Trump's Joke About How Long He'll Be in Office Sends Libs Into Complete Panic
It doesn’t take much to send those who have a knee-jerk opposition to President Donald Trump into a tizzy. (See: “Comey, James;” “Daniels, Stormy;” “Sajudin, Dino;” “Putin, Vladimir;” Trump’s Twitter account, etc., etc.)
In fact, it’s gotten bad enough that they can even get themselves into a tizzy over a joke. And said joke doesn’t even need to be offensive. It just needs to rile up the left.
Take, for instance, Trump’s Rose Garden press conference Thursday where he was touting the benefits of tax cuts. During the speech, he joked to a congressman that he would like to be in office for 16 years and they should pass an amendment allowing him to do that.
Take a look at this very obvious joke:
At a Rose Garden event, Trump just asked a Congressman to change "the law" so that he can be president for 16 years. https://t.co/3A2IVgJwDV #Trump pic.twitter.com/s48x4YjXJS
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) April 12, 2018
“We’ve cut more regulations in a year and a quarter than any administration, whether it’s four years, eight years or, in one case, 16 years,” Trump said.
“Should we go back to 16 years? Congressman, can we have that extended? The last time I jokingly said that, the papers started saying ‘he’s got despotic tendencies!’ No, I’m not looking to do it, unless you want to do it.”
That’s clearly a joke. You would think that there would be literally nobody who saw that and didn’t see a joke. What happened next proved that we’re not in a post-truth era, we’re in a post-laugh era.
Take, for instance, Newsweek. You would think they would be used to the concept of the joke, what with all all of the tentacle hentai references their employment contract with Kurt Eichenwald hath engendered. However, in the first sentence of Newsweek’s piece on the wisecrack, writer Jason Le Miere noted that Trump “has previously heralded Chinese President Xi Jinping being enabled to rule for life.”
That particular sentence fragment isn’t just grammatically-challenged, it’s also factually-challenged — at least, if you understand the concept of humor. The comment in question comes from another joke made behind closed doors back in March that the media decided, in spite of what one hopes was their better judgement, to take seriously.
“He’s now president for life,” Trump said regarding Chinese President Xi Jinping. “President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
It wasn’t just Newsweek bringing that quote up, either.
An article from Bustle noted that “Thursday wasn’t the first time Trump has ‘joked’ about becoming a dictator. In March, while addressing a change to China’s constitution that allows its president to serve for life, Trump said that America might have to eliminate presidential term limits at some point as well.” Elite Daily also referenced it in an article which won this week’s contest for most millennial-friendly Trump headline: “Donald Trump Joked About Being President For 16 Years & Just No.”
Totes perf, Elite Daily.
So, after consulting Newsweek, Bustle and Elite Daily in hope of some wisdom, I then decided to turn to twitter Twitter in search of a sensible range of reactions, because I’m clearly a masochist looking to extirpate every last vestige of my faith in humanity.
User @Pseudosaurus demonstrated the typical sort of measured response one might expect to find to an obvious joke:
https://twitter.com/Pseudosaurus/status/984554886674206720
@RogueWHAdvisor, meanwhile, decided this jest was so serious it called for breaking out the caps lock:
We are just as shocked as everyone that this moron …. Trump actually thinks that they will change the Constitution of the United States so he can be president for 16 years. WHAT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED IS THE REMOVAL OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE!
— X-RougeWHAdvisor (@RougeWhAdvisor) April 12, 2018
Then there were the uninformed…
https://twitter.com/hesanihilist/status/984498509947678720
… and the terminally bitter.
https://twitter.com/MotherResister/status/984496855915491328
You’re in good company, @MotherResister. Or, well, let’s just say you’re in company.
So, in short, what this proves is that absolutely nobody on the left seems to be able to take a joke when it comes to President Trump. All it gets is a whirlwind of outrage and contempt for those who should know better. Why, it’s almost like Trump and his people are expertly trolling the media and the left to do exactly what they want them to do just to show how deep the bias goes.
I’m not saying that Trump is trolling, mind you. All I’m saying is that if he’s doing this unintentionally, he couldn’t do a better job if he put his mind to it.
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