Okay, I am a conservative, so I like just about everything the Trump administration has done to date. I make no bones about that. From a policy standpoint, I cannot think of a president in my lifetime who has ever truly tried to "make America great again" the way Donald Trump has, apart from the great Ronald Reagan.
But when I speak of "fun", I am not just talking about policies. I'm talking about entertainment value. About Trump's showmanship. His ability to dazzle, amuse and to drive his political opponents insane. It's worth the price of admission as an American citizen.
I’m sure Barack Obama’s fans loved the insufferable, pedantic never-ending answers he gave to a few questions posed by fawning reporters, in a faux-professorial pose. I’m sure they considered that “fun” from their perspective. Fine. But that’s not what I consider fun.
Fun is watching a president who doesn’t give a rip. Or more precisely, one who doesn’t give a rip about what his political opponents, in which I include the mainstream media, think of him. In fact, he relishes confronting, berating and humiliating them. When have we ever seen that in a president?
Take for example President Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Who does that? But above and beyond that, he then actually barred Associated Press reporters from the White House for refusing to refer to that body of water by its new name. Brilliant. And hilariously funny.
Ditto in renaming Mount Denali back to its original Mount McKinley, after the late great president, throwing the press and other Democrats into a tizzy. These are pretty inconsequential moves, but for the sheer value of seeing media mavens’ blood pressure readings rocketing to near-stroke level, they were pure gold.
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Then we see Trump’s head-spinning moves to annex Greenland and make Canada America’s “51st state”. What president in modern memory has made such bold proposals? Preening European leftists, dependent for generations on daddy America’s security blanket, were almost as apoplectic as the mainstream media yappers. It has been a thing to behold.
The Greenland initiative, given the vital national security position that land occupies and its immense hidden stores of mineral wealth, actually makes a lot of sense. And the idea of its acquisition by the United States is not particularly new. The administration of the Democrats’ beloved Harry S. Truman secretly offered Denmark $100 million in gold bars for the island in 1946, also citing “national security.”
The Canada acquisition proposal seems more of a troll by Trump, designed probably to make Canadian leftists and pearl-clutching American media wankers wet themselves in preparation for Trump’s plans to hit them with massive tariffs. After all, would we really want to take on board a country whose population is, let’s face it, dang-near socialist in its orientation? America doesn’t need 40 million more Democrats. (My apologies to you conservative Albertans. Maybe there are only 30 million socialist Canadians.)
But it’s the direct, in-your-face slamming of media personalities by Trump that is absolutely priceless and probably the most fun aspect of his presidency.
Take his recent interview with Kristen Welker of NBC News. It was a classic example of a hostile mainstream media interview Trump could expect, and something Obama would never have been subjected to due to the media’s slobbering love affair with him. And Biden? Well, the Vegetable-in-Chief would rarely agree to any interview, let alone a hostile one.
At one point in Welker’s snarky, nasty and disrespectful questioning of Trump about DOGE and Elon Musk, Trump’s response was classic: “He’s leaving behind some very brilliant people. They were on television last night. They’re super high IQ people. I like high IQ people. The Democrats don’t have many of them.” Biting one-liners are Trump’s hallmark.
It was similar to the interview Trump gave the prior week to ABC’s Terry Moran, who tried to bait Trump with hostile questions. When Moran asked Trump if he “trusted” Vladimir Putin, Trump let loose, “I don't trust you. Look at you. You come in all shootin' for bear. You're so happy to do the interview.”
What these reporters seem to forget, is that Trump spent his life in the cutthroat world of New York commercial real estate. He is able to discern the weaknesses of his opponents and exploit them to the fullest extent possible. Now add to that Trump’s lifetime spent in the media space, including 15 years as the host and brains behind a top-rated television program, The Apprentice, where he honed his public presentation to perfection.
And these talking head news readers like Kristen Welker and Terry Moran think they can walk onto a set and make a fool of this man.
This is going to be a fun-filled four years. Let’s hope President JD Vance will be able to match Trump for his entertainment value. It’ll be a tough act to follow.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for 38 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and has been a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, The Federalist, American Greatness, and other publications. His work has been featured on CBS News 48 Hours Mysteries and NBC News Dateline. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)
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