Magician Penn Jllette is an insightful raconteur, whose views of Donald Trump, gained by working with him on his television show, “Celebrity Apprentice” shed new light into the perversity and limitations of the man. No surprises here, Trump is a sicker puppy than you know. Jillette spoke with radio host Joe Rogan recently, about experiencing the unexpurgated Trump, live and in living color on NBC. Here’s a transcript of Rogan’s show. [No link, I did it myself. Video below.]
Jillette: “You sit in the room…I don’t know how well you know the president of the United States?”
Rogan: “I don’t want to know him at all.”
Jillette: “…two or three hours, every other day, sitting in a room across the table…a table that you can’t put your hands on…because it might mar it…people would say, ‘We’re going into the boardroom now’ and I would say, ‘No, we’re going onto the boardroom set.’
Jillette goes on to describe the shooting on the boardroom set and it sounds about as comfortable as being in a strait jacket. He said that over his right shoulder was “the hero camera, aimed on Trump,” and you couldn’t move too far to either side because the camera operator wanted you in the frame. Great. Sitting as rigid as a wooden Indian and having to look at Donald Trump. Jillette is a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
Jillette: “So you sit straight up, you can’t move from side to side, you can’t put your hands on the table and you’re listening to somebody speak for two hours and they’re going to try to edit about three minutes.”
A minute and a half an hour? Sweet Jesus.
Jillette tells an anecdote of Trump blithering on about some guy on the internet telling him that he sold a property for too little profit. “He seems obsessed with anything that anybody says about him at any time.” Jillette went on to say that Trump was “great in his job” on the show, “because you want somebody crazy and capricious, with no filter. That’s what you want.” On TV, maybe, but emphatically not in politics and definitely not in the White House.
Jillette: “He makes arbitrary decisions and the human brain tries desperately to make those make sense and that’s some form of entertainment.”
Then Donald Jr. told Jillette, “You know, out of all the people on the show, you seem to be the only person who ever liked my father.”
Jillette: “I said, you know, I have a fascination and a respect and an affection for people who are able to get out of their filter. Some people do that with pure genius, like Bob Dylan, some people do it with bravery, like Lenny Bruce, some people do it with drugs. Thelonious Monk said, “The genius is the one who is most like himself….and I said, with some sort of mental problem coupled with greed and a lack of compassion, your father has somehow found a way to throw off the filters.”
So, Donald Trump is a genius. Hoo kay, boy. Let me wrap my head around that one. Jillette then went on to say how he used to listen to Lenny Bruce talk forever and
“Donald Trump had the dark side of that…I’ve always been interested in the people who are out on the margins. What Donald Jr. took as affection, and I guess it’s a bit of affection, is that if you’re somebody who has thrown off some filters, I’ll listen to you talk…so I ended up sticking up for Donald Trump. I’d say, ‘Yeah, he’s crazy and he’s venal and he’s empty. Really weird stuff that you’ve never seen before. You have never seen someone who has never laughed sincerely and never made a joke…he will laugh in a bully way, ‘Ha ha, you look kinda fat, Joe’ (but he’ll never laugh at himself.) I never saw any humor in person. I also never saw him show any joy or understanding of music. And those two things are things that I connect with people very much on.”
So do we all. Music is the universal language of life. It transcends all barriers of age, gender, race, nationality, you name it. It speaks directly to the emotions and the soul — and Donald Trump can’t hear it? Any of it? Seriously? I have to say, I thought I was shockproof with respect to Trump revelations, but Jillette makes a point: humor and music are key elements of a person’s emotional and spiritual development.
A smart person with a highly developed sense of humor, we call a wit. A person with good comedic reactions, such as Bernie Sanders the other day, dodging a punching bag, we call a good sport. Donald Trump doesn’t even register on the scale of humor plus he lives in a music-less void? Seriously? The man is an undeveloped blob of protoplasm nourished by McDonald’s toad burgers and animated by infinite self-reflection. He’s not only not in harmony with the rhythms of human nature, as expressed by humor and music, he’s not even in the universe of a normal person, much less a mentally healthy one. He is an empty box, with television, cable TV news, more precisely, providing him with an umbilical cord to some semblance of life, because he’s dead inside. Even Frankenstein’s monster was capable of tender feelings and an appreciation for the beauty of life and a yearning to become more than he was. He had a soul. Donald Trump does not.
I am seized with the urge to pipe Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman” into whatever hotel room is staying this weekend and keeping it on a loop.
Whatever hotel who is staying in? Trump? I thought Trump was staying home and watching the weather report to see if Mar-a-Lago gets reduced to flotsam and jetsam. I don’t wish the people of Florida any grief, but if only Mar-a-Lago could get hit, kind of like a lightning rod, that would be something. Of course Trump would find some way for the taxpayer to pay for it.
