"Ladies and gentlemen, the 45th (and final) President of the United States!"
"I'm the president! Can you believe it? Let's roll!"
The President Show is a series on Comedy Central, created by Anthony Atamanuik. Its first season consisted of twenty-one episodes from April 27, 2017, to November 2, 2017, with an hour-long Christmas Special on November 30. There is no indication of a second season coming, though there was a fake Telethon and a Mockumentary special the following year.
It is presented as a talk show hosted by President Donald Trump (played by Atamanuik), with Vice President Mike Pence (played by Peter Grosz) as his co-star. Most episodes follow a similar format: an opening press conference, banter with Pence (and sometimes other White House staff) about recent news, a skit, an interview with a guest at Mar-A-Lago, and a closing address. Additionally, each episode has its own "theme" chosen by Trump.
Several sketches are available to watch for free because they get posted on Comedy Central's website and on their YouTube channel, while the talk show bits do not get posted.
The President Show contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Trump tries to be as difficult and aggressive of a father towards Don Jr. as possible to scare him away. It doesn't really work, it only encourages Don Jr. to keep annoying his dad.
- Adventures in Comaland: Used in "Escape", as everything following Trump driving into the ocean takes place in his head.
- Artistic License – History: In the Christmas special, it was said that Trump gained a million-dollar loan from his late father Fred which is how he got wealthy. In reality, Trump borrowed at least $60 million from his father.
- Attention Whore: Trump gets mad that Santa Claus is getting all the children's attention at the mall. Trump then declares, "I'm the only big fat red guy that gets attention around here!"
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Happens in the telethon special, in which Trump is confronted by a phantom of Robert Mueller.
- Big Eater: Trump genuinely loves food up to the point he's overweight. In one sketch, Pence tells guest interviewees that he secretly makes sure Trump doesn't overeat ("No, there's no more ice cream in the freezer" and "No, this is actually the 3rd burrito you've had" even though it was only his second).
- Bookends:
- The first and last (pre-Xmas) episode of Season 1 has Trump describe himself as "just a sad, lonely man, who's in way over his head". They both also feature Keith Olbermann, a critic of Trump in real life, as a guest.
- In the Mockumentary, the final scene is a video Trump recorded to air after his death, which ends with a variation on every episode's opening and closing lines.
"I was the president. Can you believe it? ...Bye-bye." - Butt-Monkey: Mike Pence is always getting abused in many ways by Trump. Could double as a Take That! towards the real life Pence for agreeing to be Vice President to a childish, selfish megalomaniac.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Don Jr. shows up in the sketch "Executive Order: A Little Less Transparency" just to embarrass his dad for making poor decisions as president and complaining that his dad's health care bill is horrendous.
- Casanova Wannabe: Donald Trump Jr. in the Telethon special, which takes place after his real-life counterpart's divorce; he volunteered to be a phone operator just to flirt with the callers.
- The Chains of Commanding: When Trump isn't using his position to fuel his ego, he's bemoaning the amount of responsibility being President holds.
- Chekhov's Gunman: In the Telethon special, the random Trump supporter volunteering on the phones is an undercover FBI Agent there to catch Trump before he runs off with all of the raised cash. The special ends with the FBI rounding up the entire cast (with the possible exception of Kellyanne Conway, who's narrating the event as it happens).
- Christmas Special: "I Came Up With Christmas: A President Show Christmas", an hour-long special that aired following the first season.
- Cliffhanger: The Season Finale, "Escape", ends with a "To Be Continued" after the whole episode focuses on Trump's thoughts while drowning.
- Clip Show: "A Nation In Pieces", airing near the end of Season 1.
- Cloudcuckoolander:
- Steve Bannon's appearances always lead to him Suddenly Shouting very questionable things.
- Trump might be this too, if not just a very childish and idiotic misogynist and xenophobe.
- Comically Missing the Point: Trump often does this. For example, when Andrew Jackson keeps trying to lecture Trump that he wasn't involved in The American Civil War.Trump: I told everybody that you would have prevented the Civil War!Jackson: No, Mr. President. I didn't fight in the Civil War. I fought in the War of 1812.Trump: 18 to 12, the forbidden years.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Steve Bannon, who spews wild conspiracies over the U.S. government being infested with witches or albino pelican people about to rise from Atlantis and take over the world. Trump actually agrees with Bannon about the pelican people.
- Consummate Liar: The portrayal of Kellyanne Conway, to the point that her special talent during the Telethon special episode is making anyone and anything sound positive.
- Death Seeker: Trump once mentions a fantasy which starts with him getting to drive a great big truck, and ends with him purposely driving into the ocean. He gets his wish in "Escape", though he doesn't immediately die.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: After reviving Andrew Jackson by pulling him out of a painting in the White House, Trump is asked of Jackson about whether America is still enslaving blacks and battling Indian tribes. Trump denies neither still exist, but adds that he signed the Keystone Pipeline which decimated Indian reservations and in modern day America, black people are being incarcerated at a high rate and forced to work for no pay in prison. Jackson comments he's impressed by how similar this is to what happened during his presidency.
