Tag Archives: Trump

Joke About Hillary Clinton’s Novel

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The joke:

Hillary Clinton is co-writing a mystery novel. She loves mysteries and this one sounds amazing. It’s called, “How the Hell Did Trump Beat Me?”

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye because I hadn’t written a Hillary Clinton joke in a while. Plus the other topic handle, “mystery novel,” seemed to have a lot of associations that I might link her to. That is, I thought I could use my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

Most associations that Clinton used to have–her pantsuits, her emails, her philandering husband–are now too stale to hang a joke on. But one association is still fresh, years after the presidential election: how she can’t understand why she lost to Trump. So I created a punch line that links that association to an association of “mystery novel,” namely “mystery.”

But writing the joke this way wouldn’t quite work: “Hillary Clinton is co-writing a mystery novel. It’s called, ‘How the Hell Did Trump Beat Me?'” The problem is that the title “How the Hell Did Trump Beat Me” describes a mystery but not the plot of a mystery novel.

To smooth out that bump, I wrote an angle that includes the word “mysteries,” to focus the audience on just the mystery aspect before they arrived at the punch line. But I also added “this one sounds amazing,” to subtly mislead the audience into thinking that I was still describing her novel.

This joke is an example of how to write a political joke that’s unlikely to divide a mass audience. Whether you’re a Clinton fan or not, you’d probably agree that she’s still wondering what went wrong in 2016.

Joke About Long Lines for the Vaccine

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The joke:

People are desperate. They want to know if they’re eligible. They’re trying to get on the list, waiting in long lines, sleeping in their cars. They all want to get one before the supply runs out. Yes, I’m talking about Presidential pardons.

How I wrote it:

I got the idea for this joke while I read the newspaper at breakfast; yes, I get home delivery of a physical paper, to supplement all the news I read online.

On the front page was a story about how states were having problems distributing the Covid-19 vaccine. Right below that was a story about how President Trump was preparing a long list of people to pardon.

And a connection between those two adjacent stories popped into my head: the idea of people lining up to get something valuable. So I had the idea for a punch line.

I could have built out that idea into a shorter joke, something like “People are waiting in long lines to get the Covid-19 vaccine. The bad news is, the lines are even longer to get a pardon from President Trump.”

But I thought the joke would be more surprising, and funnier, if I extended the misdirection of the angle by exaggerating the lengths that desperate people were going to.

The finished joke felt like one that other writers might come up with. So I posted it on Twitter, Facebook, and this website around 9:30 am, hours before I usually post my daily joke.

Sure enough, later that day a Facebook friend alerted me to a New Yorker cartoon that, according to Google, appeared online a few hours after I had posted my joke.

Did that cartoonist swipe my idea? No. All creators of topical comedy see the same news and use the same techniques to write jokes. So it’s no surprise when two writers independently come up with the same one.

For more on that phenomenon, read how Seth Meyers Did Not Steal My Joke.

Joke About Biden’s Inauguration

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The joke:

The schedule is now set for Inauguration Day. And this is interesting: at the exact same time that Chief Justice John Roberts will be swearing in Joe Biden, Donald Trump will be swearing at Joe Biden.

How I wrote it:

I wanted to write a joke about the upcoming inauguration because it was a big story. But many aspects of it seemed unpromising for joke writing: the attack on the Capitol, the increased security, the possibility of additional violence.

So I brainstormed about the inauguration process itself. One of the associations that popped into my head was “swearing in,” and then its wordplay with “swearing at.” And I realized that my punch line could have Trump swearing at Biden.

That is, I only had a general idea of what my joke topic would be when I used my Punch line Maker #4–Find a play on words in the topic. And I still needed to write the topic.

The “swearing in / swearing at” wordplay suggested two events happening at the same time. So I wrote a topic that referred to the schedule for Inauguration Day.

Once I had that topic, I wrote an angle that emphasized the surprising nature of the coincidence I had invented: the two events will happen “at the exact same time.” A more surprising punch line is a funnier punch line.

I also used my Joke Maximizer #6–Make the punch line parallel–when I worded the Roberts/Biden part of the joke as much as possible like the Trump/Biden part. The parallelism would have been closer without the words “Chief Justice,” but I included them for clarity.

Joke About Trump’s Twitter Account

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The joke:

Yesterday Twitter suspended the account of President Trump. He responded by launching his own version of Snapchat–Crapchat.

