Republican strategist and strange person Frank Luntz was on CNBC’s Squawk Box with Andrew Ross Sorkin and Joe Kernen. Squawk Box is the business show where Sorkin represents the liberal point of view, while Kernen represents the conservative point of view. In reality, there is not much of a difference between the two except for maybe a few degrees difference in how much bulllshit they are willing to sling out to the public. That and Sorkin is clearly a younger man than Kernen.
Luntz was brought onto the show to give his opinions on Joe Biden’s announcement that Kamala Harris will be his running mate against Donald Trump this November. Luntz did what he always does: blather away, telling jokes your grandfather might have found funny in 1974, while making you stare at him and wonder: “What the hell is wrong with this guy, exactly?” Now during the entire segment—one that included a lot of footage of Kamala and Joe—every time they cut back to Luntz, there was something strange about the background of his video feed. Something off-putting and strange. As the segment wound up, Kernen decided to ask Luntz about his work-from-home office, and that’s when things went from the usually strange Luntz television appearance to truly bizarre.
Frank Luntz seemed to be sitting in both the Lincoln Room and the Oval Office of the White House. If you take dramamine for nausea, you might want to pop a few right now.
JOE KERNEN: So, Frank, what am I looking at? You seem very presidential today. Where are you?
FRANK LUNTZ: This is not a photograph—this is actually my home in California. This is a 78% replica of the Oval Office and over here … turn this around ... This is the Lincoln Bedroom.
This led to not one but three jokes about former President Bill Clinton having sexual relations with then-intern Monica Lewinski.
LUNTZ: So I'm the only person who has an Oval Office that you can actually sleep in and you don't have to be a presidential intern.
Get it? I’ll wait for you to stop laughing. Anythewhos, Sorkin then chimes in to voice his playful disbelief at this unhinged living situation, so Luntz takes everyone on a tour of his Oval Office, which even includes “the humidor from Bill Clinton.” Get it? I’ll let the laughing die down again.
As disturbing and bizarre as all of this is, the aspect that turns it into huckster grotesquery is at the end when Luntz, smiling and clearly not joking, excitedly tells both hosts that “you have now made this a tax deduction. It cost almost a million to build and now I can take it off my taxes because I can say I used it for a CNBC shot.” Hilarious. Republicans are holding up extending unemployment benefits and helping out actual small businesses because of fake deficit anxieties, and Luntz is angling to make Americans pay for his weird 1995 Oval Office Bill Clinton fetish. (And yes, I’m kink-shaming Luntz.)
JOE KERNEN: We're going to need you again and again. I'm still trying to get my head around the Bill Clinton humidor.
Get it? Sorkin does, and he’s tickled. I guess great jokes like that one cross generations and never get stale.
You can watch the entirely bizarre Oliver Stone-meets-Paul Verhoeven segment below.