Daisey on Trump - Go see it if you can

The Trump Card by Mike Daisey

If you find yourself in a city where Mike Daisey can tell you the story of Trump (in The Trump Card), please try to go hear it! Especially in the waning days of this horrid campaign, and Daisey’s clear ability to amend his script, there may be much to ponder.

Mike Daisey tells us stories about ourselves. Sometimes we don’t recognize ourselves and sometimes we might not like the story. This is what he was counting on in telling us about Trump and what Trump’s candidacy means about American society, today.

In The Trump Card, Mike lauds “competency” and, most of the time, we probably do, too. But Mike lauds Donald Trump’s competency and says that Trump is good at his job, which is as an entertainer. Trump is great at getting and keeping attention, must like any entertainer.

Mike says Trump does a lot of what Mike does – Mike recognizes the tricks. Because we might not realize all the tricks, ourselves, Mike will help us recognize some of them, as used by Trump. But in the copyrighted, discursive Daisey way, it will take some time to wind around the story.

However, the liberal audience that will go see him talk – and he is well aware of who his likely audience will be – does not get off scott-free from some blame and some political skewering. There is some complicity with the way things are, he will tell you, and he’ll describe why.

But most of this talk is a history of how Donald Trump got to where he is today and what tricks he uses, and who he has stepped on along the way. You’ll get some background on Trump’s father and the racism inherited therefrom, along with the wealth.

Daisey will wind that together with his own father, who apparently knew Daisey was working on a story about Trump and found Trump the Game at a rummage sale and packaged it up to send to Daisey. Daisey then conceives of a dinner party where everyone will play Trump the Game and eat Trump Steaks and…you get the idea.

The other salient descriptions of Daisey's tale are of Trump's relationship with the infamous Roy Cohn, the Jewish Jew-hater, the gay homosexual-hater, a most reprehensible government official of that time known to have committed deeply illegal acts within the Justice Department. Trump sat at his knee for many years in Cohn's later years! This is eye-opening, as well.

Yes, you may be sick of Trump by now. I know I am more than sick, having already – well prior to his candidacy – declared my television a Trump-free zone. That worked really well, didn’t it? Still, Daisey is a smart deconstructor and there are aspect to ponder about how our society got to this place in time.

If you have friends who are still on the fence, and you can convince them to listen, Daisey is eager to tell them all about Trump in a way that I think will help them make up their minds. This is certainly a timely subject, and Daisey can be said to have been prescient when he decided well before last June to work this idea up as his next story.

In a campaign missing a lot of trenchant and challenging content, this might be an antidote. There are some great laughs along the way, though the topic is anything but “only” funny!

For more information and upcoming performance dates, check out http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/ or follow him on Facebook or Twitter. (Mike reports that you can catch THE TRUMP CARD this Saturday night, October 15th, in Chicago at the Athaneum, a week from tonight, October 20th, in the Berkshires at the Mahaiwe, then a full week in our nation's capitol from October 25th to 30th...

...and then one final blowout performance for all the marbles on November 1st at Town Hall on Broadway in New York City. 

Here are the links for tickets:

Chicago: bit.ly/trumpcard_chicago
Berkshires: bit.ly/trumpcard_berkshires
Washington DC: bit.ly/trumpcard_dc

At Town Hall in NYC: bit.ly/trumpcard_townhall)