"At the moment, [Saturday Night Live UK] has a grinning, whooping, gurning American mania to it."

"... [W]e and our US cousins have wildly differing senses of humour.... Much of the best British comedy relies on understatement, subtle wordplay, self-deprecation, self-mortification. It’s why Larry David is the American many Brits find most funny: he, like us, understands that life is a vale of tears, suffering and torturing yourself over mild social awkwardness...."

Writes Charlotte Ivers, in "Saturday Night Live UK review: Britain is funny but this isn’t yet/There’s talent in the cast — shame this Sky One debut was four parts American gurning, one part Princess Diana" (London Times).

A description of the "cold open": "Keir Starmer... and David Lammy... are psyching themselves up to phone Donald Trump, with the help of their 'Gen Z adviser.'... Keir: 'Oh golly, what if Donald shouts at me?' Gen Z adviser: 'You’re looking for more of a special situationship.'"

Also: "In a sketch parodying news headlines, the question is asked whether, once Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is in prison, he will 'be able to keep his mouth shut.' This is followed, I regret to inform you, by the punchline: '"I hope not," said his cellmate’s penis.'"

I don't see what's American about those jokes. And I don't see why the SNL format forces writers to use American-style humor! Worse, don't excuse your bad jokes by claiming they are American. The SNL format — cold open, monologue, sketches, Weekend Update, music performance — is an empty shell into which writers can insert whatever humor the producers want. Take responsibility. Or withdraw into the vale of tears and suffer and torture yourself. Apparently, you find that amusing. 

As for the "grinning, whooping, gurning American mania" — I only know the word "gurning" from the perennial reports of the World Gurning Championships. I see the NYT had one last year: "In This Pageant, the Ugliest Face Wins/The World Gurning Championships in northern England celebrate the centuries-old art of face-pulling."

That's been going on for years. I remember reading about the World Gurning Championships in LIFE magazine in the 1960s:

Here, you can buy that issue of LIFE on eBay. It was March 14, 1969. The cover story is "The Daring Contraption Called LEM." Inside: "The Race for the SST." And here's an ad: "McDonald's introduces Big Mac/A meal disguised as a sandwich." And: "Why is the Camaro the pace car again?/Because it's the Hugger."

That's all so American. And the American point of view was that gurning was a British oddity.

ADDED:

More clips from the show: here.

"Trump picks his cabinet in part for their aesthetics, and their ability to perform well on TV and Noem was famed for never missing a photo op...."

"But her hunger for publicity also contributed to her demotion. Under Noem’s watch, $220 million of taxpayers’ money was spent on an advertising campaign for border security that prominently featured footage of her on horseback, dressed as a 'cowgirl,' in front of Mount Rushmore.... In recent months, she has drawn negative headlines for using border funds for a multi-million-dollar jet fleet. There are rumours she is romantically involved with Corey Lewandowski.... He joined midway through the 2024 presidential campaign and quickly butted heads with the official campaign chiefs, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. At an event when the scale of Trump’s victory was becoming clear, Lewandowski tried to congratulate LaCivita only to be told: 'F*** you, f*** you and f*** you. You have f***ed with the wrong person. I’m going to f***ing destroy you.'"

I'm reading "ICE, luxury jets, an ‘affair’ and a dead puppy: the downfall of Kristi Noem/The Republican known as ‘ICE Barbie’ has been beset by allegations and became the first major departure from Trump’s comparatively stable second-term cabinet" (London Times).

Milestones in Feminism: The question is not what did the woman do, but what did the woman wear.

The retrogression is not really Trump's. It's Breitbart's. Trump is just passing along the publicity received by his wife:

Breitbart's opinion on aesthetics is worthless. Look what an ugly mess it is:

That's my screenshot from the Breitbart article.

Readers are expected to look past the drink this/don't drink this/robot puppy/robot bunny advertising and read what looks like a press release: "Melania Trump chose a gray textured wool bar jacket from Dior for the historic occasion, pairing it with a matching gray textured wool skirt, as well as a thin black leather belt from Dior and patent leather stilettos from Christian Louboutin."

A "bar jacket," I was curious enough to learn, is the kind of jacket Christian Dior thought perfect for women drinking cocktails in the afternoon at the bar at the Plaza Athénée hotel in in 1947. Did they have "bladder issues"? Did they dream of electric rabbits?