Yeah, Trump, sorry, got a little ahead of my typing there. And as to the hurricane, Mar-A-Lago delenda est! (Mar-A-Lago must be destroyed!)
That may be God’s idea. Last I knew, Dorian was getting fiercer. Remember the last hurricane that hit Florida in 2016 — and Marco Rubio was fundraising during it? I love Republican priorities.
My family–the parts I still claim–used to live out in Florida. Dorian has made my mom glad that they don’t anymore.
I understand he’s at Camp David, so Mar a Lago really must be at risk.
Of an upcoming storm insurance fraud.
Almost 24 hours later the story now is that he’s heading to Trump National, Sterling Virginia.
Dimwit Donny doesn’t like Camp David, it’s not tacky enough.
And he doesn’t profit from it.
He’s at least already issued the emergency declaration and told FEMA to get on it. (So now it looks like Dorian may make a right turn and go up the coast instead. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/234529.shtml?cone#contents )
Does make me wonder if he left them enough money to handle Dorian and its aftermath.
Heading for Camp David?
I’m not surprised. Himself’s face has no laugh lines, no signs he’s ever really smiled or laughed at anything. Maybe he laughs about cruelty, the stuff done by his appointed minions like Miller and Cooch, but I doubt it.
(They’d all be in the stands watching hungry lions attack people, though, and wanting more.)
(Most conservatives seem to have trouble with humor, but most of them can at least get into some kinds of music.)
Trump would have been a kid when Elvis was hot. Surely he dug Elvis? or Buddy Holly or somebody from that era? if he was retrograde, he would have enjoyed Sinatra. I’ve always loved Sinatra. How can he not have some favorite music? Some Top 40 song or something from the 50’s?
Contrast that with the Obamas, who fill their lives with gentle wit and a deep understanding and appreciation for good music.
There is such a thing called Musical Anhedonida, people’s brains literally cannot understand music, it’s just weird noise to them. But most of them are normal decent people otherwise. I figure this is just another part of *rump’s massive brain malfunction.
https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/6/5477622/bad-brains-some-people-incapable-of-enjoying-music
Tone-deafness is also a real thing. But it’s hard to understand people who get nothing at all from music.
It’s a neurological defect. I’ve read about it in books about various brain ailments that people get, like being unable to recognize faces. Anything by Oliver Sacks about it is good. There’s this one in particular.
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition
“With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls “musical misalignments.” Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans; and a man whose memory spans only seven seconds-for everything but music. Illuminating, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable, Musicophilia is Oliver Sacks’ latest masterpiece.”
The epitome of SAD! Good music, interesting books and fine friends are all as necessary as clean, fresh air is to life.
When I was only 6 yrs old, I discovered my parents’ extensive collection of Glenn Miller. I’ve never been the same since. A few years later I got the most memorable birthday present from them, a turntable (called a “record player” back then.) My first album was Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. I wore it out. Music is a balm to my soul, sometimes the only key to shutting off the useless static in my brain.
Can’t imagine a life with out music!
I can’t judge, though, I have face and name blindness.
I cannot even imagine my life or anyone else’s without music. As a child, I watched my parents laughing & dancing to swing music from the ’40s. I was a State Department brat and with each transfer to a new posting, the first things packed were our books and records. We all hear songs that immediately evoke time and place. Even now, in our family, the first one to wake up turns on the tunes and the last to bed turns it off.
Prior to learning this disturbing fact about Trump, the single most disturbing thing for me was learning that the “first family” had NO pets at all. They are the first to live in the White House without any. It’s not just sad, it is really weird. it speaks to a man with no soul.
As an animal lover and advocate, I am very glad than no-things Trump have pets.
Other than bed-bugs?
YES, there is a close neighbor, lives at the end of our long driveway and has a bunch of labs, (7), that’s a lot of big dogs, but they all love us and anyone that will take the time to be kind … then a couple doors away there is a man living there that grew up tough, was an all-day farm worker in the family long hours and little time for humor went to Nam and was an ammo loader on a carrier ship, immense noise when trying to sleep, bunked up under the deck and steam launchers, he has recently completed some treatments for cancer, which has been determined to at some time to be terminal, he has calmed down and become a church based individual, but for a long time and even now, he had no music and I saw him kick a small dog in frustration one time a few years ago, one needs the music … when I was in a music appreciation class at Drake University in Des Moines, the instructor said it is very difficult to say anything definite about the root of music because of the many feelings it generates in different people … so the simplest definition he said it is, an organized series of sounds, usually of or paired with a noticeable rhythm … the drums of the natives here and in the jungles of the world the music comes from the heart and sole, Trump has none of that …