I have heard that Trump was quite entertaining at the Al Smith Memorial dinner, but this riposte from the Guardian’s Helen Sullivan displays true comic genius. Her effortless mastery of the role of the po-faced straight man (replace “mastery” and “straight man” with gender-neutral equivalent terms if required) is a joy to behold.
Trump speaks at Al Smith dinner – as it happened
03.35 BST
Trump’s speech ends and he receives warm applause from the crowd. We will end our coverage of this event now.03.31 BST
Trump says he will bring back the SALT tax deduction. Some context from NBC’s Sahlil Kapur: [screenshot of tweet]03.26 BST
Trump makes another transphobic joke.03.26 BST
Trump repeats claims that he has been treated worse than any other president.He takes a jab at Gaffigan, saying that hopefully his role as Tim Walz will be short-lived.
03.25 BST
Trump makes a joke to boos, then says, “That’s nasty. I told the idiots who gave me this stuff.”The joke was about Harris’s support for childcare and was directed at her husband, Dough Emhoff and paid child care workers.
“Last time I did this I was wondering against crooked Hillary…I had the meanest guy you’d ever seen write stuff up and man was the room angry,” Trump says.
They said “It’s too much, but I did it anyway.”
Trump jokes that he is meant to make self-depracating jokes, then says, “So here goes. Nope! I got nothing”.
03.15 BST
“Chuck Schumer is here looking very glum, Trump says. “But look on the bright side chuck, considering how woke your party has become, if Kamala loses you still have the chance to become the first woman president,” Trump says – it is a transphobic joke.03.13 BST
Trump again refers to Harris not appearing in person, and says she is “receiving communion from Gretchen Whitmer,” to claps and cheers.“If the Democrats really wanted someone to not be with us this evening, they would have just sent Joe Biden,” Trump says.
Trump claims – not clear if joking – that Biden is having second thoughts and wants to come back. There is no evidence of this.
Trump says the term “fake news” is no longer in vogue.
He refers to President Barack Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama” – dog whistling for the baseless ‘birther’ conspiracy theory that Obama is secretly a Muslim born in Kenya.
03.07 BST
Trump says of Harris, “I like her a lot, but now I can’t stand her.”“Catholics you gotta vote for me,” Trump says. “I’m here and she’s not.”
Trump lists good deeds done by Catholics.
“If you wanted Harris to accept your invitation you should have told her the funds were going to bail out the rioters and looters in Minneapolis,” Trump says, to loud whoops and cheers.
Trump is referring to the George Floyd protests that took place in the historically Catholic city of Minneapolis in 2020.
03.03 BST
“The last Democrat not to attend this important event was Walter Mondale,” Trump says, “And it did not go very well for him. He lost 49 states and he won one: Minnesota. So I said there’s no way I’m missing it.”Mondale “was expected to do well, then it didn’t work out,” Trump jokes. “It shows you there is a god.”
Trump then says that Harris is weird and it is weird that Harris isn’t here tonight – saying the word several times, referring to the insult Harris and Tim Walz direct at Trump and his supporters.
03.01 BST
“Always: It’s a rule, you gotta go to the dinner, you gotta do it, otherwise bad things are going to happen to you from up there,” Trump jokes, getting a laugh – he is referring to God.“But my opponent feels that she does not have to be here which is disrespectful to the event and in particular to our Catholic community,” Trump says. The crowd claps.
02.59 BST
“They’ve gone after me. Mr Mayor, you’re peanuts compared to what they did to me,” Trump says.02.58 BST
“Mayor Adams, good luck with everything, they went after you,” Trump says to a big laugh.02.57 BST
Trump is receiving a warm response from the crowd.“They told me under no circumstances are you allowed to use a teleprompter and I get up here and see there is a beautiful teleprompter,” he says.
Unclear if that is a joke or more of Trump’s obsession with whether Harris is using teleprompters or not.
I particularly loved Sullivan’s deadpan re-telling of Trump’s jokes in the character of a robot explaining human humour: ‘…if Kamala loses you still have the chance to become the first woman president,” Trump says – it is a transphobic joke’ and ‘Trump claims – not clear if joking – that Biden is having second thoughts and wants to come back. There is no evidence of this’.
