By Hal Brown, International blogger
“Trump Says He Will Ban TikTok From The U.S. — The app’s China-based corporate ownership creates a security risk, administration officials say” reads the title of the first HuffPost article.
The second article’s title says it all: Critics Convinced Trump Wants TikTok Banned Because Sarah Cooper Is Driving Him Nuts — “Sarah Cooper is being mean to me! I don’t like it when girls are mean to me!” mocks one Twitter wag.
If you think the Lincoln Project is prompt to respond with their anti-Trump ads in a timely fashion they take a bit of time to construct, consider how Sarah Cooper is a one woman rapid response force to be reckoned with. If the Lincoln Project is an anti-Trump SWAT team, Sarah Cooper is Wonder Woman, who could run and fly incredibly fast with speeds reaching hypersonic levels around 3,806-7,680 mph.
If any single person has deservedly risen from relative obscurity to the heights of comedic fame thanks to Donald Trump it is Sarah Cooper. Tina Fey was famous before Sarah Palin and Alex Baldwin before Trump.
Cooper is the Charlie Chaplin or Mr. Bean of the Trump era. She has become a sensation without speaking a word. Unlike these icons of pantomime who used a lot of full body language (Chaplin’s famous walk, and Mr. Bean’s) she does it with facial expressions and upper body language.
Whether or not Trump can actually ban an app from the Internet in the United States remains to be seen. From what I read in another article this is an empty threat because a ban would only be symbolic since the apps can’t be automatically erased from devices where they are already downloaded. Besides she’s already posting her hilarious mockery on Twitter, InstaGram, her Facebook page, and on YouTube.
Sarah herself reminds us that she also posts her Trumpbits (Trump + bits) on Twitter with this classic which shortly after posting she had someone help add captions.
She has a website where you can see videos of her stand-up comedy shows and find links to articles about her. The most recent article came out in Vanity Fair last week.
Excerpt:
Cooper says she would never parody Trump’s cruelest remarks, like his implication that late representative John Dingell was “looking up” at him from hell (“Just evil,” she says, shaking her head), or his most poorly timed failures: “He messed up several words at a Memorial Day speech and people were like, ‘You should do that!’ But no. It’s still a sacred day.”
While amassing 1.5 million Twitter followers, Cooper has signed with talent agency WME and drawn fans like Halle Berry, Jerry Seinfeld, and news legend Dan Rather—who attributes her appeal, in part, to Trump fatigue. “You feel like you need to know what he’s saying and doing, [but] you’re sick of what he’s saying,” says Rather. “What she brings is something totally new and fresh. And it’s short.”
With a never-ending stream of terrible Trump quotes, Cooper could lip-synch for years to come. But instead, she’s hoping to branch out into television. She’s currently writing and pitching a show about an overly confident boss who “fucks up all over the place and still somehow fails up.” Who could possibly have inspired that?
Very few stand-up comedians, even those who get their shows on streaming video, make the Seinfeldian jump from stand-up to having their own sitcom. If you wonder about her having writing chops watch the stand-up video. If I had to bet I’d put my money on Sarah Cooper.
Trump is the master of blustering impossible to implement threats. The more significant one is his blabbering about postponing the election. This has prompted a lot of legal blowback and and talk show hysteria. However this impossible threat to undermine the Constitution hasn’t provided a publicity boost to comedian who has become on of his most popular critics.
If you think the Lincoln Project is prompt to respond with their anti-Trump ads in a timely fashion they take a bit of time to construct, consider how Sarah Cooper is a one woman rapid response force to be reckoned with. If the Lincoln Project is an anti-Trump SWAT team*, Sarah Cooper is Wonder Woman who can run and fly incredibly fast with speeds reaching hypersonic levels.
I expect if she came face to face with Trump and he tried to browbeat or intimidate her with threats she might say something along the lines of “you want to start a social media war with me, bring it on!” More likely she’d pantomime back his words as they came out of his mouth. Now, this is something I would pay to see.
Afterthought: I just realized this could stand for Super Wonks Anti-Trump team.