America is a joke right now, a bad one 

Donald Trump is the only person capable of making the Taliban look like aspiring comedians

By D. Watkins

Editor at Large

Published October 17, 2017 11:13AM (EDT)

 (AP/John Locher/Salon)
(AP/John Locher/Salon)

I feel like we're living inside of a Dave Chappelle episode, and even though Dave is one of the best, I doubt if even he can come up with material this good.

“I will tell you I left Texas and I left Florida and I left Louisiana and I went to Puerto Rico and I met with the President of the Virgin Islands," President Donald Trump said at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, last Friday. “The Virgin Islands and the President of the Virgin Islands, these are people that are incredible people, they suffered gravely and we’[ll] be there, we’re going to be there, we have really, it is not even a question of a choice.”

Trump, as many have pointed out, is himself the president of the Virgin Islands in the sense that they are, whether he knows it or not, an American territory. Yes, we really have a president who doesn’t know exactly what he’s president of. I think of all of the money I pay in federal taxes and wonder if any of it can go towards a 6th grade civics lesson.

These sort of funny/unfunny jokes roll on in a nightmare that never stops — well, a nightmare that has evolved to a festering day-mare that only gets worse by the second and is rapidly spreading to other countries.

Over the past week Americans Joshua Boyle, his wife Caitlan Coleman and their children were rescued after five years of Taliban captivity in Afghanistan. While detained, they had no access to books, newspapers or the internet. At one point, one of his captors told him that Donald Trump was president of the United States of America. He didn’t believe it, just as most of us still can’t.

“It didn’t enter my mind that he was being serious,” Boyle told The Star. Yes, Trump’s antics are so sickening that that he even has the Taliban looking like a bunch of witty stand-up comics interested in delivering the joy of laughter and practicing their material on hostages while waiting for their big break.

It’s truly sad, but alas, all hope isn’t lost; legendary pornographer Larry Flynt is making an honest attempt at really Making America Great Again.

The 74-year-old publisher, mostly known for founding Hustler Magazine, took a huge full-page ad out in The Washington Post that read, “$10 MILLION FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE IMPEACHMENT AND REMOVAL FROM OFFICE OF DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Joke or no joke, this is still America, and cash is king, so maybe Flynt’s proposal is exactly what we need to get back to business and put all this silliness to rest. It would be the perfect punchline.


By D. Watkins

D. Watkins is an Editor at Large for Salon. He is also a writer on the HBO limited series "We Own This City" and a professor at the University of Baltimore. Watkins is the author of the award-winning, New York Times best-selling memoirs “The Beast Side: Living  (and Dying) While Black in America”, "The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir," "Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised: A Memoir of Survival and Hope" as well as "We Speak For Ourselves: How Woke Culture Prohibits Progress." His new books, "Black Boy Smile: A Memoir in Moments," and "The Wire: A Complete Visual History" are out now.

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