In December, The New York Times devoted 5,000 words to a hatchet job on President Donald Trump over his TV viewing habits. Among the more damning accusations was the claim that the leader of the free world spends as much as eight hours a day in front of the boob tube.
The article was riddled with bile, but in the end the Times writers didn’t come close to an accurate depiction of the amount of time Trump devotes to his TV watching or the nature of the programming. As it turns out, he spends 17 hours a day — more than twice the Times estimate — and for the entirety, his TV is tuned to the “Gorilla Channel.”
From Michael Wolff’s explosive tell-all, “Fire and Fury,” comes this revelation:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Wow, this extract from Wolff’s book is a shocking insight into Trump’s mind: pic.twitter.com/1ZecclggSa
— official pixelated boat facebook account (@pixelatedboat) January 5, 2018
If you haven’t already figured it out for yourself, the passage quoted above is not from the Wolff book. It is from the fecund minds behind Pixelated Boat, a comedic Twitter account with over 100,000 followers, and it is a parody of “Fire and Fury.”
The seventeen-hour figure alone — which would allow the president seven hours of sleep and time for virtually nothing else — would seem to be a tipoff to any sentient being. But Trump haters desperately want to believe. Here’s MSNBC contributor and #Resistance leader Scott Dworkin, as quoted by Alex Griswold:
Oh, Scott pic.twitter.com/EwkSdtCfLq
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) January 5, 2018
Litsa Dremousis, a writer whose byline occasionally appears in New York Magazine and The Washington Post, was also taken in:
It's not that I think the gorilla portion of Michael Wolf's book will keep me up tonight; I think it might keep me up *forever.* #Impeach
— Litsa Dremousis (@LitsaDremousis) January 5, 2018
Ditto for Christine Cheng, who teaches at King’s College London. Her justification for swallowing something so patently ridiculous? Her conviction that “Trump is beyond parody.”
This gorilla channel thing is utterly ridiculous- but I believed it at first (until we got to the 17 hrs part) because Trump is beyond parody. Yes folks, that’s where we’re at right now.
Via @shashj https://t.co/mq2SxZsNTe— Christine Cheng 鄭穎茵 (@cheng_christine) January 5, 2018
A more likely explanation is that Cheng believed it at first because she believes anything: for example, that Barack Obama was a great speech maker.
This all comes at a time when Trump’s mental fitness is back on the liberal radar, so look out.
