On Saturday, several media outlets reported that Donald Trump was phone-pranked by Howard Stern regular “Stuttering” John Melendez — which is a bit like getting shot in the face by Dick Cheney after he convinced you to go on a weekend snipe hunt. (The prank turned out to be mostly harmless, but I sincerely hope House and Senate staffers do a quick CTRL+F search for “Nigerian prince” the next time Trump submits a budget to Congress. It could save us trillions.)
Still, the incident should be worrying, particularly since Trump believes (surprise, surprise) that he’s preternaturally savvy when it comes to avoiding scams:
First of all, not true. Not remotely true. Oh, I can’t stress enough just how false that tweet is.
Here’s Trump’s segment with British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter ego, Ali G. As you can see, it goes on for a full minute and 43 seconds:
Now, it’s ironic that Trump would direct people’s attention to a video in which he says “hundreds of millions of years ago people were doing business” to prove how smart he is, but even more ironic is the notion that Trump never falls for scams.
Trump will fall for anything … as long as it’s something he wants to believe.
Vaccines cause autism? Sure.
North Korea is no longer a problem? Of course it isn’t! Kim Jong Un didn’t lunge across the table at him with a pair of nunchucks!
Ted Cruz’s dad had something to do with the Kennedy assassination? Sure, why not. It was in The National Enquirer, after all.
“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said Tuesday during a phone interview with Fox News. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don't even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”
Orrin Hatch thinks Trump’s a better president than Washington and Lincoln? Of course he does!
"Orrin is — I love listening to him speak ... He actually once said I'm the greatest president in the history of our country and I said, 'does that include Lincoln and Washington?' He said, 'Yes.' I said, 'I love this guy.'"
The voice on the Access Hollywood tape wasn’t Trump’s? No, how could it be?
But something deeper has been consuming Mr. Trump. He sees the calls for Mr. Moore to step aside as a version of the response to the now-famous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitalia, and the flood of groping accusations against him that followed soon after. He suggested to a senator earlier this year that it was not authentic, and repeated that claim to an adviser more recently. (In the hours after it was revealed in October 2016, Mr. Trump acknowledged that the voice was his, and he apologized.)
Donald Trump is not only the most dishonest president we’ve ever had — by leaps and bounds — he’s also the most gullible. If a member of Stern’s Wack Pack can get patched through to Air Force One and conduct a lengthy conversation with our pr*sident, imagine the circles the Russians have been running around him. Is there even any doubt now that the pee tape is real?
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