Do I detect a call-back to a famous anecdote about one of Bruce Bairnsfather’s cartoons depicting life in the trenches during World War I? The cartoon in question, headed “So Obvious”, shows an old soldier – probably but not certainly his recurring character “Old Bill” – slumped wearily against a brick wall with an enormous hole in it while his younger companion looks on. The caption says,
The Young and Talkative One: “Who made that ‘ole?”
The Fed-up One: “Mice.”
According to the Bairnsfather’s Wikipedia article, in the next war along, the Nazis, puzzled by the apparent paradox that humour about grumpy British soldiers seemed to actually raise British morale, made careful study of the phenomenon and explained it to their own soldiers, using this very cartoon as an example:
Quoting a Nazi textbook taken from a German prisoner of war that shows the cartoon, the clipping reads: “Obviously, the hole was not made by a mouse. It was made by a shell. There is no humor in this misstatement of facts. The man, Old Bill, was clearly mistaken in thinking a mouse had made it. People who can laugh at such mistakes are obviously not normal; therefore we should pay careful attention to their psychology. Their very decadence may prove to be a weapon of self-defense.”
Call me cynical, but I find it hard to believe that anyone, even an employee of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, ever really believed that it was necessary to explain that the hole was not made by mice. I suspect that claimed “Nazi textbook” was in truth written by some chap in the British Ministry of Information who enjoyed his work. Helen Sullivan continues in that great comedic tradition.
It has to be a transphobic joke or otherwise you have to accept it a sharp political criticism of the Democrat mindset. And that would never do.
Are the “mainstream” media types really this stupid, or are they pretending?
As for President Trump – he has good delivery and has learned to withstand endless savage attacks, I doubt that all but a few people could withstand the constant attacks that have been directed against him. I know I could not.
I can also be po-faced.
I am against bringing back the deduction for State and local taxes, indeed I am against any deductions at all – the tax code should be a simple, you pay X per cent of your income above a certain figure.
As recently as 2016 Senator Cruz proposed a ten percent income tax (over a certain figure) for individuals, and a ten percent turnover tax (a turnover tax – not a Corporate profits tax, as Corporations can hide profits) for Corporations – both with no deductions.
As for the spending side – about one TRILLION Dollars a year goes on servicing the 36 Trillion Dollar debt – this makes no sense at all as the government is not borrowing gold or silver, it is borrowing fiat “Dollars” that it itself creates – it (via the Federal Reserve) creates this “money” – lends it out to financial institutions and then borrows it back again – at a higher rate of interest.
This monetary and financial system is a joke – but a bad joke.
If the moderns insist on fiat money (rather than gold or silver) then the government can finance its spending directly (there would be no more inflation than is already generated) – it has no need of this 36 Trillion Dollar National Debt thing, of the “financial centers” such as New York – who do NOT deal in Real Savings (actual Capital) they deal in fiat Dollars that the government dishes out to them and then borrows back.
There is very little industry left in such places as New York or Chicago (and-so-on) – time to say goodbye to these Credit Bubble places.
They (the financial center cities – all over the Western world) are going to collapse in 2025 anyway – but no doubt the media will blame “Trump”.
The po-faced Helen Sullivan either chose to gloss over the impact on a Catholic audience of the Gretchen Whitmer communion quip or, more likely, is so ensconced in her bubble as to be genuinely unaware of its meaning.
A less kind person than myself might also question whether her co-authors were best qualified to appreciate many other nuances of Mr Trump’s humour.
Helen Sullivan (now); with Maanvi Singh ,Maya Yang, Erum Salam and Amy Sedghi (earlier)
The thing is – some people have no sense of the absurd. It’s not dumbness, it’s just that they are wired differently.
I happened to be in a pharmacy in the US a couple of days ago, while Mrs Moore was collecting a prescription at the counter. I was standing back to keep out of the way. A second pharmacist appeared at another window and said “Can I help you ?” It was 10.57am, so naturally I said “No no, I’m just waiting for the free ice cream at 11 o’clock.” The pharmacist giggled, and the guy standing beside me (assuming I was queueing) produced a nervous laugh and said “They don’t really give out free ice cream at 11 o’clock, do they ?” I said “Of course not” He looked relieved. I added “They don’t give out free ice cream. Just cookies.” The guy said “Really ? I did not know that.”
