The inauguration of President Joe Biden has heralded the onset, like no other event in recent times, of Clown World. 

Conservatives, populists and sane people everywhere must now find a new breed of leaders we can trust to tell the truth in these topsy-turvy times: right-wing comedians.  

Luckily, three hilarious political roasts show us how we got here and how we must now proceed.  

In Clown World lies are adopted as conventional wisdom (for example “Trump incited a riot” or “believe all women”).  

In Clown World it is very difficult to speak the truth in public, as Republican Senator for Missouri Josh Hawley found out when Simon & Schuster cancelled his book deal (he objected in the Senate to the conduct of the presidential election).  

Policies in Clown World have an edge to them – designed to destroy social conventions and bonds by the force of political shaming and, ultimately, the law. So we’ll see gender-free speech rules, open borders, defunded police, trans-men in women’s sports and bathrooms, abortion-to-birth and slavery reparations, among other crazy policies.  

President Biden was being a President befitting Clown World when he labelled as “domestic terrorists” anyone who protested in Washington DC over alleged election fraud. Biden has now embellished that lie, now labelling Trump supporters as “white supremacists”. This is also a lie, but is more useful than “terrorist” as it cancels his opponents and need never be proven in court.  

While the Democrats pursue their show trial of Trump in the Senate (a facist move akin to the Nazi show trials of German Communists accused of burning down the Reichstag in 1933) and their corporate henchmen and henchwomen compile blacklists of political opponents “seditious Americans” to de-platform and black-ban from their services, it is clear that Clown World will gather momentum and become stronger. 

So the question becomes – how do sane people respond? 

The key in this task is to remember one thing: only the Joker can speak the truth in Clown World. 

When 2+2=5 and journalism has failed, it falls to those permanent outcasts and wicked observers of society, comedians, to tell the truth out loud.  

Their jokes are funny because they are true. 

Three blistering roasts since 2006 will illuminate where we’ve come from and where we must now go. 

One by a sitting President; one by a future President; and one by a once-brilliant comic.  

When President Barack Obama spoke at the 2011 White House Correspondents dinner all present saw it as another supremely cool display of his perfect comedic timing and under-played chutzpa.  

But it may also have triggered the run for the man who would succeed him as President, so effortlessly did the high-handed, Harvard-educated Obama ridicule Donald Trump that night. 

Say what you like about Obama’s style-over-substance presidency, when in a room of admirers, a teleprompter and some good jokes, he could be very funny. 

Addressing Trump directly, that night in 2011 (you can see it from the 2:30 mark here): 

“All kidding aside, obviously we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience,” said Obama, sarcastically disqualifying Trump from future high office. 

“For example, recently in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice (laughter) there was a lot of blame to go around but you, Mr Trump, recognised that there was a lack of leadership (laughter) so you fired Gary Busey.” 

“These are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night!” 

Laugh, did they laugh. 

But not many Democrat sycophants were still laughing when, in October 2016, then-candidate Trump rose at the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York, to roast Hilary Clinton, in the final stages of the presidential campaign.  

It was, in a way, his ‘right of reply’ to Obama’s roast five years earlier.  

As you’ll recall, Clinton was attempting to continue the uninterrupted Clinton-Obama-Clinton monopoly on power in Washington, running a smug, hollowed-out campaign offering nothing to the working poor, but much to the donor class in Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex whose interests the Clintons and Obamas have always served.  

Like Obama five years earlier, Clinton was under-estimating the Orange Man. But unlike Obama, Clinton would pay a heavy price.  

Trump had run a stunning campaign, hinged on economic nationalism and re-awakening pride in America’s heritage values.  

By the time he rose to speak at the Al Smith Dinner, the Democrats should have known he was a contender.  

By the time he sat down, they all knew.  

Trump didn’t waver, happy in his work of making mincemeat of Clinton’s poor record, unpopularity and modest offering to the electorate.  

“It’s great to be here with 1000 wonderful people, or as I call it, a small intimate dinner with some friends, or as Hillary calls it, her largest crowd of the season,” Trump said.  

Clinton was possibly a criminal, Trump also suggested. 

“Just before taking the dais tonight, Hillary accidentally bumped into me, and she very civilly said ‘pardon me’, and I very politely replied ‘let me talk to you about that after I get into office,” said the future President. 

Trump lost the room but won many hearts across the Rust Belt and Mid West, voters who would, 19 days later, deliver him the White House. 

“Hillary is so corrupt (booing) that she got kicked off the Watergate Commission – how do you get kicked off the Watergate Commission!” 

Trump just got tougher from there, with jokes, delivered drolly and without a hint of apology, convincing those watching at home of his utter seriousness in destroying the Clinton-Obama Democrat machine and taking the country in a new direction. 

Trump of course won in November and, for a time, halted the coming of Clown World. 

The Democrats would remember their humiliating defeat. They came prepared in 2020, not with policies for the working class or a financial plan to drag the US into the black, but with unconstitutional changes to states’ election rules and systemic ballot fraud across multiple states.  

With the courts refusing to hear the merits of the objections, and Republicans in Congress split and impotent, the era of Clown World has now begun. 

So we turn to the final, and most crucial, roast of this comedic history lesson. 

The performance is tantalising and ironic, as it shows us how to deal with Clown World but was delivered, way back in 2006, by one of today’s leading Biden apologists – Stephen Colbert. 

Today, Colbert is the host of CBS’s The Late Show, but on that night at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Colbert was an emerging cable television comic – a parody of a conservative newsman – and he was on fire.  

With as much zest as Trump had drollness a decade later, but with the same utter seriousness in destroying the room and reaching the viewers at home, Colbert carpet-bombed the George Bush presidency with beautifully crafted political satire.  

“I’m a simple man with a simple mind and a simple set of beliefs,” said Colbert. 

“I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least, and by this standard, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq!” 

But he reserved his most deadly, guided munitions that night for what he saw as the biggest villains of that time – a compliant national news media. 

“Over the past five years you people (journalists) were so good, over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming; we Americans didn’t want to know and you (the media) had the courtesy not to try to find out!” 

“Those were good times, as far as we knew!” 

Oh to have a comic with the wit, wisdom and prominence today to level the same charge of failure to today’s media. 

Colbert is a shadow of his former self; drip-fed unfunny lines by staff writers vetted by his corporate owners at CBS (owner: Viacom). 

Fear of speaking up is spreading; an unfamiliar and unwelcome feeling for the children and grandchildren of the West.  

With a compliant media supporting a cancel culture that is getting stronger, only the Jokers can plant the satirical bomb under Clown World and light the fuse. 

With Biden and Harris declaring Year Zero in Washington DC last week, we wait more in hope than expectation, to hear the truth again. 

In the meantime, go ahead and watch this collection of Biden gaffes and try not to laugh. 

If you enjoyed this piece, you can support Andrew Vincent’s work at Patreon.

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