How I wrote it:

The biggest news story at the time was the storming of the Capitol building, but that didn’t lend itself easily to joke writing. So instead I chose for a topic a related news story that was almost as big.

The topic about Twitter suspending Trump suggested the question “What will he do about that?” That is, I gravitated toward my Punch Line Maker #3: Ask a question about the topic.

To answer that question, and create a punch line, I thought of associations of the two handles of the topic. As I did so, I had in mind the possibility of linking two associations using wordplay.

One handle, “Twitter,” is associated with other popular social media sites. As an aid to brainstorming, I looked up a list of them online.

The other handle, “President Trump,” has as an association “his tweets.” I mentally gauged how a mass audience now feels about those tweets and decided most people would be okay associating them with something like “garbage.”

Then, to get my punch line, I linked my list of social media sites to my list of synonyms for “garbage” by blending “Snapchat” and “crap.”

I debated about whether to include “Snapchat” in the angle. Without it, I thought the wordplay in the punch line might not be clear. With it, I thought the punch line might be too on-the-nose. I opted for clarity.

As a bonus, my Joke Maximizer #7 advises using stop consonants, and “Crapchat” has three of them.

Joke About Trump and Covid-19

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The joke:

President Trump is still in the hospital for Covid-19. Doctors say the good news is the virus isn’t making any progress because Trump’s immune system keeps interrupting it.

How I wrote it:

I wanted to write a joke about Trump contracting Covid-19 because it was a huge news story. But, as always, I also wanted to write a joke that could be enjoyed by as many people as possible. That’s a tricky task, because Trump is so polarizing.

So when I used my Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic–I only considered associations that I thought most people would have, not just Trump haters and not just Trump supporters.

That meant when I came up with associations of the topic handle “Trump,” I rejected associations like “he deserves to be infected,” because plenty of people might disagree with that.

Instead, I went with an association that I thought everyone would be willing to accept, that in the first Presidential Debate, Trump had interrupted Biden constantly.

Associations of the other topic handle, “Covid-19,” include “immune system fights virus.” So I was able to create a punch line by substituting the idea of interrupting for the idea of fighting.

Because the news about Trump’s condition was so fast-moving at the time I wrote the joke, I crafted a topic that describes his status in general terms, so the joke would have a little longer shelf life.

I worded the angle as “the virus isn’t making any progress” so it would suggest something that someone in a debate might do. A wording like “the virus is being neutralized” wouldn’t have guided the audience from the topic to the punch line quite as smoothly.

Joke About the Articles of Impeachment

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The joke:

House Democrats haven’t sent the two articles of impeachment to the Senate yet. They say they’re waiting to add a third article so they can get free shipping.

How I wrote it:

This news item was one of the top stories of the day, so I wanted to write a joke about it. The nature of the story pointed me towards Punch Line Maker #3: Ask a question about the topic.

The obvious question to me was, “Why haven’t they sent the two articles yet?” To create a punch line, I answered that question using associations of handles of the topic.

One topic handle, “sent,” has the association “mailed,” which has the sub-association “free shipping.” That sub-association was particularly top-of-mind when I wrote the joke, during the heart of the Christmas shopping season.

A second topic handle, “two articles,” has the association “three articles.” So I was able to link “free shipping” and “three articles” to create a punch line that answered my original question about why House Democrats are waiting to send the articles.

My experience writing for broadcast network TV shows has instilled in me a desire to entertain as large an audience as possible; ratings are very important. That means crafting political jokes that are unlikely to “split the room.” This joke is a good example of that.

Whatever you feel about President Trump and the Democrats, you’d have to agree with the facts that the joke needs you to accept as true, like the fact that the Democrats delayed sending the articles to the Senate and the fact that they did consider adding more articles of impeachment.

Joke About the Impeachment Inquiry

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The joke:

Today House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump. To head it off, Trump now says his call to the Ukrainian president was a butt dial.

How I wrote it:

This was a big story so I wanted to write a joke about it. It’s also a political story, and writing jokes about political stories can be tricky. If you’re not careful, your joke will be rejected by a large segment of your audience.

I started with my Punch Line Maker #3–Ask a question about the topic–asking myself the natural question “How did President Trump react?”

