Has Trump Seen Jared Naked?

Today we’re talking about Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, and more.

I didn’t actually really know what “Funbag” was until Barry asked me to do this. I still don’t really know what “Jamboroo” is, and it’s unclear to me why these aren’t the same thing. Still, I tried not to pick all Trump questions and even considered picking a sports question just to shake things up, but I got bored halfway through all of them.

But this is the Feinbag—not the Funbag. And in this house, we talk about Don Jr., pooping, and Under the Dome. Also the way Deadspin normally formats this is awful, so I’m fixing it. [Ed. note: I fixed it back.]

John:

Has Trump ever seen Jared naked? If yes, was it just a peek while getting changed at a golf course clubhouse, or something else? Please answer in the form of a list organized by likelihood.

This is a phenomenal question, and one I had genuinely never considered before. My instinct was to say yes, because that’s obviously the funniest answer, but let’s consider what we’re dealing with here.

1) Trump moves around as little as possible. He’s not going around busting down doors, bounding around a vacation home or clubhouse looking for Jar-bear. Jar-bear comes to him.

2) Any opportunities Trump might have to stumble upon Jared in a state of undress are already pretty limited.

2a) Unless, of course, Jared fully undresses every single time he has to use the bathroom, which I can not in good conscience discount.

3) Ivanka almost certainly exercises total control over when Jared is and is not allowed to undress. And it’s hard to imagine that she lets him undress anywhere that isn’t a small, enclosed space capable of being locked.

4) When Jared does finally undress, he looks like this.

All this considered, I’m afraid we must conclude that Donald Trump has not, in fact, seen Jared Kushner naked. But then again, in a way, haven’t we all?

Brett:

What is the saddest Donald Jr tweet?

There are obviously a lot of contenders here, but the first thing that came to mind was this:

This is Donald Trump Jr.’s favorite piece of campaign memorabilia from his father’s run for president. As you can see, the date in the upper right-hand corner appears to have been typed using a default font, meaning there are two possible scenarios for what happened here.

The first: Don Jr. scanned this image on the election’s one year anniversary specifically so that he could put the original date his dad signed it in the corner, so we would all know that, one year ago today, Don Jr.’s father said to him, “Thanks.”

The second: On election night, Don Jr. himself found an image of the electoral map online, opened PowerPoint, added the date, printed it out himself, and walked over to his father to say, “Hey, Dad, can you please sign this piece of paper I just printed?” At which point Donald Trump grabs the paper, writes “thanks,” and hands it back to his son without ever making eye contact. This is the closest Don Jr. has ever come to hearing the words “I love you” escape his father’s mouth. He weeps.

Both scenarios are absolutely devastating. I love this tweet.

Richard:

So, we know Tom Brady loves kissing his kids constantly and it got me to thinking: Ivanka aside, has Trump ever kissed one of his kids? Like even as a baby? Bonus question: how old was Barron the first time Trump saw him?

Richard, my man, where you been?

As for the second question, it’s still unclear whether Trump actually knows who Barron is.

John:

Are people who live in New York City required by law to tweet about certain things? For example: the subway (which is always late) being late, the temperature being below 35°F, Slack being down, etc.

Fuck you, John.

Michael:

As the internet’s foremost pee tape expert I was wondering if you could describe how you think the aftermath of the pee tape being released (I assume by you). What stupid thing would Cillizza say? How would Jake Tapper “both sides” it? In what way would anything or nothing change?

God, just thinking about the pee tape response is already making me irrationally upset. For the sake of argument, let’s just go ahead and pretend the pee tape release is an inevitability (it is).

The first issue is going to be whether or not outlets show clips, or even just stills. After the initial shock of everyone realizing that I have been right for years and no one should ever doubt me again wears off, we are going to have about a week’s worth of debates about Decency and Respectability. Not as it relates to the president, mind you, but the people reporting on the president. What was BuzzFeed thinking when they posted a gif of two blurry figures squatting over a bed in a dimly lit room? Will this be the final straw for the horny nerds of Deadspin, which posted entire clips of our large, gibbering president making sounds approximating laughter while directing the women exactly where to urinate with the grace of a seasoned conductor? How can any of them even be sure of what’s happening in this video that clearly depicts exactly what’s happening?

Jake Tapper will assemble a panel of scolds to tell us that the details of the tape are not what’s important. Brian Stelter will pose a string of godawful questions on Twitter, only to feign ignorance when people yell at him for asking if Americans are merely engaging in kink-shaming. After all, is it not his job to spark debate? Are you really contributing to a healthy discourse when you incorrectly refer to him as “Stian Brelter?” Chris Cillizza will tweet “WOWZA” approximately 231 times in a period of two days before before getting shamed off Twitter for accidentally posting close crops of the sex workers’ feet.

As for what it will change, my honest inclination is that the answer is nothing. This is probably a little bit of self-preservation on my part, as I’ve found that it’s best to keep your expectations as low as humanly possible. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

HALFTIME!

