Last week, Jimmy Fallon had Trump on his show. It was all very pleasant, he ruffled his hair, further proof that his hair is in fact REAL, although quite shitty. Trump even gets a laugh out of us (read- me) when Fallon asks him if he can ruffle his hair, saying, “The answer’s yes, but the people in New Hampshire where I’m gonna be in about an hour from now, I hope they’re going to understand.” This guy can be funny. He can take a joke. And he looked so sweet when his perfectly kept hair was ruffled, affectionate even. Why can’t he be President?
This is all, of course, the reason why Trump spends so much of his time on his media image. So people will think that. They’ll see him over and over and his face will start to look more and more like it belongs in the Oval Office. But surprisingly, very little of that money is spent by Donald Trump himself. The media gives him airtime, because they know it will sell, that it will get ratings. According to the New York Times, Donald Trump has been given $1,898,000,000 in free air time. Compare this to Hillary Clinton, who has received only $746,000,000 in air time. Even liberal news sources will spend their time talking about the next racist thing Trump has said rather than the stances of his opponent or, well, actual news. I was asking myself a similar question when SNL did nothing to roast Trump when he guest starred on their special. I saw genuine fear, fear that the studio would come down on them hard if they did anything to ruin the reputation the esteemed Donald J Trump. Why can’t these comedians have the courage to tell this two-faced churlish asshole what they really think of him?
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But it’s not like we don’t understand. We get it. Interviewers need to make money. It’s a business, supply and demand. There’s a big audience for the next thing spewing out of Donald Trump’s mouth, regardless of whether it means anything. But where must interviewers draw the line from doting giggles to genuine criticism? We could commend John Oliver for being so blunt in his refusal to let Donald Trump appear on the show, but then again, the wing of HBO is a much calmer mistress than NBC. Oliver has more freedom. How about Samantha Bee? Well, her audience is skewed even more left than most network late night shows, so she can take that risk. Fallon is more middle than Bee is.
But then again, Fallon’s immediate follow-up Seth Meyers also banned Trump from his show, and he didn’t appear to get any particularly strong backlash from it. Fallon has the bigger audience, though, and he pulled in more views the night Trump guest starred than most other nights. How do you argue against the numbers?
I suppose the real question then is where do you, as an interviewer, choose to draw the line? Clearly, the lines are more sand-drawn when it comes to Trump. There is some wiggle room to be had. So when does it become the responsibility of the interviewer not to feign neutrality when they’re faced with such a liar, such a propagandist, such a bully? How much face are you willing to lose when you present crude clowns as men?
As another infamous propagandist once said, “If you repeat a lie often enough,” or see a giant orange face often enough, “people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” After all, as 1930s Germans once asked themselves, Adolf Hitler could never be lying about all those things he says- why can’t he be Chancellor?
