud of the Quentin Tarantino story, though.
Louis CK
Clinton: Mr. Trump, not only have your businesses gone bankrupt, you’ve stiffed honest working people, refusing to pay them for their work. If you scam your own workers out of money, how can Americans trust you?
CK: I do that. I’m a terrible person. Really. I’m a rat bastard. I don’t mean to be. When I’m hiring someone, like a brick layer, I’m thinking: Wow, that guy works so hard. And you know something? He does something I couldn’t do in a million years. Give me a literal million years, and I’d still be laying bricks that looked like they were done by a two-year-old playing with her own poop. Uneven. Tilted. The cement between them would sometimes be the thickness of the chocolate in a Milano cookie, you know, so little it’s really there just so they can put on the package that it’s got chocolate. But it’s really like the fruit juice they add to a children’s drink so they can say “Made with real apples” when really it’s like they use apples in the paste on the labels. You can’t argue: it’s made with real apples. And then right next to that brick, the concrete would be like you split open two double-stuffed Oreos and stuck them together. Never in a million years could I do what a bricklayer does, and I’m in awe of them.
And next thing you know I’ve misjudged how many people want to get on a smelly bus to Atlantic City for four hours, and I’m like, “Hey, sorry, Mr. Bricklayer, but, go home and starve with your kids. But thanks, really.” I’m just such a rat bastard.
Malcolm Gladwell
Moderator: Mr. Trump, independent economists have estimated that your tax plan would cost the country as much as ten trillion dollars
in lost revenues. How would you pay for your ambitious new programs?
Gladwell: The best economists are with me. 100%. All of them support me. They’ve looked at my plan and they compare it to FDR. Franklin Delaney brought us out of the Great Depression. He was a cripple, you know? Still a great guy, though. Lot of brain. The world’s best economists look at my plan and what that tell me is that it’s like in 1875 when a peanut roaster by the name of Samuel Bridewell made a surprising discovery: the plants harvested from the western edge of his 30-acre farm in Virginia were slightly darker in color, slightly larger, and – this was the true revelation – when mashed at a temperature between 140 and 150 Fahrenheit, formed a glutinous mass that when cooled would hold whatever shape it was formed into. Bridewell began a lively, but local, business selling mashed peanuts in the form of farm animals, then Fathers of the Constitution, and then, as a wave of Irish immigrants spread the through the area, saints.
Bridewell’s Legume Figurines would today be forgotten if the nephews of a chemist named Robert Michelson had not been traveling through Virginia and came upon a box of the faded Figurines at a farm stand along a country path in Pebble Corners, eight miles south of Richmond. They opened one of the packages, but the youngest of the nephews, Chad Hemmings …
Moderator: Time is up, Mr. Trump.
Gladwell: … chipped a tooth on a desiccated miniature statue of St. Sebastian. He threw the statue down, where, by chance, it landed in a bowl of “lemon invigorator,” a punch being offered at the price of two drinks for a penny.
Moderator: Time, Mr. Trump.
Gladwell: The reaction of the peanut compound to the acidity of the lemons was immediate and startling …”
John Podesta: Thank you.
Bryan Cranston
Moderator: Mr. Trump, you have said that you would consider withdrawing support for our NATO allies unless they made larger contributions to the financial cost of the treaty. Doesn’t that send a signal to Russia that it can invade countries with impunity?
Cranston: You’re worrying about Russia invading? You don’t understand. When invaders knock on the door of Crimea, I’m not Crimea and I’m sure as hell not its allies cowering in the dark. I am the one who knocks.
Clinton: I’m sorry, you’re now threatening to invade Crimea? I think we need to take this down a notch…
Cranston: Hey, lady, the screw only turns in one direction, and it you’re either the one doing the screwing or you’re on the pointy end…
John Podesta: Thank you Mr. Cranston. We’ll get back to you.
Terry Gross
Moderator: Mr. Trump, the next president may have the opportunity to fill up to three Supreme Court seats. Are there any litmus tests you would apply to candidates?
Gross: A litmus test? They’re completely unreliable. A hoax. Total hoax. You know who wants us to believe in litmus tests? The Chinese. [To the moderator] You should know that. Your father was a chemist, and your mother taught biology, right? And when you were fourteen, your father announced that he was gay. So how has growing up in a house full of scientists, one of who was a closeted gay man, influenced your sense of how reliable answers to any question can be, and the sort of follow-up you…
John Podesta: Thank you for your time, Ms. Gross.
Quentin Tarantino
Clinton: Politifact, the non-partisan fact checking site, says that you tell more untruths per hour than any candidate they’ve ever seen.
How can you lead the country when you have no problem knowingly telling outright lies?
Tarantino: You know who’s a liar? The biggest liar? God. I call him Lyin’ Jehovah. Lyin’ Jehovah. And you know the biggest lie Lyin’ Jehovah ever told, which makes it the the hugest lie in history? Huge. Really incredible.
You know Job, right? From the Old Testament. That Job. And it says right there that he’s the most righteous of his generation. He’s the guy. He does everything right. He prays. He sacrifices goats or whatever it says he has to sacrifice. He does it right. And it’s not easy. One little screw-up and you’re elbow deep in goat guts and it doesn’t count for anything. In fact, it shows God, who’s sitting there watching every detail just because He can, it shows God that you didn’t really mean it. If you meant it, you’d get it right. And Job gets it right. He totally does. God says so, flat out. And God rewards him with wives and children and goats and land. So Job is honoring God, all day, honoring, honoring, honoring.
And how does God respond? He basically gets into a drunken bet with Satan. Satan! Satan barely exists in the Old Testament, but he shows up just so God can have someone to bet with. Because who else is going to bet with God? God is always going to win. You know why? Because He’s God! The Creator. So, God bets the only schmuck arrogant enough to bet against Him that Job isn’t in it just for the wives and the goats. No, Job is righteous because he loves God. So what’s the test? Take away everything Job owns. Wives, children, land, goats. Give him boils, take away his HBO Go. Everything. Boom. Now instead of being the most righteous, he might as well be the town loser who takes a dump in the public swimming pool, you know what I mean? Job’s got nothing not because he was bad but because he was the most righteous. That’s why God picked on him.
So, Job asks God why this is happening to him, it’s so unfair. And asking God takes some Satan-size cojones because Job has seen what God can do. So, God replies with the greatest lie in the history of mankind. God — Jehovah, — to Job out of a freaking whirlwind and says, “Who are you to question me?” And God really rubs Job’s nose in it. Do you know about every freaking sparrow that falls? I didn’t think so. I couldn’t explain it to you if I wanted to, God says. And that’s it. That’s the lie. How do we know this? Because the Old Testament tells us exactly why it happened to Job: It was a bet. There’s nothing to understand except that God is being a total dick. But God can’t say that. So He lies. He lies!
But, I gotta say, Lyin’ Jehovah won the bet. He’s the ultimate winner.
John Podesta: Thank you, Mr. Tarantino.
Anthony Wiener
John Podesta: Next!
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