Kelly:

Why does Trump say “the democrat party” and not “the Democratic Party”? Is it some kind of crooked Hillary-Esque branding? Is his brain just too addled to know how adjectives work? Is my brain just too addled from all the Twitter? Please help me. I don’t know why it bothers me.

You’re not insane! The fact that it bothers you is pretty much exactly the reason why they do it.

I should first disclose that I can’t remember exactly where I learned this—I want to say Alex Pareene told me, but honestly it could have been anyone. Allegedly, though, it stems from a conservative desire to avoid implying that Democrats are the singular party of democratic ideals. In the ‘80s, our boy William Safire wrote:

Why, Republicans asked for years, should we allow the Democrats to get away with the adjective “democratic”? As a result, partisan Republicans, especially those who had been head of the Republican National Committee, called the opposition “the Democrat party.”

But then, no one really believes they give a shit about that. They do it because it’s annoying as hell and they can. It’s not a coincidence that it’s consistently used by the biggest assholes around. Newt Gingrich, Joseph McCarthy, Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, all these idiots default(ed) to saying “Democrat Party” (often emphasizing the “rat” at the end) because they can plausibly claim that they didn’t mean anything by it, and because it also acts as a convenient bat signal for other like-minded assholes. But more important than anything else, it pisses off the libs. And isn’t that really what politics is all about?

Randy:

I recently split my pants at the ass/crotch. My underwear was visible in almost any way I sit or stand; I went home to change and came back. In talking to other friends with similar scenarios, almost all of them had to stay at work and weren’t allowed to go home to get a new outfit. What should the minimum offense be for an employee to go back home when an item of clothing is unwearable?

Here’s a story for you, Randy. When I was younger, I had a debilitating fear of asking to go to the bathroom. (This was not some sort of late-stage failure to potty train thing. In fact, I was potty-trained at an exceptionally young age. According to my mother, when I was one year and 11 months, any time I would soil myself I would find the nearest adult and demand to be changed, because I am civilized and not an animal. Upon realizing I just wanted to use the toilet, they showed me how and I never looked at back. But that’s neither here or there.)

Anyway, I found asking to go the bathroom to be profoundly embarrassing, so I would wait for as long as humanly possible, often to disastrous results. Once when I was, I believe, seven, I really, really had to poop. I did not want to raise my hand and ask the teacher to use the restroom, so I tried to hold it. I can’t remember how long I tried, or how urgent the situation was, but it must have been pretty bad, because I do remember sitting on my chair, pooping, and just kind of hoping that no one would notice. I was wearing shorts, and people noticed. I vaguely remember my teacher asking me if I needed to go to the bathroom (there was poop on the floor below me). I am pretty sure that I said no, I was fine, and continued staring straight ahead. The teacher eventually took me into her office, where she kept a change of clothes for just such an occasion (side note: at the time, when she said that, I thought she meant that she kept a change of clothes in case she herself ever pooped her pants, but as I type this, I am realizing that was probably not the case). While my clothes were clean, I still smelled very much like I had pooped my pants, because I had. I remained at school for the rest of the day.

Unless you shit yourself, and have no other clothes to change into, I say you ride that sucker out.

Will:

What if the dome from under the dome took over Davos when all the billionaires were there?

Will, thank you for asking a question about the single greatest television adaptation of our time. I would like to be able to tell you that the reason I love Under the Dome so much is because I was a fan of the book, but I never actually read the book. The acting is godawful, the plot is a nightmare, there’s an egg that fucking everybody wants to get their hands on, and it’s perfect. I love it.

One of many great things about living life under the dome, is it that it brings out the very worst in you. For Junior that means you get all murdery, and for the billionaires of Davos, that would almost certainly mean trying to revive slavery. It’s hard to imagine Peter Thiel, for instance, finding himself stuck under the dome with a exactly one half of a cow and not forcing young Joe McAlister into a cage to live a life as Thiel’s personal blood bag. Howard Schultz would begin by paying the townspeople in coffee in exchange for their service constructing a replica of Apollo’s chariot, only to slowly lower their bean allotment to nothing as he binds them in service to him, forcing them to pull his new chariot as makeshift horses. Schultz will then ride around the dome in his search for the egg for the entire three seasons. They eventually start eating each other, more out of sport than hunger.

David:

I’ve noticed you have an affinity for bad awkward great photos of some of America’s best politicians. Which one is your favorite? Least favorite? Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

It is, without question, this:

Look at all that glistening skin.

William:

Ashley, what’s your take on Bidets? Can I have one? What’s with the STIGMA? Is BIG TP to blame?

Here’s another nightmare story from my youth. When I was little—younger than the pooping incident, maybe three or four—my mom and dad had a water fountain in their bathroom. It was very cool and exciting because none of my friends’ parents had water fountains in their bathrooms. Tragically, this was all taken away from me the day my mother explained what a bidet is.

I blame the bidet stigma on my mother, but also a general fear and distrust of Europeans. I think they seem nice, but am still probably too scarred from my prior experience with them to ever fully embrace the bidet lifestyle. My own failings aside, I fully encourage you and everyone else to do so.

Email of the week!

Absolutely stunning.