"Please tell me this isn't real" was the only thing I could think while watching Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker try to out-Trump Donald Trump on X yesterday, but it was real and it was craptacular.
Trump made his fame and fortune by splashing his name in giant gold letters on impressive skyscrapers, casinos, hotels, and other properties, all while living a busy social life — dating, marrying, and divorcing various models — on Page Six of the New York Post. Did I say Page Six? Trump lived rent-free on the front pages of the NYC tabloids, too.
Then he tweeted his way into the White House — something impossible for any other candidate because no other candidate (before, since, or maybe ever again) enjoys Trump's hard-earned bombast or celebrity/media cred. So when Trump, the POTUS whose name emblazons buildings around the world, says he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico or buy Greenland, people sit up and take notice, particularly people who think it would be ridiculous to rename anything and couldn't find Greenland on a Mercator projection map.
Part of the not-so-secret to Trump's success is that he almost always looks like he's having so much fun.
Then there's Pritzker, who has all the charisma of an over-boiled cabbage and whose main claim to fame is epically mismanaging his state.
And Another Thing: My old PJTV colleague (and part-time Right Angle boss) Bill Whittle said in 2012 after Barack Obama's reelection, "I don't know who the next Republican president will be, but I do know this: he'll be a celebrity." Prescient, eh? But more than that, during his four years in the wilderness, Trump rewrote the book on how to use celebrity to affect political change. Compare what he's accomplished in three weeks to all the useless moaning you hear from virtually every left-wing celebrity.
Maybe the most cringeworthy moment of the 2016 Republican presidential primaries was when then-Sen. Marco Rubio tried to out-Trump Trump with a "small hands" joke. The crowd ate it up, but Rubio should have known better.
What a long, strange trip it's been for Trump and Rubio. From back on the campaign trail in 2016, Rubio said Trump's small hands meant he had a small penis. pic.twitter.com/dSVw2HTOCn
— Justin Robert Young (@JustinRYoung) November 12, 2024
Politicians succeed when they play to their type. Nobody can out-Trump Trump — whether it's with ridiculous personal insults or grandiose gestures like buying Greenland — because nobody else spent decades becoming Donald J. Trump. Rubio's type is "earnest/tough/slightly nerdy." Pritzker's type, aside maybe from swallowing other types whole, seems to be "meritless technocrat."
Anyway, here's Pritzker promising to rename various things near Illinois and trying to get in a dig at Michigan.
An important announcement from the Governor of Illinois. pic.twitter.com/irh7UtwEOe
— JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) February 7, 2025
Where's the bombast? Where's the wink and the smile? Where's the fun?
Funny, he ain't. It's easy to picture a more entertaining politician — Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton come to mind — riffing on Trump's grandiosity and getting plenty of laughs out of it. But Pritzker reading monotonously off a teleprompter as though he isn't in on his own joke?
As Trump himself might tweet: "Sad!"
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