He turned out to be a Professor at the local university. Perfectly nice guy, but Monty Python would have been wholly lost on him. It takes all sorts.
The Guardian gal may be the same, many lefties are. But she may just have been being professionally humourless.
Trump didn’t write his own jokes, but he delivered them pretty well. Good comic timing.
Amen. Agree. Why should NY residents be able to choose a very high state tax rate knowing that it mostly just drastically reduces their federal tax rate?
(And how is it that so many states never figured out that, under the local-tax federal deduction scheme, they should have been maximizing their local and state taxes simply to keep the dollars from being shipped to Washington? Seems basic.)
Why should NY residents be able to choose a very high state tax rate knowing that it mostly just drastically reduces their federal tax rate?
There are several tight Congressional districts in NY and California. A few hundred votes either way could make the difference in these districts. If Trump wins, he would like to have a majority in the House.
A ten percent turnover tax? Feedlots would go out of business and no-one would be wholesaling petrol, let alone retailing it. It’s a good reminder that for every difficult problem there’s a simple obvious solution, and it’s usually wrong.
bobby b
“I am against bringing back the deduction for State and local taxes . . . “
I’m not. I mean I 100% agree with everything you said, but I live in a high tax state and it would definitely reduce MY taxes, and these days I’m basically a single issue voter — what will let me keep more of my money. And on the flip side anything that reduces taxes anywhere is a good thing since it gives the bastards less money to fuck with you.
Of course I’d love a fair and sensible tax code – but that ship sailed a long time ago! If it were down to me we’d have a 10% fixed national retail sales tax, and no other federal taxes at all. If Jesus only wants 10% what right does Joe Biden have to want more? But that is of course a complete fantasy.
BTW this debate reminds me a lot of the “poll tax” that was Thatcher’s eventual undoing. Much of the point of the poll tax was that it made the profligate local councils much more accountable for their porky ways. And it did. In spades. Some of those labour councils had poll taxes three or four times higher than the tory ones. But instead of it exposing the local councils perfidity, it was bounced back at Thatcher, and ultimately lead to her downfall.
Taxes, I guess, are about politics as much as raising money.
Aren’t y’all at 5% state income tax? I’m here at 10%. So, yeah, I understand. But it’s just such a gamed system that it bugs me. If you set your state tax high, then your residents pay about the same combined amount as people in other states, but your money stays in the state. (Which isn’t bad in itself, but it skews the federal tax receipts.)
Typical of a certain kind of American “libertarianism”: failing to take into account incentives, 2nd-order effects, and results in the long term.
I just noticed this:
Although Helen Sullivan quotes Trump’s other jokes, she did not quote that one, just left it as “Trump makes a joke”. His exact words were,
That is genuinely funny 😀
Funniest part was where Trump implied men who support Kamala are cuckolds 😄😄
He did the same thing at the same event in 2016. Absolutely tore Hillary Clinton to shreds.
It was a delightful spectacle.
That’s not “as it happened”, that’s in reverse order of how it happened.
What is it about these morons that list a narrative backwards?
And now we finish. (yerwot? you’ve not even started)
He’s done it again! (done what again? you’ve not even mentioned anything yet)
And he’s entered the room. (ah, so now we’re going to start)
Welcome to our commentary (ok then, he we go.)
(ok. so where’s your commentary?)
jgh, copied from a speech-to-text transcript, too lazy to reorder the scroll.
Fraser:
I am reminded that some of the great supporters of a federal income tax were prohibitionists. Prior to the dread year of 1913, much government income came from duty on alcohol sales, and the prohibition lobby needed to establish a way to fund the federales when alcohol was banned.
Of course alcohol was banned, and then unbanned, but somehow federal income tax never went away.
@JohnK
I am reminded that some of the great supporters of a federal income tax were prohibitionists.
Interesting historical info JohnK, thanks for sharing. Ironically, paying my taxes, and in particular filling in a hundred pages of tax forms, definitely drives me to drink.
@bobby b
Aren’t y’all at 5% state income tax? I’m here at 10%. So, yeah, I understand. But it’s just such a gamed system that it bugs me.
