Literary Corner: Trump With the Toilets, Toilets

1952 GE dishwasher ad. Via.

Say what you will, while all politicians try to focus on kitchen table issues, Trump is unique in his preoccupation with the bathroom. But he really cares about all your domestic water amenities, and your fundamental right to waste water if you live in a region with adequate rainfall. In this new work from last night's Battle Creek rally, the emotionalism of his previous effort has given way to a childlike lyric quality:

Plumbing Songs

by Donald J. Trump

Song of the Recalcitrant Dish Machine

I

Sinks, uh, showers,
all of this stuff,
I did a lot of it.
No water comes out.

You have areas where there’s so much water
you don’t know what to do with it. 

II

You turn on the shower,
you’re not allowed
to have any water anymore.
I mean, we do a lot of it.

Uh, dishwashers.
You did the dishwasher,
right? You press it.
Remember the dishwasher,

you press it? Boom, there’d be like an explosion,
five minutes later, you open it, the steam pours out, the dishes. 

III

Now you press it 12 times.
Women tell me. Again.
You know, they give you
four drops of water.

And they’re in places where there’s so much water
they don’t know what to do with it. 

Song of the Unmentionable Water Closet

I

Now we’re doing it
with a lot of other things.
Uh, dishwashers,
and uh, you know. 

I won’t tell you one of the things because
every time I tell you they do a big number on it. 

II

You know the one
I’m talking about, right?
Sinks, right? Showers? And what goes
with a sink and a shower? 

Ten times, right? Ten times. Babop. Not me of course,
not me, but you. You. But I never mention that.

III

Because one time
I mentioned all three.
I said, sinks, showers, and toilets.
The headline was, 

‘Trump with the toilets, toilets.’ That’s all they want.
They don’t even mention the, so I didn’t mention that, okay? 

Battle Creek, the original home of Dr. Kellogg's breakfast bran operation, is a great venue for the president to assure us that his shit, contrary to some scurrilous rumors, is easier to dispose of than yours and mine ("not me of course, not me, but you. You").

The important thing we glean from the toilet song is how he's stewing over the giggly reception of his previous remarks, and what he thinks he did wrong: not wasting his audience's time by obsessing over plumbing fixtures as if that was part of the president's job, but using the word "toilet". He thinks we're mad at him for using a naughty word—and one that clearly excites him more than "fuck" or other expressions he commonly uses without especially getting called out for it. He thinks "toilet" is the worst and most powerful, and even as he says he's not going to use it you can see he's kind of desperate to, and ends up ascribing it to the media. They said it, not me!

On dishwashers, the one he's describing—the single button, the rush of water, and the quickness—was clearly in a restaurant kitchen, presumably one he owns, the kind of machines I used to run some decades ago (in one terrible pseudo-Italian place in Buffalo we used it to open clams), which is why he was there. He's never seen a dishwasher in a home kitchen, and that picture, of a button you must press again and again, is purely imagined.

The funny thing is how he checks himself when he realizes he's suggested he might have seen a home dishwasher: "Women tell me." God forbid! It's OK to visualize your president in the bathroom squeezing out his neatly diposable turds, as long as you don't use the frightening words, but please don't imagine him in the kitchen helping with the dishes!