Every time I promise myself that I'm not going to pay attention to Donald Trump anymore, he goes and does something that I can't ignore. The newest thing to throw me off my game is the recent revelation that Trump will be going on Jimmy Kimmel Live the week of Oct. 19, when Kimmel is returning to Brooklyn for five shows from the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House. Wait, really, Trump? Kimmel isn't by any means a softball interviewer guaranteed to toss you questions that will help your campaign, in fact, he actually has kind of a history of teasing his guests. Right off the top of my head I can think of his long-running joke at Matt Damon's expense and the amount of times he's reused the hashtag #NODISRESPECTTOBENAFFLECK from when Kanye West went off at Kimmel on Twitter after an appearance on his show.
If that's an environment that Trump is willing to insert himself into, does that mean he's in on the joke? I'm starting to feel like that's the only answer that really fits. Sure, you could make the case that there's no such thing as bad publicity, and that Trump is just trying to get his face on every media outlet within reach, and you wouldn't be wrong, but I think there's more to it than that. After all, Trump was recently announced as the host for the Nov. 7 episode of Saturday Night Live, a show where it's virtually guaranteed that he's going to have to poke fun at himself, and was surprisingly game to do to the same thing on a recent appearance on Stephen Colbert's Late Show, where Trump used humor to avoid answering the tough questions.
It's a pretty solid strategy, honestly, because if Trump is laughing with us, he makes it all but impossible to laugh at him. So in between moment in which you're rolling your eyes at this dude, make sure you also set some time aside to take him seriously as a candidate — I have a feeling that's exactly what he doesn't want.
