Trump suggested during a rally appearance that NBC bring back Johnny Carson, who has been dead for nearly 20 years.
Trump said in Indiana, PA:
He’s not very funny. (Jimmy Fallon)Â Can you believe that guy? Those three guys, they’re being blown away by Gutfeld. You know, Gutfeld, totally dominant. Those guys. Do you remember that guy? When I first ran, it was like 2015 thinking about running. I was going to run. I went on his show, right? And he goes, The Tonight Show, which is dying. They’re all dying. Where’s Johnny Carson? Bring back Johnny. It made you appreciate, right? Uncle Sam? It made you appreciate the greatness of Johnny Carson and these guys.
These three guys, they’re so bad. All three of them. All three of them. But this one, I go on a show and he goes, is that your real hair? I said, yeah, he said, do you mind if I mess it up? I said, I’d prefer no. Do you remember this? I said I’d prefer it if you didn’t, to be honest. But if you have to. So he grabs it and he starts really going crazy, right? And everybody laughed. And it was a big thing and it was a big hit. It was all over the place and he got great ratings and all. And six months later he went out because he was under pressure to apologize because he humanized Donald Trump.
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Johnny Carson died in 2005. Even if NBC wanted to bring back Johnny Carson, I’m pretty sure that zombie Johnny would not be a good late night host.
Comments like this raise the question of whether Trump knows what year it is, or if he is trapped in the 1980s and dying to take the country back there?
Everything about Trump intentionally screams the eighties. Trump has stolen as much of the Reagan presentation as he could down to Lee Greenwood’s crappy Proud To Be An American song. Trump is a nostalgia act who is trapped by his own obsession with the past.
Trump doesn’t seem to be mentally all there, and his call for the deceased Johnny Carson to return is another moment where the ex-president demonstrated that he is not mentally fit enough to be president.
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Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association