-What I get out of satire
is kind of getting my political rocks off.
It's interesting to think of Trump as my collaborator.
Trumpty Dumpty wanted a crown.
Certainly, he is the one who's given me my best material.
He wanted a robe made of ermine and velvet.
The Constitution, he wanted to shelve it.
I don't know.
We're hardly a comedy duo.
I was asked to perform at a New York public theater gala,
and I did a parody of Gilbert and Sullivan's
"I am the very model of a modern major-general."
Only I sang it in full Michael T.
Flynn costume and makeup, and I sang,
"I am the very model of an ex-lieutenant general."
And I rewrote the third verse to sing things like,
"When President Obama made me head of all things clandestine,
he realized he brought to life a governmental Frankenstein,
but then I made a killing in a case
of public pillory by shouting,
'Lock her up,' in my harangue opposing Hillary,"
you know, et cetera.
And a year passed, and my literary agent said,
"John, it's high time you wrote something,"
and I had no idea what I would write,
but it suddenly occurred to me
to sing my song to my literary agent,
and his voice literally lit up in front of me,
and he said, "There's your book."
And that's how I became a political satirical versifier.
I was able to address my political outrage and anxiety,
but I did have an anxiety about it.
I mean, the whole phenomenon of Donald Trump,
one very upsetting thing about it
is half the country disagrees with me.
Or not quite half, thank God.
But that's the satirist's job to go ahead
and express that feeling.
In my editorial in the Post, I call it
"the satirist's dilemma."
Number one, you're only preaching to the converted.
The only people interested in my book
are people who agree with me.
Number two, it doesn't change anybody's mind
as a consequence of that,
and that is simply a depressing fact.
But this is an era of depression on so many levels.
I really did think people needed something
that would both cheer them up
and get their political rocks off to.
I am a storyteller for a living.
Pretty much everything I do is a fiction.
I act in movies and plays and television shows.
I am in the business of pretense, pretend.
Basically, I lie for a living.
But I'm also in the empathy business.
I try to get inside people's minds and souls,
try to figure out what drives them.
And this, which is a completely new adventure for me,
I'm trying to get into the minds and souls of political people,
including the one political person
who's created the current culture,
which, to me, is a very dark and feverish and hateful culture.
On the other hand, just the way I'm entertaining
when I play a villain in "Dexter,"
I'm entertaining by writing about the despotic age
of Donald Trump.
It was overwhelmingly important to write
about the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.
And the fact that everybody knows who was behind it
and yet, clearly, this person will get away with murder,
I mean, that was an essential thing.
You couldn't ignore that.
And yet how do you write satire about such a thing?
And it was a very difficult poem to write.
I really wanted to write it,
and yet it was just too difficult.
And it's interesting.
I solved it with a decision about the rhyme structure.
Instead of the long metric line
and trying to really grapple seriously
with what had happened,
I reduced it to a very short, almost nursery rhyme line.
It became like a Mother Goose poem.
"Jared and Mohammed were very blah, blah, blah.
Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee."
A kind of daffy little nursery rhyme.
The more appalling the events were,
the more it needed to be completely stupid, you know?
And I made it about Jared and bin Salman,
for participating in the exoneration
of Mohammed bin Salman
for murdering a green-card carrying American journalist.
It's just mind-boggling.
And I just couldn't let that go.
I just had to write something about it,
and, by God, I was able to do it.
Hell, I was able to write a long poem about the coronavirus.
A pandemic's a terrible thing to waste.
-"For a desperate POTUS impeached and disgraced,
a pandemic's a terrible thing to waste.
Hence, with markets a-bust and the virus let loose,
Dumpty put COVID-19 to good use."
-"With the country in quarantine, fretful and nervous,
he decided to hit the intelligence service."
It was a really interesting challenge,
and it took a lot of nerve to do it.
But, ultimately, I think those are the most successful poems
because they're the most terrifying,
and sometimes the most mean.
It really made me mean.
Not to get too new-worldy, I'm a Libra.
My problem in life is I always see the other point of view,
but that helps you out as an actor.
It helps you understand people
or at least be curious about other people.
It makes it a lot more interesting to play villains
to get on their side
and to try to understand them, see how they think.
Often understand that they do what they do
'cause they're in the grips of a compulsion,
and very often, they don't want to have that compulsion.
They consider it the worst thing they have to live with.
I think that's true of Trump.
If you read my poems carefully with this in mind,
you'll see I have a degree of empathy with him.
I mean, I can't stand the man, politically,
but I do sympathize with him.
Not sympathize, but I pity him.
I feel he's a very troubled man.
He would hate to hear that,
but I think he's deeply insecure.
I mean, it's quite obvious to me.
I wrote yet another editorial for the New York Times
about a year ago at this time,
and it was all about what a terrible entertainer he was.
"Speaking as a professional entertainer," I said,
"I have to say Donald Trump is a terrible entertainer."
I was completely wrong.
He sends an audience to the moon.
He gets a bigger response than I have ever gotten on any stage,
so I have to admit, even though it appalls me,
he is a great entertainer.
But, I mean, I hate to use the word, but so was Hitler.
So was Mussolini.
All tyrants have a way
of captivating the population of their nation
until they all turn on them,
until the scales fall from their eyes.
It's like Winston Churchill says,
"Be very careful when you ride the tiger.
Be careful what happens when you get off."