To answer that question, I thought about the topic handle “impeachment inquiry,” which has the association “phone call to the Ukrainian president.” And “phone call” has the association “butt dial.”

So the punch line answers my original question by saying that President Trump reacted by claiming that his controversial phone call was an accidental butt dial. Lucky for me, “butt dial” also has three stop consonants, which makes it even funnier as a laugh trigger.

Notice that even though this is a joke about a political story, it stands a good chance of not alienating a lot of audience members because it’s based on things that pretty much everyone can accept as true: Trump did call the Ukrainian president and he often does offer dubious explanations for his behavior. For more tips on how to write political jokes, read my article “Writing Political Comedy.”

Joke About Apollo 11

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The joke:

Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. President Trump celebrated by telling Buzz Aldrin to go back to the moon where he came from.

How I wrote it:

One of the big news stories at the time was how President Trump tweeted that four congresswomen should “go back” to the “places from which they came.” The story was so big that I felt compelled to write a joke about it.

But instead of assuming that the Trump story would be the topic of the joke, I started by brainstorming on the phrase “go back” to see where that would take me.

I gravitated toward Punch Line Maker #2–Link the topic to pop culture–asking myself, “Who else in pop culture would President Trump tell to “go back” somewhere?

As it happened, another event that was dominating the news at that time was the Apollo 11 mission, which featured men landing on the moon and then returning to earth. When I realized that the association “going back” could link the Trump story to the Apollo 11 story, I had the basis of my punch line. I made the Apollo 11 story the topic because the wording of the joke seemed more natural that way.

I also checked my facts to be sure the joke would be clear, per Joke Maximizer #4. I confirmed that Buzz Aldrin had walked on the moon in Apollo 11 and was still alive. The internet makes it so easy to confirm information, why run any risk at all of botching a good joke?

Joke About That 7.1 Earthquake

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The joke:

Recently Southern California was rocked by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake. The good news is, as a 7.1, it’s unlikely that President Trump would grope it.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this topic because it was a big news story and it had a couple of handles–“Southern California” and “earthquake”–with a lot of associations.

At first I considered using Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic. But I had recently used that technique to write a joke about actor Jussie Smollett’s reaction to an earthquake.

So instead I turned to Punch Line Maker #2–Link the topic to pop culture–and to a different topic handle, “7.1.” As I brainstormed associations of “7.1,” it occurred to me that some people rate the physical attractiveness of women on a scale of 1 to 10.

Turning to pop culture, I asked myself who my audience would associate with assigning numerical ratings to women, and President Trump came to mind. He’s made no secret of the fact that a woman’s attractiveness is important to him.

So the basis of my punch line became President Trump treating the earthquake as a fairly attractive woman, i.e., a 7.1.

I could have worded the punch line something like, “A 7.1. Or as President Trump would say, ‘fairly attractive.'” But instead I used Joke Maximizer #8–“Wildly exaggerate.” I implied that our President is so obsessed with attractiveness ratings that he’d even consider groping an earthquake.

Joke About the Godzilla Movie

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The joke:

Now in theaters, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.” It’s very exciting. Mothra, Rodan, and the three-headed King Ghidorah decide the only way to stop Godzilla is to impeach him.

How I wrote it:

Newly released movies tend to make good joke topics, especially on slow news days. People are usually interested in movies and their titles often lend themselves to surprising interpretations.

The new Godzilla movie seemed especially promising because Godzilla is a huge monster who causes a lot of chaos and conflict and I thought people would associate it with President Trump. That is, the topic led me quickly to my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture.

But this wording of the joke, for example, would have been way too direct: “Now in theaters, ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters.’ In this movie, Godzilla is scarier than ever. He behaves like Trump.” My Joke Maximizer #11 is “Don’t be too on-the-nose,” because on-the-nose jokes aren’t as surprising and therefore aren’t as funny.

So I decided not to mention Trump explicitly in the punch line. I also decided not to rely on the associations “Godzilla” = “monster” = “Trump,” because I thought that equation might split my audience unnecessarily.

Instead I based the punch line on how the monster Godzilla is attacked by his monster adversaries. The surprise is that they use the same technique that some of Trump’s adversaries are considering using on him.

The result is a political joke that’s unlikely to divide a mass audience because it’s based on a fact‑‑impeachment talk‑‑instead of an opinion that may not be universally held.