An open letter to political
satirists everywhere*
It’s time to stop satirizing Donald J. Trump
By Randi Hacker
June 26, 2025
Dear Colleagues,
I have been writing political satire for a long time now. In fact, once, during Donald J. Trump’s first installation in the White House, I was labelled a danger to the country. So I don’t say this lightly.
It’s time to stop satirizing Donald J. Trump.
Three reasons:
- It’s so first-term, back when there was a better chance of getting him out of the White House. Now neither his mannerisms nor his incoherence nor his ignorance is funny. Nothing about Donald J. Trump is funny.
. - It’s redundant. Donald J. Trump is better than we are at satirizing himself. It’s hard to keep ahead of him. It’s not hard to imagine some poor political satirist pushing the outside of her artistic envelope, drawing Mt. Rushmore with Trump’s head added to the left of George Washington’s, only to find, before she could submit it anywhere, a news report about a Trump sycophant who proposed just that thing. This happens more often than you think.
. - It could give him ideas. Who among us has not considered that Trump’s wish to be pope came, in part, because he saw something like that posted somewhere on social media, either in mockery or adoration. What if, for argument’s sake, a political satirist created an invitation from Donald J. Trump to purchase a table at the dinner honoring him for naming himself the Chairman of the Board of The Kennedy Center for the Arts where the New MAGA Black-Face Minstrels would give a command performance of Negro spirituals and fieldhand songs, and it were to be published, and someone saw it, and Donald Trump decided that would be a great thing to do? What if that same political satirist created a series of Donald Trump Forever Me stamps, published them, and now waits every day to see if that has happened yet?
The mind reels.
Remember, my fellow political satirists, there was satire before Donald J. Trump, and a lot of it was really good. It’s all still out there, waiting for us – from the reliably satirizable human tropes of sex, love, religion, and relationships to more specific items such as the Abu Dhabi Disney theme park, that 4X4-truck of a grill – the Ninja Flex Flame, climate grief counselling, and the upcoming extinction. Oh. And academia. Especially academia. So many possibilities.
The mind reels. Only this time, in a good way.
* But mostly in America
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of WestmountMag.ca or its publishers.
Feature image: Mount Rushmore [thankfully without Donald Trump’s head], Winkelvi, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Randi Hacker has been a writer and editor since the 20th century, and she’s been writing about the environment for more than thirty years, mostly to empower young people to take agency in their future. Satirical essays written with a partner appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Punch and Spy, among other publications. Her YA novel, Life As I Knew It, (Simon & Schuster) was named one of the Books for the Teen Age by the NY Public Library, and her TV show, Windy Acres, written with Jay Craven, was nominated for a New England Emmy for Writing. She just retired from her position as the resolutions copy editor for the State of Vermont, a job that has forever damaged her relationship with the comma. randihacker.com
