It started when we followed you on Twitter, because why not? We follow Big Ben, the fake Donald Trump and most named weather events, so why not the online version of a grabby, racist uncle?
Casual as a comb-over, you glided down an escalator and gave us a grammatically lobotomized rant about Mexican drug dealing rapists and walls, and nominated yourself to be the next President of the United States. And we fell for you, harder and faster than Obama drops bombs from drones.
You couldn’t stop jabbering and we couldn’t stop listening. Then whenever you paused, so did we, breathless and waiting for your next mentally vacant, factually devoid brain fart.
Suddenly every other piece of news, and even the sport report, became as dull and grating as the pleas for one more chance, from a rejected lover who just couldn’t and wouldn’t take the hint.
We even stayed smitten although you treated us like wireless internet in a five-star hotel – free, invisible, and only noticed in absence, in the rare times we weren’t by your side and incessantly stroking your narcissism.
We claimed to be casually dating a field of candidates, from both sides of politics. But only you were clicked each time you appeared in our news feed, as we lied to ourselves that you gave a single misspelt character about our feelings.
It was your personality, above everything, that won us over. Not that it’s a good one, but it’s a big one, and in these days of the cult of personality, size is all that matters.
You’re an animal everyone thought went extinct in the 1940s, but has suddenly materialized at a zoo, and in every moment does the completely unexpected, keeping us mesmerized until we realize too late it’s us trapped in the cage, made from your emotional neglect. While you’re on the outside peppering us with peanut shell ideas, garbage outside and vacant in the middle, but still we remain hooked, and can’t get enough of your straw-colored, one-hundred-percent pure nonsense-heroin.
Worst of all, when it comes to partners, you’re truly the pits. Not concerned at all with our health, finances, or feelings, and so possessive and obsessive that you want to build a huge wall around our heart, and instead of spending one dollar on a romantic anything, all you want to buy are more guns and golf clubs.
Like a rusty rollercoaster that hasn’t been properly maintained for years, although we know the crash is coming, it’s too terrifyingly exciting for any of us to scream what we’re all thinking, ‘Stop! I have to get off!’
Then, the inevitable. We were warned by nearly every media mouthpiece, who all just got another raise thanks to you and the size of your ratings, that you couldn’t be trusted, and once a cheater, always a narcissistic piece of cheese.
Even back when you first asked us out, and promised to make this relationship great again, you were already seeing someone else. Vodka-scented, covered in crude oil, and surrounded by the bodies of disappeared dissenters, with a perky set of nuclear warheads and a dictator of her very own, we should have known the moment you told us she could be trusted, that we should never trust you alone with Mother Russia.
Despite the secret meetings, dirty texts, coordinated releases of damaging information and fake news, we refuse to let you go, and still check our phones, screens and feeds countless times a day, because our politics is nothing without you.
No matter how much you use and abuse us, we’ll never leave, but one day you will leave us. News outlets, media organizations, and even comedy shows are getting their biggest ratings in decades, but once you’re gone, our one and only Humpty Trumpy, you’ll take those ratings with you.
Regardless of all the hate and havoc you’ve sown, the worst single thing you’ve done is ruin us for whoever comes next. They’ll never capture our attention like you have, and while millions may have tuned in thanks to you, that’s nothing compared to the millions who will tune out once you’re gone.
Xavier Toby is a writer and comedian.
His second comedy memoir ‘Going Out of My Mined’ is available now.
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