How dare they put a stereotypically old woman sitting on a toilet right next to the news of the First Lady's appearance at the U.N. doing whatever it was she was doing while wearing some very specific items of clothing!

"Mr. Clean was first devised in the mid-1950s, when Procter & Gamble commissioned a commercial artist, Richard Black, to create a marketing character..."

"... for a new detergent-based household cleaner. The company envisioned a bald man with a nose ring, a nod to the genie-like powers of a product that cleaned 'like magic.' Mr. Black, who died in 2014, drafted two sketches of a strong, smiling genie: one with a nose ring, and one with an earring. Procter & Gamble chose the second one...."

From "Mr. Clean, the Bald, Broad-Shouldered Cleaning Mascot, Retires The character became the face of a household cleaner in 1958. It’s not clear what the brand plans for its next mascot" (NYT).

At Straight Dope, there's skepticism: "Its a marketing ploy to draw attention to a brand that has been taken for granted. He will come out of retirement"/"Yeah, like when Mr. Peanut 'died' a few years ago."

A retrospective:

 

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"In an ad for Amazon’s Ring camera that ran during the Super Bowl, a new A.I.-powered feature called 'Search Party' helps reunite a tearful little girl with her missing dog..."

"... by activating all the cameras in the neighborhood to find him. The feature works by using A.I. to scan video captured by all the participating Ring cameras in a neighborhood, pinging the device’s user should the reported dog pass in view. The device’s user can then notify the pet’s owner (they can also decline). Scores of posters online have decried Ring’s new feature as dystopian and terrifying. In a rare unifying moment, members of the political right and left expressed their discontent. Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, posted on X: 'This definitely isn’t about dogs — it’s about mass surveillance.' And the conservative commentator Stephen L. Miller wrote, 'The Ring cam lost dog ad is just propaganda for mass surveillance.'"

From "What Homeowners Need to Know About Smart Home Cameras/A new Super Bowl ad is raising questions about the power of doorbell cameras" (NYT).

Here's that ad:

The Harry Nilsson tag is not a mistake. His recording of "Without You" is the background music.

In the ad, "can't live/if living is without you" is used to express a little girl's feelings about her dog. Such dark thoughts to impose on a child. I mean, it can happen — see "12-Year-Old Girl, Unable To Cope With Loss Of Her Pup, Dies By Suicide" — but let's try harder to keep darkness off of children. The theme of inability to live without a particular loved one is an adult theme.

"You've gotta learn to get more pleasure!"

A Super Bowl ad for a product called...

"I should not be treated like a terrorist for traveling within my own country by an agency that’s trash at its job anyway."

Tweeted Evita Duffy-Alfonso, the daughter of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, about the "absurdly invasive pat-down" TSA subjected her to after she, on behalf of her unborn child, declined to submit to the body scanner.

The agents were passive-aggressive, rude, and tried to pressure me and another pregnant woman into just walking through the scanner because it’s “safe.”... Perhaps things would have gone more smoothly if I’d handed over my biometric data to a random private company (CLEAR). Then I could enjoy the special privilege of waiting in a shorter line to be treated like a terrorist in my own country. Is this freedom? Travel, brought to you by George Orwell....

The ignominious Chia Pet deployed against Bari Weiss.

The headline at Variety is "Big Advertisers Appear Wary of CBS News’ Bari Weiss Town Hall Format." 

Not only is there that dismissive rhyme — "Wary of... Bari" — there's the attack of the Chia Pet:

The news special aired at 8 p.m. on Saturday, one of the least-watched hours in broadcast TV. And that may have contributed to a relative dearth of top advertisers appearing to support the show. During the hour, commercial breaks were largely filled with spots from direct-response advertisers, including the dietary supplement SuperBeets; the home-repair service HomeServe.com; and CarFax, a supplier of auto ownership data. Viewers of of the telecast on WCBS, CBS’ flagship station in New York, even saw a commercial for Chia Pet, the terra-cotta figure that sprouts plant life after a few weeks....

The ignominious Chia Pet!

For a substantive overview of the town hall, you might read "7 highlights from Erika Kirk's CBS News town hall." Did you watch it? Did you watch it in the actual 8 p.m. time slot? Do you feel you ought to watch it, as you obviously still can, on YouTube, or do you feel you already know everything Bari Weiss and Erika Kirk might say to each other? 

