Comedian John Mulaney has a compelling theory on how Donald Trump has maintained his success in the presidential race.
“What’s weird to me is that the success kind of continues for him,” Mulaney told Seth Meyers on his talk show Wednesday night. “But I realized something as to what might be causing that.”
The former “Saturday Night Live” writer compared the entire Republican presidential field to a round of “Family Feud,” a game show that requires contestants to name the answers to survey questions. He said he watches back-to-back “Family Feud” episodes every day, and he noticed a psychological effect that can be applied to how the candidates’ performances have been perceived in the four GOP debates.
“You actually start to feel smart,” Mulaney said of his excessive “Family Feud” viewing. “Because you feel smarter than the people on ‘Family Feud.’ But once your bar for intelligence becomes the people on ‘Family Feud,’ two things happen. One: You become very, very dumb. Secondly, you start to think the people who are good on ‘Family Feud’ are smart.”
Then he connected the analogy to Trump, who currently sits at fourth on the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings.
“That’s what happened with Donald Trump,” he said. “He’s not good at running for president, he’s just good at ‘Family Feud.’ And these other people are terrible at ‘Family Feud.’ So when the Steve Harvey of this election is like, ‘Name something that’s bothering Americans,’ and Ted Cruz is like, ‘Benghazi,’ then Trump is like, ‘All the problems,’ and that’s the No. 1 answer on the board. So he’s pretty good at it.”
Mulaney also busted out a joke from 2007 he used to tell about the way Trump carries himself.
“To me, Trump is not a rich man,” he said. “Donald Trump is like what a hobo imagines a rich man to be. Like, Trump was walking around under an underpass and he heard some guy like, ‘Ah, as soon as my number comes in, I’m going to put up tall buildings with my name on them. I’ll have fine golden hair and a TV show where I can fire Gene Simmons with my children.’ And Trump said, ‘That’s how I want to live the rest of my life.'”