I think 5% IS a high tax state! At least you aren’t in CA where the top rate is 13%. But yeah, the system is terrible, but there is nothing I can do about it. All I can do is support the few crumbs that drop from the table that might advantage me. I’m afraid I think the idea that we can “fix” the tax system to be fair is just delusional[*]. Although I agree that SALT caps do have a delicious feedback mechanism. However, rather than enjoying the schadenfreude (or imagining that the consequences of a SALT tax will be pressure on the high tax states) I’d rather just keep more of my money.
And, I might add in consideration of your comments on the gamed system: I think the only thing worse than the amount of taxes I have to pay is the manner in which I have to pay them. I’m not exaggerating when I said I had to fill in 100 pages of tax forms — I went back and looked at my 2023 taxes. And that doesn’t include the dozens of pages I had to fill in every quarter, or the considerable cost of paying a professional to do the work, or a payroll service just to process my income. The whole thing is outrageous nonsense. But there is literally nothing I can do about it, so anything that might happen that gives my back some of my money, I’m in favor of.
[*] Part of the reason we can’t fix it to be fair is that most people in this country have a very different idea of what “fair” means than I do. I shiver every time I hear a politician saying “the rich should pay their fair share”. The top 1% pay 40% of the taxes, which, to me means that if the rich are to pay their “fair” share then they are very much due for a big tax cut. Not that I am advocating for that. I am advocating for a total transformation of the tax system. But I’m also advocating for a genie to turn up and grant me three wishes, which seems rather more likely than the implementation of my idea of a fair tax system.
Genie: Fraser I grant you three wishes!!
Fraser: Oh, great I always wanted to drive to Hawaii can you build a bridge?
Genie: Are you crazy, you can’t build a four thousand mile bridge across the ocean!!
Fraser: OK, I understand. In than case I wish that the federal tax system be made fair and just.
Genie: How many lanes do you want on that bridge….
More uncomfortably for the libertarians, many supporters of the income tax were free traders
Yes indeed bobby b – a pox on all these “deductions” both for individuals and corporations (corporations can even deduct their property taxes from their taxable income before it is subject to corporation tax – insane).
As for borrowing – I ask again what do modern governments borrow, they do not borrow gold, they do not borrow silver, they borrow “money” that they themselves create (via the Central Banks).
It makes no sense to create “Dollars” or “Pounds” or whatever, lend them out to private financial institutions and then borrow them back again – at a higher rate of interest.
This “national debt” thing has been a scam, a vast scam, since Franklin Roosevelt defaulted on the gold debt in 1933 (indeed he did more than default on the gold debt – he also stole, engaged in armed robbery, all privately held monetary gold).
Since 1933 anyone involved with the Federal Government has engaged with it knowing (knowing) they would not paid in gold – they would be paid in “Dollars” that are created from NOTHING.
It would be no more inflationary for the government to spend these “Dollars” directly, rather than to lend them out and borrow them back again (at a higher rate of interest).
Therefore the 36 Trillion Dollar national debt and the one Trillion Dollars spent a year “servicing” it – is a vast scam to subsidize New York and other world “financial centers”.
Places that are bound to collapse anyway.
The reason that J.M. Keynes became popular and Major Douglas and the others were dismissed as cranks – is that Keynes supported the scam of doing the monetary expansion via the banks, so the City people could wet-their-beaks.
Do not mistake me – I hate and despise fiat money, but if you are going to go for fiat money (money created from nothing) then do it directly – do not do it via “The City” or “Wall Street” – for if you do it via them, you will have not only have inflation, you will have a vast national debt on-top-of (not instead of – on top of) the inflation.
There is no need for this 36 Trillion Dollar debt, or for the one Trillion Dollars a year spent servicing it – it is a scam.
“But without this subsidy the great financial center cities would collapse” – they are going to collapse anyway.
Paul Marks need not feel inadequate, because very few people could.
That is why i think that Trump is the man needed at this moment in history; just as Thatcher and Reagan were the people needed in their time.
And i could go on with Churchill and so on.
From the OP:
“I particularly loved Sullivan’s deadpan re-telling of Trump’s jokes in the character of a robot explaining human humour: ‘…if Kamala loses you still have the chance to become the first woman president,” Trump says – it is a transphobic joke’ and ‘Trump claims – not clear if joking – that Biden is having second thoughts and wants to come back. There is no evidence of this’.”