It's a good question, but it's easy to answer.

Good question pic.twitter.com/cgdRX8TW01

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) November 23, 2025

I think the answer is in this logic:

Identity is in your feelings.

From that 1967 Clairol ad: "Why don't you try saying this out loud: 'If I've only one life, let me live it as a blonde.' If you get a surge when you say the words, you're a blonde at heart." And you are free to bleach your hair blonde so it affirms your inner feelings.

And by the way, the blondest blondes in American culture — Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Debbie Harry — had to bleach their way to blondeness, and some classy writers have argued that they are more truly blonde — whatever that means! — than the natural blondes. 

Here's that crazy ad that Cuomo accidentally/"accidentally" released.

This is the wildest attack ad I’ve ever seen in politics. Andrew Cuomo pulling out all the stops. pic.twitter.com/rPQ77Z3bE7

— Stephen Taylor (@stephen_taylor) October 23, 2025

Background from The Guardian, "Cuomo condemned over racist AI ad depicting ‘criminals for Zohran Mamdani’/Official X accounts posts and then deletes AI-generated attack ad that prompts widespread denunciation."

From Fox News, "Andrew Cuomo campaign walks back controversial attack ad targeting Mamdani voters/Campaign quickly removes AI-generated video after Mamdani calls it 'just disgusting.'"

"A boy in a sports jersey stands with smaller girls on a court and then is seen, shirtless, inside a bathroom with them. A girl in a towel shrieks in terror."

"'Abigail Spanberger is as extreme as it gets,' says the narrator of the television ad that recently began airing in Virginia. A year after Donald Trump’s presidential campaign unleashed $37 million in transgender-themed issue ads against Democratic rival Kamala Harris, Republicans are returning to the cultural flashpoint ahead of next month’s elections, including Virginia’s race for governor, and plan to highlight it again in the 2026 midterm contests. 'Where is our common sense?' Winsome Earle-Sears, Virginia’s Republican lieutenant governor, said in an interview when asked about transgender athletes competing in female sports. 'If I have to tell you that water is wet, we’ve got troubles.'"

From "Republicans Target Democrats Over Transgender Policies in This Year’s Races/Ahead of critical midterm elections, GOP revives culture war strategy used by Trump in 2024’s presidential campaign" (Wall Street Journal).

Here's that anti-Spanberger ad:

#VAGov: Dick Uihlein-funded group Restoration of America PAC is up on TV with this spot --

Female voiceover:

"Abigail Spanberger is as extreme as it gets..."

"She's apparently all in on a horrifying gender mutilation. An irreversible sterilization of children" pic.twitter.com/gD0ytXwUIn

— Medium Buying (@MediumBuying) October 14, 2025

What a terrible issue for Democrats! They can't seem to back away from it.

"Even brands are acknowledging the stakes of putting yourself out there — a hallmark of cringe — when things could turn out poorly."

"Earlier this month, Nike reworked its longtime tagline 'Just Do It' into a new campaign called 'Why Do It?' The ad, narrated by Tyler, the Creator, depicts athletes, many of them mid-game, as he asks why they are trying if failure is an option.... Reflecting on how her phrase, cringe mountain, had spread, [creator consultant Erin] Mallett said it was already a common feeling that was in need of a name. 'I gave them a personal mantra and maybe just an opposing excuse,' she said. 'If someone goes, "Oh, but you shouldn’t do that." Now my excuse is, "But I can, because it’s OK." You can’t get to the land of cool without first climbing cringe mountain.'"

From "Climbing Cringe Mountain With Gen Z/Raised online and under constant scrutiny, young adults are leaning into embarrassment as a necessary part of growing up" (NYT).

"But as real celebrities and influencers try to be perceived as more 'authentic,' many A.I. influencers like Miquela and Mia Zelu are leaning into their unrealness..."

"... proudly claiming their robot monikers in their bios and having no shame about posting in Hong Kong at 3 p.m. and in New York an hour later. In fact, the teams behind them feel the lack of a corporeal form may be their best selling point. 'From a brand perspective, we are able to create a very dynamic story line,' Ms. Kahn said. 'So Miquela can be, for example, in London one day supporting an art gallery opening, and in L.A. the same day to support a new coffee shop that she really likes, right? I think brands love that she can be anywhere... I think the next generation isn’t really thinking as much about is this person real or not?... It’s more about: 'What does this account stand for?'"