- Dissonant Laughter: Don Jr. is laughing his head off in every scene he appears. It's possible he could be a katagelasticist.
- Dragon with an Agenda: Pence, when out-of-sight from Trump, has mentioned that he's just biding his time and trying to seem non-threatening until Trump's inevitable impeachment, so that he can take over as President.
- Elvis Impersonator: Trump's musical number "Porn Star" and fashion attire in the Make America Great A-thon special parody Elvis.
- Five Stages of Grief: Trump goes through this in the "It's A Tremendous Life" segment of the Christmas special that Bernie Sanders put him through in which he is in a parallel universe where his father wasn't rich, and so Trump is reduced to an unemployed con man who steals coins from street services such as public phones:
- Denial: The real Trump keeps denying to Bernie that he would've failed without his father's money.
- Bargaining: He tries peddling trips to Mar-A-Lago Resort to New York civilians walking by.
- Anger: He gets furious over his lack of business over selling trips to Mar-A-Lago Resort, then gets denigrated by both his landlord and his wife Ivana for being too broke to pay rent and utilities, which only makes him angrier and he resorts to shouting out his window.
- Acceptance: He gleefully goes on a rampage through the streets causing crimes and freely stealing money. But this doesn't last long and he gets caught by the police.
- Depression: He starts bawling after the police arrest him for flirting with teenage girls.
- For Want Of A Nail: In the Mockumentary, set in the future, the series of events that leads to Trump being removed from office and committed to a seniors center all starts with a victory for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
- The Fundamentalist: Pence tries to push Christian fundamentalist beliefs whenever he can especially on people who aren't devout Christian conservatives like he is, such as little kids at the mall.
- Genius Ditz: Trump; sometimes he's ignorant of the consequences of his actions, but other times he's fully aware and simply doesn't care about anyone else.
- Gladiator Games: Trump orders Pence and Bannon to fight each other for his own amusement. Although it seemed that it was going to happen anyways without Trump asking for it cause Bannon kept egging on Pence.
- Greater-Scope Villain: You can interpret that Vladimir Putin is this to The President Show, since (in the context of the show's setting) he's the reason Donald Trump became President of the United States after rigging the election.
- Homoerotic Subtext: Trump performs some suggestive actions with Anthony Scaramucci (played by Mario Cantone) during the latter's brief time working in the Oval Office. Scaramucci's last appearance even ends with him and Trump making out.
- Hurricane of Puns: In the Make America Great A-thon special, Trump claims he has Russian contacts (eye contacts to be precise) and that his contacts help him evade tacks on the floor and chop down trees, so therefore he does "tacks evasion" and "tree-sin".
- Hypocrite:
- Trump complains about American jobs getting outsourced to foreign producers, but it turns out a lot of his merchandising is also produced overseas.
- Don Jr also calls his sister Ivanka one for speaking out against sexual harassment but then endorsing her own father, whom Don Jr. says is guilty of said crimes.
- Ignored Epiphany: After Trump confronts his true self in "Intelligence".
- Insult Backfire: The episode "Flag" ends with Trump and Pence dressed as superheroes, but Pence flubs his line; Trump's exasperated "Jesus, Mike!" is then seen by Pence as an even better name for his super-self.
- It's All About Me: A key part of Trump's character, and why he's hosting his own talk show while already being President.
- Jerkass Has a Point: In the gun debate part of the Make America Great A-thon, Trump admits that he wants to win over both the college students supporting gun control and the NRA gun rights advocates. While of course being afflicted by short attention span and not focusing on addressing the gun issue (only caring about getting approval from both of them), when both sides finally meet each other Trump admits that he can't be the solution to everyone's problems and so he lets the two sides amiably ruminate over solutions of their own.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: The result of guided meditation in the episode "Intelligence". "Escape" also has him conversing with his own psyche (played by Lewis Black) during his Adventures in Comaland.
- Literal-Minded: Trump seems to display signs of being this.Reporter 1: Sir, the House is talking impeachment.Trump: Houses don't talk, you dummy.
- Lured into a Trap: In the "Mullerman" sketch, Robert Mueller lured in Donald Trump and his staff to him by putting up a highway sign that says "Donald J. Trump State Park" into an empty forest while they were going to a donor party. Only Trump overlooks the fact that this so-called state park was never on the map. Although Pence and the rest of his staff advised against it, Trump insisted they go anyways.
- Mad Libs Catchphrase: Trump's "I'm the president! Can you believe it? Let's roll!" is slightly different every episode, generally replacing one word (like the "believe") with the title of the episode, or in the Twilight Zone-themed episode, being said by the Rod Serling-like presenter rather than Trump.
- Manchild: Trump is indubitably on the same brain level as children, except he has worse temper and is more aggressive than most children. He is so childish that Mike Pence clearly "fathers" him and Trump doesn't notice it. For example in the "Deck the Malls" sketch when Trump is getting tired of walking around the shopping mall:Trump: When do we get to Cinnabon, Mike?Pence: At the end. You have to do a full work-out to get your treat.