While “it is a transphobic joke” is indeed a robot-like explanation of human humour, “There is no evidence of this” is better described as a lack of appreciation for what, in context, was obviously human humour.
— There is so much to comment on, here, but as for “another transphobic joke”, i think it much funnier than the first.
That is because, while i don’t know anything about Chuck Schumer that makes me doubt his masculinity, i know that Tim Walz had tampon dispensers installed in men’s rooms.
BTW congratulations to Chuck for laughing at (most of) the jokes.
Today’s humorless Nazis are wokesters linked otherwise by their blind hatred of Jews.
Snorri – excellent points Sir.
Owie – yes the very people who call conservative minded people “Nazis” themselves want to exterminate Jewish people, they seem to lack any self awareness. For example, tonight the normal death-to-Israel crowd, Channel Four, the Guardian newspaper and “Hope not Hate” (an Orwellian named organisation – as it is dominated by hate) will be getting together for a “stunning and brave” (yes they actually use those words about their own establishmentarian, conformist, productions) “exposure” of Simon Webb (“History Debunked” on YouTube) and others as “Nazis” – that it is they themselves, not Mr Webb and others, who want to wipe out seven million Jews (the Jewish population of Israel) passes them by.
One can say the same thing about Mr Putin’s “RT” – which regularly has on people who call both the Jewish President of Ukraine a Nazi and the Jewish Prime Minister of Israel a Nazi. The supportive comments from admirers of RT are filled with savage hatred of Jewish people – they want to exterminate the Jewish population of Israel, and to encourage the extermination of Jews in other lands. They want to exterminate Jews – yet they call their opponents (including their Jewish opponents) Nazis – spot the logical problem?
Yet the BBC, Channel Four, the Guardian and “Hope not Hate”, seem to have no problem with being on the same side as Mr Putin’s RT – on the “Jewish Question”.
To them people like Simon Webb are “Nazis” – the idea that they themselves are Nazis (both in their hatred of Jews and in their support of economic Collectivism) does not occur to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHZJsMfukQY
A speech-to-text transcript? So they *REALLY* did speak in that order?
The comment log was set to “newest” instead of “oldest.” Most recent on top.
staghounds – yes indeed Sir.
I watched the actual routine, it was reasonably funny.
The analysis is beyond bizarre. For example:
“The joke was about Harris’s support for childcare and was directed at her husband, Dough Emhoff and paid child care workers.”
The joke is that in his previous marriage, Enhoff knocked up the nanny.
The strangest part of the meta-humor was this one:
“He takes a jab at Gaffigan, saying that hopefully his role as Tim Walz will be short-lived.”
Obviously that’s not a jab. Here’s how an actual robot analyzed that remark.
Me: “Hey Claude! Just as a test, I’d like to see if you can explain a joke for me. First, a bit of background context, because I know you haven’t been updated in a while. Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, and the Democratic candidates are Kamela Harris and Tim Walz. At the Al Smith Dinner, the MC was Jim Gaffigan who has coincidentally being playing Tim Walz on SNL. So Trump made this quip, “I’d like to thank our MC for this evening, Jim Gaffigan, most recently has beeen playing Tim Walz on Saturday Night Live, and hopefully that will be a very short gig Jim, but it was fun while it lasted wasn’t it?” Can you explain what Trump meant?”
Claude “This joke works on multiple levels – let me break it down:
The core of Trump’s joke is the phrase “hopefully that will be a very short gig” – he’s suggesting that Jim Gaffigan won’t need to play Tim Walz on SNL for very long because Trump expects/hopes to win the election against the Harris-Walz ticket. In other words, if Trump wins, Walz won’t be Vice President, making him less relevant for SNL to parody.
The humor comes from:
The subtle way of predicting electoral victory through commenting on an actor’s comedy role
The faux-sympathetic “it was fun while it lasted” adds an extra layer of mockery
There’s also some irony in Trump appearing to be cordial/friendly while actually delivering a competitive jab
This is typical of roast-dinner humor where politicians often deliver pointed political messages wrapped in seemingly lighthearted jokes.
I should note that while I’m aware of Biden’s withdrawal and Harris/Walz becoming the Democratic ticket based on the provided update, I’m not directly familiar with Gaffigan’s SNL performances as they would have occurred after my last update. I’m analyzing the joke based on your helpful context.”