I'm reading "They’re Famous. They’re Everywhere. And They’re Fake. Influencers like Lil’ Miquela and Mia Zelu have millions of followers and generate serious income, despite being created with artificial intelligence" (NYT).

1. Who's "Ms. Kahn"? Who cares?

2. I like how they put "authentic" in quotes.

3. What's the difference between A.I. "influencers" like Miquela and old-time ad mascots like Tony the Tiger and the Trix rabbit?

4. You know who else can be in Hong Kong and then in New York an hour later? Santa Claus. Kids have accepted his dictates as long as I can remember. At least Miquela isn't demanding that we be "good" and threatening us with a list. Or is it only a matter of time?

5. Here is what reality must compete with:

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6. Maybe she and her ilk are saving us all from the trouble of striving to excel at fakeness. We're free at last. Now, what?

7. What if the people you met in real life were like Miquela, putting their plastic cup on their head and affecting an expression of inane ecstasy? And maybe they already are... and have been for a long time. I went running to find this passage from "My Dinner With André," a movie that came out more than 40 years ago:

... I turned the television on, and there was this guy who had just won the something something, you know, some sports event, some kind of a great big check and some kind of huge silver bottle, and he, you know, you know, he couldn’t stuff the check in the bottle, and he put the bottle in front of his nose and pretended it was his face, you know, he wasn’t really listening to the guy who was interviewing him, but he was smiling, huh, malevolently at his friends, and I looked at that guy and I thought “What a horrible, empty, manipulative rat.” Then I thought, “That guy is me.”

8. Writing #7 — "What if the people you met" — made me think of an old song that I gradually realized was "Who Are the Brain Police?"

"It's tricknological, when white people invoke the holocaust. allows them to step out of their whiteness and slip on fake oppression."

Wrote Doreen St. Félix, in an X post screencapped in an Instapundit post by Ed Driscoll.

St. Félix published an article — in The New Yorker — about the Sydney Sweeney jeans/genes foofaraw. I'd skipped that article — I was Sweeneyed out by the time it appeared — but I see from the excerpt at Instapundit that it contained lines like "Interestingly, breasts, and the desire for them, are stereotyped as objects of white desire, as opposed to, say, the Black man’s hunger for ass." The desire is the object of desire? That's defective writing, and The New Yorker got its lofty reputation in part because of its punctilious word editing. But St. Félix is in The New Yorker, thus making her statements conspicuous and goofier than they would be somewhere else, like X (or a blog). 

Hey! It says "Black man’s hunger for ass" in The New Yorker.

The screencappers of X plunged into St. Félix's X account, homing in on posts with the words "hate" and "white people." Go to the Instapundit link to see what they found. 

What calls me is that new word: "tricknological." The adjective is, apparently, formed from the word "Tricknology," which is in the OED and traced back to 1938. It's marked "U.S. disparaging." It means:

Does a hot young actress really want President Trump approving of her? Poor Sydney Sweeney!

Trump, this morning, at Truth Social:

Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the “HOTTEST” ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are “flying off the shelves.” Go get ‘em Sydney!

Well, she's selling perfectly ordinary denim. Maybe she'll make being Republican the new thing.

That's from 60 years ago, but it's a line I've never forgotten: "The new thing is to care passionately and be right-wing." In context, of course, he's laughably wrong, and everyone watching that movie knew it. Didn't we? Or did we think watch out, some day that will be true. It's all a matter of time.

Trump's post continues:

On the other side of the ledger, Jaguar did a stupid, and seriously WOKE advertisement, THAT IS A TOTAL DISASTER! The CEO just resigned in disgrace, and the company is in absolute turmoil. Who wants to buy a Jaguar after looking at that disgraceful ad. Shouldn’t they have learned a lesson from Bud Lite, which went Woke and essentially destroyed, in a short campaign, the Company. The market cap destruction has been unprecedented, with BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SO FOOLISHLY LOST. Or just look at Woke singer Taylor Swift. Ever since I alerted the world as to what she was by saying on TRUTH that I can’t stand her (HATE!). She was booed out of the Super Bowl and became, NO LONGER HOT. The tide has seriously turned — Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

And speaking of Trump on Truth Social, there's also this, which caught my eye...

