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Trump-Winfrey Won’t Be Rockin’ In The Free World

As Athenae pointed out yesterday, the entire Trump “campaign” is an epic troll. It makes the freak show that is the GOP nomination process even more farcical. Call me sick but I love it, especially the thought of Trump in a debate going all Noo Yawk on Jeb, Rubio, and whoever else he feels like pounding on. I may even watch myself in the way that some rubberneck at car wrecks. The 2016 Republican race is God’s gift to satire. It almost gives me religion..

The announcement wasn’t Trump’s only act of blatant trollery, he also stated who he wants as his running mate:

After declaring his run for the White House Tuesday, Trump appeared on ABC and said Oprah Winfrey would complete his presidential dream ticket.

“I think Oprah would be great. I’d love to have Oprah,” Trump said. “I think we’d win easily, actually.”

Trump had suggested Oprah as a potential sidekick once before — while considering a bid for the presidency in 1999.

Now that he’s officially running, he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that she’s a perfect fit.

“She’s great, she’s talented, she’s a friend of mine,” he said.

“She’s a good person. I’ve been on her show. In fact, I was on her show last week, she said, could I be on her show with the whole family?”

The Republican hopeful emphasized that everybody loves Oprah.

Well, I don’t but she has more than enough self-love to compensate. I love the thought of the two biggest egomaniacs in American public life as a team. Who would do the listening? Can you imagine Trump telling Oprah she’s fired? Trump’s style is to throw shit against the wall and see how much of it sticks. Oprah deserves this since she’s on speaking terms with this bilious birther blowhard. There’s been no response from Winfrey World as the odious Mark (Pilates with Romney) Halperin would surely call it.

A quadrennial ritual has occurred early thanks to Trump’s trollery. I’m referring, of course, to a right wing Presidential candidate appropriating a song from a left wing rock star who doesn’t want to be associated with said wingnut. This time it’s Neil Young:

When Donald Trump strode on to the stage at Trump Tower on Tuesday to announce that he would enter the Republican race for president, a rock and roll anthem blared: Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” It was an odd choice, given that the 1989 song seemed to slam a Republican administration for not giving a damn about the poor. And Young has taken exception to Trump’s appropriation of his tune. A statement issued to Mother Jones for Young by his longtime manager Elliot Roberts suggests Young was not pleased by Trump’s use of the song:

Donald Trump’s use of “Rockin’ in the Free World” was not authorized. Mr. Young is a longtime supporter of Bernie Sanders.

In other words, it may be a free world, but you’re not free to steal my song.

I suspect Trump saw this and said: “Hey, I made Mother Jones whatever the hell that is. All publicity is good.” Here’s the 1989 Neil Young video, which doesn’t look very Trumpian to me:

Finally, I stumbled into a wonderful separated at birth picture that was tweeted yesterday showing blowhard London Mayor/Tory MP Boris Johnson side-by-side with the blowhard Yank troll candidate:

 

5 thoughts on “Trump-Winfrey Won’t Be Rockin’ In The Free World”

  1. It always amazes me that candidates who are big on property rights feel no need to respect the intellectual property of musicians.

    Then again, I’m amused when a candidate looks at a song title and doesn’t bother listening to the lyrics. Hilarity ensues.

    Appreciating irony is not a prerequisite for launching a campaign.

  3. T Rump won’t be in the campaign long enough to make it to any of the debates. As soon as he has to file a campaign financial disclosure report, he’ll drop out again.

    A propos candidates appropriating songs for their own use (for appropriating, read stealing), it’s pretty obvious by now that they get one free rip-off. Any professional campaign adviser knows you’re supposed to get permission and pay the artist, but as long as you get one consequence-free theft, dishonest folks like T Rump will continue to exploit that gap.

    I read the comments to the MSN story about Neil Young objecting to T Rump stealing his work; it was initially surprising to see commenters castigating Young as a socialist and praising T Rump as a capitalist, when back in the real (free) world, Young was defending his capitalistic property rights while it was T Rump who was taking a very communitarian approach to the free and easy use of something that belonged to someone else. After reading basically that same comment repeated several times over (Socialist Foreigner! American Capitalist!), I realized that all these people had gotten the same marching orders. Not one original thought in the bunch.

    There’s also news out today that at least some of the crowd at T Rump’s announcement were paid actors. Would it be irresponsible to speculate that T Rump paid people to post online in his favor? It would be irresponsible not to!

  4. What would really be hilarious is if, in a true “Springtime for Hitler!” moment, he actually won the nomination.

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