When it comes to getting mocked on TV, Donald Trump is doing great
Donald Trump only pays attention to statistics that say he’s doing great, but it’s unclear how he’ll respond to a new study from the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University (quoted in Variety). On the one hand, the study says that he’s on track to break a record previously set by President Bill Clinton, giving Trump the sweet satisfaction of besting the husband of his hated opponent. On the other, the record in question is for the most late-night jokes made about a sitting president, meaning Trump’s about to make history for being the most mockable president of all time—or at least since 1992, when George Mason University started tracking these things.
Clinton was the target of 1,717 jokes in 1998, most of them involving the Monica Lewinsky scandal that broke that year. Meanwhile, Trump has been the target of 1,060 jokes in his first 100 days in office alone, a number that swells to 1,530 when you include jabs at his family and members of his administration (same difference, really). So while checks and balances and overwhelming popular disapproval have made it difficult for Trump to make big, beautiful gains in the realms of racial profiling and wantonly killing off members of the electorate, when it comes to being made fun of, he’s ahead of the pack.