.. because I thought I saw Bucky Badger. But yes, happy birthday to the Coast Guard.

"I think what’s getting people talking — or rather, why everyone was watching these TikToks obsessively over the weekend and picking them apart — is how regressive the ads seem."

"The line about her having great jeans — several people are suggesting in the comments on Instagram and TikTok that this is a 'pro-eugenics ad.' Whether or not that’s the case, it is part of a wave of imagery of influencers, pop stars and musicians that feels tethered to the values of another time."

From "How American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ‘good jeans’ ad went wrong/A provocative new denim campaign featuring the actress leans into retro sexiness — and it’s sparking debate about eugenics and ‘wokeness'" (WaPo).

That's a gift link. My last of the month. In case you want to see the ads people are so worked up about. I've avoided talking about them because I don't want to help make them go viral. But they've obviously gone massively viral, so expect more of the same.

It's a pun: "good genes"/"good jeans." You'd think it would have been noticed, used, and groaned over decades ago and that it would be completely uncool to bring it up now. But what if it's cool precisely because people are sensitive and fearful about a perceived rise in enthusiasm for white supremacy. It's needling those poor souls. It's transgressive. Is that where we are?

By the way, Deepika Padukone used the pun 3 years ago, for Levi's jeans:

"Colbert gets no advertising and late night is a tough spot. Colbert might be No. 1, but who watches late night TV anymore?"

Said an unnamed person who, the NYT Post assures us, knows what he's talking about, quoted in "CBS canned ‘The Late Show’ over tens of millions in financial losses annually — not Stephen Colbert’s politics: sources."

Millions = between $40 million and $50 million a year.

Are these losses because people just don't watch what's "on TV" anymore? We've lost the habit of winding down at the end of the evening with the talk shows the network runs in that time slot? Or is there a problem of Colbert's show leaning to one side politically and spurning the opportunity to appeal to half the people in the country? 

RedBird’s Jeff Shell, the former head of NBCUniversal who will run the network once the [Skydance-Paramount] deal is done, has been crunching the numbers and finding that CBS is a “melting ice cube” with its losses and cost overruns, a source said. The plan is to enhance CBS Sports and invest in “truth-based” news at a network that conservatives have long ripped for its alleged liberal bias.

Are those the scare quotes around "truth-based"? Much as the quotes made me laugh and want to poke fun, I think they are more likely to signify that the Post is quoting Jeff Shell. Same thing with "melting ice cube." I don't think the Post was trying to help us idiots understand that that CBS is not literally a melting ice cube. They were just giving Jeff Shell credit for the turn of phrase. Now, the interesting question becomes what does Shell, who's about to be running the network, think "truth-based" means?

The Post has learned that Ellison is now telling people that with the [Trump's] lawsuit settled the Skydance-Paramount deal will get FCC approval by mid-August.

Ellison = Skydance CEO David Ellison, "the son of Donald Trump pal and tech billionaire Larry Ellison. 

While Ellison is predicting imminent regulatory approval, it will come at a cost: FCC chairman Brendan Carr is likely to demand conditions to remedy what he believes is left-wing news bias in programming that violates agency “public interest” rules that govern local broadcasting as opposed to cable.

More quotation marks. I'm just going to guess that the highly abstract term "public interest" is something in the vicinity of "truth-based." Or... maybe it's something more like the word that got us started on Stephen Colbert — "truthiness."

"Truthiness" was The Word of the Year 2006. Colbert launched it thusly, back when he began his excellent show "The Colbert Report":

And on this show, on this show your voice will be heard... in the form of my voice. 'Cause you're looking at a straight-shooter, America. I tell it like it is. I calls 'em like I sees 'em. I will speak to you in plain simple English.

And that brings us to tonight's word: truthiness.

Now I'm sure some of the Word Police, the wordanistas over at Webster's, are gonna say, "Hey, that's not a word." Well, anybody who knows me knows that I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true, or what did or didn't happen. Who's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I wanna say it happened in 1941, that's my right. I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart.

