Trump as a Roast Battle and Comparing Him to H.H. Holmes

• 34:11Tim does edgy jokes about bullying in a French Canadian city and gets laughs despite the audience likely not being Trump voters.
• 34:30People defined by being anti-politically correct are as insane as the PC crowd, and the most vapid want to get laughs by being racist rather than funny.
• 34:52This election has become tabloid junk fodder, removing the burden of understanding how government, institutions, and entrenched interests actually work.
• 35:24The 2024 election is literally a roast battle, and people who don't understand it think the president can just wave a wand and change the country.
• 35:47Obama kept dropping drones everywhere despite his pre-presidency writings suggesting he was skeptical of using military force to solve problems.
• 36:32America has a $2 trillion war machine and a financial services industry consolidated on the East Coast that you can't just regulate without working with people.
• 37:00Bill Burr nailed it: Trump is a billionaire guy who lives on top of a building, and that's how he talks.
• 37:44Unlike Rockefeller or Carnegie, Trump has a distinctly new money, garish 1980s quality—the Greed Is Good, Gordon Gekko ethos.
• 38:47Trump is a stick-and-move hustler who franchises his name on buildings worldwide and has a documented pattern of not paying subcontractors.
• 39:29That evasion tactic Trump used—finding bullshit reasons not to pay contractors—is exactly what H.H. Holmes, the first serial killer, used to avoid his debts.
• 40:02H.H. Holmes built a murder mansion for the Chicago World's Fair with hallways leading nowhere, torture chambers in the basement, and trap doors in various rooms.
• 40:59Trump's brilliance is that he's a crony exposing cronyism, and the idea of him coming out saying 'I played the game, this is how it's played' is interesting because nobody else has really done that.
• 41:23American elections traffic in false narratives between opposing pairs—mommy and daddy, pull yourself up by bootstraps, tough on crime versus compassion—with meta-narratives underneath.

Bill BurrH.H. HolmesThe Devil and the White City