As in-focus civilians flowed up the Trump Tower taking selfies in the background, an inexplicably out-of-focus Donald Trump sought to explain his rising poll numbers on Sarah Palin’s janky new program on an unknown right-wing news network.
“We’re bringing back—I use the term again, (as) it hasn’t been used in a long time—the silent majority,” he told Palin at the tail end of her 10 p.m. newscast, On Point with Sarah Palin, on Friday night.
Of course, Donald Trump appeared once again unaware that the Silent Majority most popularly referred to those Americans who supported the Vietnam War, often viewed as one of the greatest quagmires of our time.
But Palin, herself, full of platitudes on a network too new or broken to sell ad space (fear not, One America News ran pseudo-PSAs to break up the interview segments instead) did not call him out on it. Instead, the former Republican vice presidential nominee-cum-wider reach public access news anchor offered hard-hitting questions such as this:
“We appreciate your battles here.”
“You’re crushing it in the polls.”
“[Talk about] the respect [veterans] have for a truth talker, as opposed to getting punched in the nose in the last seven years under Obama.”
To be clear, this was a set-’em-up, knock-’em-down campaign speech and not an interview—one in which Sarah Palin largely dominated and made Donald Trump seem like a level-headed centrist by comparison.
Palin preceded Trump’s interview with other ones featuring Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz—both lagging and pixelated on Skype—and, for some reason, Orrin Hatch.
In Ted Cruz’s interview, he called Planned Parenthood “a criminal enterprise” that he would prosecute if he took office due to viral videos he believed implicated the organization in some kind of baby-parts-for-cash sting. He, of course, ignored Friday’s revelations from The New York Times that said those same videos were heavily doctored all along.
Then, Palin greeted Donald Trump, asking him to set the record straight because “I don’t think we’re getting the truth out of The White House,” just like she was taught in journalism school. (Journalism, after all, was the emphasis on her bachelor’s degree diploma, which she earned over five years from four different colleges.)
Then came the random haymaker. Behold:
“You’re seeing some idiots in the press. They’re misrepresenting your exchange with some political activists—the father of the Clinton staffer, Univision’s Jorge Ramos—and you schooled that radical activist,” she said. Ramos has won eight Emmy Awards for excellence in journalism.
“And it was the right thing to do because I don’t think he’s going to pull that again. Where’d you get your guts for that radical confrontation?” she asked.
Of course, when Jorge Ramos was forced out of Trump’s interview room earlier this week, he was immediately told to “get out of my country” by a Trump supporter. When the supporter was rebuffed by Ramos—who told him he was, in fact, a U.S. citizen—the heckler replied with, “Well, whatever.”
But that’s not the point! The point is the courage!
“Actually, the press—they agreed with what I did,” says Trump, for some reason not taking the outrage bait.
So Palin tried again.
“You get hit with these gotchas, like ‘What’s your favorite Bible verse?’” said Palin.
This week, after saying his favorite book was The Bible, Donald Trump didn’t or couldn’t name a verse from it when asked by a reporter for his go-to.
“I’m like, ‘Do they ask Hillary that?’” Palin asked.
Trump has a very reasonable explanation.
“You saw that. I love The Bible,” he says. “‘What’s your favorite verse?’ That’s a very personal thing. I don’t like giving that out. I love The Bible.”
Then, in the same breath, Trump alerted Palin as to how The Bible has helped him, a Presbyterian.
“In the last poll, I won everything, including the Evangelicals,” he says. “I’m big with the Evangelicals.”
The church in which Trump claims to be an active member has since contradicted him.
After hearing about Trump’s “tremendous standing ovations” once again, Palin had to let Trump go—remember, they had PSAs to play on this very serious news network—but she wanted to let him know one thing first.
“You are a terrific person, and it’s great to be with you,” she said, journalistically.
After the ad space rolled with no ads in it, Sarah Palin went on to commend Curt Schilling for comparing Muslims to Nazis.