ADDED: Here's Colbert, in July 2016, relocated to "The Late Show," talking about his old word "truthiness" and presented the new word "Trumpiness":

"I was trying to make a heart for him. I was too late."

Said Robert Jarvik, quoted in "Robert Jarvik, a creator of the artificial heart, dies at 79/He was the lead designer of the Jarvik-7, a controversial plastic and metal device intended to permanently replace an ailing human heart" (WaPo).

A handsome, tousle-haired man whose interests ranged from skiing and weightlifting to poetry and theoretical physics, he cited a personal motivation for his work on the device: His father, a physician, had died after open-heart surgery in 1976.

The first artificial heart, the Jarvik-7, was implanted in 1982. Perhaps, like me, you remember the name and occupation of the recipient: Barney Clark, a dentist. When he awakened from the surgery, he said to his wife, "I want to tell you, even though I have no heart, I still love you."

The artificial heart never became a replacement for a real heart. Didn't you think it would, if you were around, reading the news 43 years ago? Artificial hearts are only used as to keep people alive while they wait for a heart from a human donor.

Jarvik, the "handsome, tousle-haired man," also posed in Hathaway shirt ads — like this one, complete with the company's trademark eyepatch. He also posed in a Lipitor ad that got criticized as misleading because Jarvik was "not a cardiologist" and — though the ad depicted him rowing — "apparently, not a rower."

Jarvik was married to Marilyn vos Savant, the woman who's been famous for decades for supposedly having the highest IQ. (She scored 228 on the Stanford-Binet test when she was 10.)

Speaking of dolls, whatever happened to "Creatable World" dolls?

Dolls came up in the previous post when a NYT author located Trump's "level of aesthetic consideration" to that which a child gives "her doll’s face before covering it in nail polish."

That took me down the rathole that is the "dolls" tag in my archive, and I was surprised to encounter this 2019 post: "That’s why I applaud Mattel’s Creatable World, a new collection of gender-neutral dolls, which allow kids to customize their Barbie and Ken in ways they never could before."

That's not me applauding Creatable World. I was quoting something. I can't think of a time when I applauded a toy, and, though I like the idea of children creating little imaginary worlds with their toys, I'm wary of Big Toy's packaging of a particular world to capture the creative energy of the child. Was Creatable World — i.e., gender-neutral world — offered as the antidote to the excessive genderizing of Barbie?

But what happened to Creatable World? I don't think Mattel ever announced that it was withdrawing the product. How much of a fiasco was it?

Did kids just not like it? Did the adults who liked that sort of thing simply fail to have children?

Who even remembers Creatable World? It surprised me to run across it this morning. Is it in the junkpile of things people like to forget ever happened? Have we created a world in which Creatable World never existed?

James Comey's now-infamous Instagram account is mostly about marketing his novel... which has a theme that's suspiciously close to his "8647" gambit.

At the top of his Instagram account (quoting Publisher's Weekly):

Thanks to Charlie Martin for pointing me at Comey's book: "So, now it turns out that Comey actually has a book coming out in a few days about a Mary Sue main character who investigates, arrests, and apparently convicts a conservative radio talker of inciting a murder by dog-whistling. Coincidentally."

I read Martin's post while I was still in bed this morning looking at my iPhone, and I quickly dictated this question into the ChatGPT app (I usually access A.I. by typing things into Grok):

"What is the argument that James Comey by showing a photograph of rocks in the shape of 8647 was really teasing a novel that he had written, which is about someone accused of inciting violence by giving out an obscure message and [Comey] will actually benefit from this new attention he’s getting from the right because people on his left will actually get excited about his otherwise incredibly boring book."

Yeah, that's the way I talk when I'm, essentially, talking to myself. Notice my lazy bias toward thinking everything is boring. Anyway, I had these follow-up questions:

1. "How smart is James Comey?"

2. "He would need to be smart in a marketing and media sense to have come up with the idea of posting that photograph as a way to gin up interest in his novel. He strikes me as someone who is too boring and staid to attempt such a flashy scheme, and he would have to be willing to do something different to expose himself to criminal accusations. It almost seems like something Trump would do ironically."

You can read all ChatGPT's responses here, but the bottom line is: "Your read—that he’s too boring and staid for such a risky, theatrical move—aligns far more closely with what we’ve seen of him than the idea of a QAnon-baiting media play."

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