A decade from now, when the history books are written, someone should write a book about how “Seinfeld,” the popular comedy show from the 1990s based in New York City, which is still regularly shown on television, prepared the world for the elections of a prominent New York City presidential candidate, Donald Trump. (President Trump now claims he is from Florida. But no one really believes that.)
I came to this realization during the 2024 presidential debate when Donald Trump said this about Joe Biden:
“He’s become like a Palestinian,” Trump said of Biden during the section dealing with foreign policy. “But they don’t like him because he’s a very bad Palestinian. He’s a weak one.”
Clearly, President Trump is trying to make the case that Joe Biden is taking the side of the Palestinian Arabs (and other antisemites) in their war against Jews (and not just the Israelis). And he is also saying that Joe Biden is a weak man, who appeases every bad actor throughout the world, only to receive their scorn in return (for Biden’s weakness), which is also what is happening with the Palestinians (and the other antisemites).
Trump is 100 percent correct about this and Joe Biden. I have written about this subject before, and there is no question that Biden is screwing over the Israelis, who are strong U.S. allies, and who had given up control over Gaza, only to be rewarded for that by the vicious Hamas-led October massacre of Israeli civilians. And there is no question that Biden is trying to curry favor with the antisemites in the Democrat Party, including many Palestinian Americans, who are currently rioting on U.S. streets and attacking American Jews for wearing their kippahs. As I am sure former Democrat Mayor of New York Ed Koch would say if he were still alive, “An American Jew would be crazy to vote for Joe Biden.”
But I think the Trump comparison — and the nickname for Biden — is still sort of clunky.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter what I think. Lots of people seem to love it. And this tells me something – Donald Trump belongs in a “Seinfeld” episode, as he is clearly another version of Alan, the “Bad Breaker-Upper” from the episode “The Andrea Doria.”
In that “Seinfeld” episode, Elaine, the only female character (if I am allowed to presume her gender), is dating a guy named Alan. She finds out he is a “Bad Breaker-Upper.” Deeming this an unacceptable flaw, Elaine breaks up with Alan. He retaliates by calling her “Big Head.” She initially scoffs at the nickname. But the comment about her head holds true when a cab driver asks her to move her head because he can’t see around it in the taxi, and a bird is unable to avoid her head and crashes into it. Elaine later decides to see Alan again to prove to herself she doesn’t care about his comment. On this date, Alan tells her she has a bump on her nose, and she flies into a rage and attacks him with a fork. At the end of the episode, Alan gets the condo George, another of the main characters, has been trying to get by bribing the building’s super. George had been focused on trying to make the condo board feel sorry for him instead. When George confronts him over this, Alan calls him “chinless.” The last scene is George rubbing his chin and looking perturbed.
A lot of the humor of this episode comes from the fact that the insults thrown by Alan are really, rather silly, yet, for some reason, they badly hurt their target and are popular with most other people.
Donald Trump clearly has the power of creating silly insults that bite their targets, too. Here is a (close to) full list of his nicknames for people, courtesy of Wikipedia. Obviously, the big hits include: Sleepy Joe (Biden), Boot-Edge-Edge (Pete Buttigieg), Ron DeSanctimonious, Lyin’ James Comey, Crazy Nancy (Pelosi), Crazy Bernie (Sanders), and Low Energy Jeb (Bush). Hillary Clinton was called Crooked Hillary, until, after her defeat, when this nickname was retired for her and instead awarded to Crooked Joe (Biden).
I am going to go out on a limb and conclude that most of these people didn’t like their Trump nickname and got tired of ordinary people repeating these names in everyday events. Some of them were probably driven a little crazy in the real world, as is the fictional Elaine, over her nickname of “Big Head.” You can see this in the real world with the many Trump Derangement Sufferers (TDS).
But these insults are certainly memorable, and they clearly work for Trump. People like them. So, I am sure that Donald Trump will continue to give them out for the rest of his career.
And remember – Alan, the “bad-breaker-upper,” wins at the end of the episode by slipping the super $50 for the apartment. He does what any good New Yorker would do and what George should have done.
I think Donald Trump is going to get his condo – otherwise known as the White House – in 2024.