- Mental World: A reoccurring segment is Trump retreating to his own Land of Fake Believe, home of characters such as The Forgotten Manatee and the hero Scape-Goat, to avoid dealing with his real-world problems.
- Mistaken for Badass: Trump keeps erroneously calling Andrew Jackson a war hero who triumphantly led the United States out of the Civil War, which is completely inaccurate and Jackson asserts he died before the Civil War ever happened, owned hundreds of slaves and massacred/expelled entire Indian tribes.
- Mockumentary: "A President Show Documentary: The Fall of Donald Trump", first airing before the 2018 midterm elections. Set in the year 2030, it covers Trump becoming both the Republican and Democratic nominee in 2020, losing the election to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, having to be forcibly removed from the White House after refusing to step down, attempting to return to television, and vanishing from the public eye after being committed to the senior center that Mar-A-Largo gets converted into, all while his former council make new lives for themselves (literally, in the case of Mike/"Richard" Pence).
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: Towards the end of the Telethon special episode, a frustrated Trump starts ranting in German about how the FBI investigation is ruining his grand vision, and Kellyanne Conway briefly refers to him as "mein Fuhrer".
- Nightmare Sequence: In the Christmas special, Bernie Sanders forces Trump to see an alternate reality of himself in which his father was never rich and so never gave Donald that famous $1 million loan. Donald is now a broke and petty coin thief in his 70s. And because most people these days have cell phones, guess how much luck he's had robbing public telephones.
- No Indoor Voice: Having a childish personality, Trump tends to scream a lot.
- One Degree of Separation: A segment in "Escape" has Trump attempt to connect all of his problems to Hillary Rodham Clinton in a Six Degrees format.
- Parental Incest: Trump has very strong, sexual feelings towards his daughter Ivanka.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Trump. For example, during the Christmas Episode, he claims that the only holidays before it were Kwanzaa and Toyotathon (which is a vehicle sale).
- Product Placement: The Christmas Episode is brought to you by coal. Coal:
One of the good blacks. - Red Oni, Blue Oni: The impulsive, short-tempered Trump is the Red, and the even-tempered Straight Man Pence is the Blue. Their ties, coincidentally, match their colors. Bernie Sanders sometimes guest stars as another Blue Oni.
- Saying Too Much: Don Jr. tends to speak the truth far more often than President Trump would prefer.
- Shout-Out: Many of the show's gags are based on other media, such as...
- "Mothers": Trump being haunted by, and then dressing as, his mother.
- "Flag": Trump convinces himself that Brad Sherman is a time-traveling robot named The Sherminator.
- "Fear": The opening and closing are based on The Twilight Zone, and there's a found-footage encounter with The Mullerman.
- The rant described in A Nazi by Any Other Name is an Affectionate Parody of the Hitler Rants.
- The Sociopath: Trump has shades of this, usually in the closing addresses when he acknowledges how his actions are hurting America.
- Spoiled Brat: Trump obviously, even calling the White House "a real dump" when most Americans (including his own supporters) will never get to afford to live somewhere as big or fancy as the White House.
- Spontaneous Choreography: The halfway point of the Christmas Episode is marked by Trump and a reporter (played by Bebe Neuwirth) breaking into a song-and-dance number about their symbiotic relationship.
- Straight Man and Wise Guy: Pence and Trump, respectively.
- Straw Hypocrite: Don Jr. jokingly calls his sister Ivanka one for denouncing sexual harassment but endorsing their father, who Don Jr. designates the "President of Sexual Harassment".
- Straw Misogynist:
- Trump seems to hate women, not just Hillary Clinton. He complains they ruin everything from Ghostbusters to his health care bill and his son Don Jr. pointed out that he hates any woman who won't sleep with him or who isn't very attractive.
- Pence hinted he might have misogynist feelings by complaining he stopped watching The Devil Wears Prada once he realized the protagonist is female.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: When General Kelly comes looking for Anthony Scaramucci, Trump hides Anthony behind merely his own back and tells Kelly, "No, we don't know where Mooch is or what couch he lives in!"
- Telethon: The format of a special, "Make America Great A-thon". What they're actually funding money for, however, changes with Trump's whims.
- Token White: While playing charades with Trump, Scaramucci and Pence, Bannon has to make out "Justice Department Fights for White College Applicants".
- Two-Timer Date: One segment of the Telethon special episode has Trump doing this with teens wanting better gun control, and adults wanting to keep their guns; they turn out to be willing to compromise with each other once Trump leaves.
- Villain Protagonist: Isn't it obvious?
- Visual Pun: The Russian "ties" Trump allegedly has.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Don Jr. knows he's not his father's favorite child, but still tries to make him proud.
- Yes-Man: Pence is usually this to Trump, but he often does try to fight off Trump's abuse.
"Bye-bye!"
