This piece originally ran on June 3, 2020. We are republishing various Trump-related articles, as explained in Why We’re Publishing Some Trump Stuff Again
The image of the clot Trump being whisked by Secret Service agents into the White House underground bunker last Friday night (May 29th) to avoid the protests is a satirist’s dream come true. Excuse me for letting fly here.
What first comes to mind is the German 2004 film Downfall. It chronicles the last days of Hitler, Eva Braun, and the top surviving Nazi henchmen (including Josef Goebbels and his entire family) in the Berlin Bunker. The hugely talented German actor Bruno Ganz plays Adolf Hitler. Inside the bunker, the Nazis are all getting shit-faced drunk, popping pills and trying to dream up the least painful ways to commit suicide. Meanwhile the Red Army is storming around above ground. It is a very gratifying movie to watch.
The WWII historian Anthony Beevor wrote an immense account of the final days of the Third Reich, entitled The Battle for Berlin. I can’t quite remember how he found this out, but he tells of two SS soldiers grabbing a smoke in the garden area near the bunker. There is fire and smoke coming from the end of the yard. “What’s that?” inquires the one goon. The other responds, “They’re burning the boss.”
Alec Guinness also starred as Adolf Hitler in a film production called Hitler: The Last Ten Days. Let’s face it, Donald Trump is no Alec Guinness or Bruno Ganz. Even with his tin coalscuttle helmet and goggles on, he would resemble a very mediocre George C. Scott as George Patton. Trump probably doesn’t know who was on which side anyway in World War One.
I have to believe that there is a tremendous portfolio of jokes and one-liners floating around the Secret Service bar of choice for rest and relaxation. Imagine having to take a bullet for Trump. Man, one would need a real macabre sense of humor to envision that as part of your job. Talk about The Last Detail and I don’t mean the Jack Nicholson film. It’s more like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (with Zero Mostel).
Finally, there is Archie Bunker. It’s hard not to see Trump cowering and fulminating about the protestors nearby, especially the black protestors. His comments the following morning about vicious dogs, big guns and “the MAGA loves the black people” are a combination of Downfall, Selma and a Norman Lear script. I wonder where Meathead was. Probably getting ready to burn the boss.