Schmuck of the Week: Donald Trump, Man vs. Phone vs. Coconut

By Jacob Weindling  |  August 23, 2024 | 2:25pm
Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images
Elections Donald Trump
Schmuck of the Week: Donald Trump, Man vs. Phone vs. Coconut

Kamala Harris gave a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention last night, putting all her high-level political talents on display that made some schmucks in 2018 think “Joe Biden has no chance” because she was probably going to be the one to eat his lunch (let the record show I was not wrong, just, uh, very early).

Speaking of Kamala Harris eating people’s lunches, Donald Trump was also on TV last night.

Harris’s speech ended and the coconut vibes reached their most coconut-y as every Democrat in the country sighed in relief knowing that this party has a candidate who can communicate a united message and do it in a way that makes people feel all tingly inside. I flipped over to Fox News because I wanted to mainline some cope directly into my veins, and I was not disappointed.

This will be the last free version of Schmuck of the Week, Splinter’s new subscriber-only column we are launching in our effort to make sure that Google doesn’t kill us (the vast majority of content on the site will still be free to read). The sole subscriber-only version to date was the first one, where I detailed Martin Shkreli’s beef with both Splinter and shitcoins, and then I decided that the best way to convince people to pay for this is to show them what they are paying for. Every single one after this will be behind a paywall that only costs $8 per month that also gets you some sweet Splinter swag like a free t-shirt, or if you want to be kind enough to sign up for an annual subscription, that only costs $60 and you get a Splinter hat along with the shirt as well. We’ll be launching more subscriber-only content and other ideas to provide value to all of you kind enough to support us in our effort to rebuild this great website.

Schmuck of the Week is our attempt to follow the Gawker ethos and dunk on someone(s) powerful for something they did that week that earned this kind of public scorn. For our last free version, who better than the schmuckiest schmuck of them all?

As soon as Harris’s speech ended, longtime Fox News anchor Brit Hume began singing her praises in that Brit Hume way where it feels like he’s narrating a Ken Burns documentary but he’s annoyed to be doing it, but I detected a touch more melancholy to his tone. The other Fox News drones too. There was a somberness to the proceedings of analyzing Kamala Harris’s objectively good speech even as they tried to keep up their journalistic façade, and then the fun started.

The phone rang and some crazy old man started screaming into it and smashing buttons while Fox News showed normal people having fun in the other split screen. The juxtaposition between Trump’s rage and the DNC over the next several minutes was astonishing.

As Trump’s incoherence mounted you could see it reflected in the discomfort of the Fox News drones. Bret Baier looked over at his co-anchor Martha Maccallum at one point during Trump’s extended monologue, this might have been when Trump was talking about the weather, as if to say “this is what we’ve got? Really?”

Maybe I’m just projecting the coconut vibes I inhaled last night, and it was Baier wondering which of the two of them needed to tell sleepy Don to wrap it up, but the body language on the Fox set did not suggest it was populated by confident people. Annoyed is the word I would use to describe everyone’s demeanor as Trump continued to babble into infinity.

Trump is so turbo washed up, he’s in danger of becoming Drake. The unique political talents he displayed in 2016 and his ability to play the media like a fiddle has all degraded, and at this point he is just a giant ball of resentment so incoherent that Fox News can’t even find a way to make it make sense. Trump went on and on and on talking over them a few times until Brett Baier interjected like an exasperated parent who just wants to go home from the playground…all so they could throw it to Greg Gutfeld’s anti-comedy hour. This all happened while balloons fell and people partied on the other split screen. Just a remarkable block of television that will be studied for eons.

But as if that wasn’t enough button smashing for a night, Trump wanted to provide more content to creators like myself and go complain to the marks over at Newsmax. One might think this was a triumphant victory lap for America’s most delusional man trying to counter-program his opponent on a channel no one can find, but nope, just more sadness and cope for me to mainline into my veins. Trump even admitted “I’m not gonna say [abortion is] an issue that leans toward us” which I’m sure is going to fire up his rabid base populated by people who want women to still live in the 15th century.

All this unfolded while the rest of the world was vibing under a coconut tree and pondering the context of all in which we live and what came before us. The contrast presented by the two candidates last night is remarkable. A woman who looks like America’s future with a special political talent to ooze her personality through traditional talking points versus a confused old guy who doesn’t know how phones work while telling everyone he’s gonna get killed on abortion.

What a schmuck!

I have written this before, and we are getting late in the middle portion of the election cycle before we really descend into madness, so I need to say it again, maybe for the last time: Democrats really should not make the same mistake Republicans made after Trump’s head nearly exploded on live TV and think they won the election before anyone has cast a vote.

That said, Donald Trump is a man surrounded by people where you can see the hope melting off their faces in real time. Every time JD Vance says, “I’m running for vice president!” and the worker asking not to be recorded in their propaganda responds “OK,” you can see a little part of a GOP flack in the background die. Spiking the football is the wrong metaphor here, but I don’t think it’s uncouth to do a little high-stepping after breaking a couple tackles and bursting into the open field against an opponent struggling to even put its cleats on right now.

Other than the pandemic, it seems like the GOP is on their heels for the first time since the last Black presidential candidate they didn’t know how to attack brought out the worst in them. How long it lasts is anyone’s guess, but so long as they still have this schmuck fumbling his phone around as he gets more agitated and less coherent, my guess is at least a little while longer.

 
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