Drunk Pelosi? Not on "Jimmy Kimmel Live…"

One of the silliest comedy bits ever featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live has to be “Drunk Trump.” It’s so funny yet so easy to set up. All they do is replay the audio and video of Trump giving a speech — any speech — and then slow the audio down so it sounds like Trump is drunk. Really drunk. Not intoxicated enough to pass out, but inebriated enough to slur his words and to act like he’s delivering a sloppy Gettysburg Address.

What makes it so funny, though, is the surprise — one of the hardest things to do in comedy. When you hear Trump talking as if he’s drunk, you start focusing on what he’s trying to say. Then it dawns on you: Although he sounds drunk, Trump is actually saying all these things when he’s sober!

He’s not a drunk speaker, he’s just another sober blowhard — AND HE’S THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! Therein lies the humor. What makes us laugh is this realization that he doesn’t need to get plastered in order to say goofy things.

And for Kimmel and his cabal of comedy writers, there’s never any shortage of goofy things coming out of Trump’s mouth. “Drunk Trump” could be shown every night of the week and still get big laughs — even if the audio wasn’t slowed down to a snail’s pace.

But “Drunk Trump” was creatively contrived for “comic effect.” It’s a joke. It always was intended to be a joke and to get laughs on Kimmel’s nightly talk/comedy show. There was never anything subversive or diabolical or mean-spirited behind the idea and its execution, either. It was done in the spirit of comedy. It was just plain funny. (I thought so, anyway.)

Now if you’re a diehard Trump supporter, you might not think so. You might not like the joke. You might not get the joke. You might not laugh at all. But you could never accuse Kimmel of slandering Trump. Why? Because of the way he handled this satire and the way the law protects comedy and comedians in general.

Not only is Kimmel protected by the free speech of “comic effect,” he also never asserted that Trump was actually giving those speeches while drunk. He let everyone know upfront that “Drunk Trump” was a joke — not a slice of reality.

In fact, when this bit first aired on his show, he telegraphed how they’d tampered with the footage to make it appear Trump was drunk. He never said at any time that Trump was actually drunk. Or pickled. Or even a little tipsy. Later on after “Drunk Trump” became a regular feature, he continued to remind both studio audience and home viewers that it wasn’t real, that Trump wasn’t really drunk.

Contrast Kimmel’s set-ups with what POTUS #45 is now doing to Nancy Pelosi.

Trump and his toadies from FOX NOOZ actually stole this concept of “Drunk Trump” and are now using it to smear House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. No big surprise there because this President never did have an original thought in his entire life. He also had — and still has — serious issues with strong, outspoken women who refuse to continually flatter him. But now Trump and his loyal cohorts are using their own version of “Drunk Pelosi” on social media to destroy her credibility and reliability.

Call it whatever you want: a distorted, doctored, manipulated, altered, or reimagined audio and video of Nancy Pelosi. It’s still a fake. It’s still an inaccurate depiction, a misrepresentation of reality. The real problem here is that it’s been done so well, so deftly, that it really does sound like she’s had a little too much to drink. Not a lot, just enough to make you wonder if she’s a little drunk or slightly off mentally or just ditzy. If you go online you can see and hear side-by-side comparisons of Pelosi speaking last Wednesday at the Center for American Progress.

On one side of the computer screen is the actual footage of her speech from C-Span. On the other side is the altered version from Politics WatchDog. No, her speaking patterns aren’t as slow or as slurred as the exaggerated “Drunk Trump.” But that’s what makes this distortion seem so real, so believable. It’s NOT an over-the-top misrepresentation, but it’s enough to make you seriously wonder about Pelosi’s competence and mental capacity a little more than you should. In other words, it’s hard to tell the difference between the real Nancy and the fake one.

Unfortunately, this fake one is being shown across the gamut of social media — on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter — to millions who may or may not know it’s been distorted.

More significantly, Trump didn’t just tamper & twitter right before the weekend as he usually does. He did it right before the big holiday weekend of Memorial Day. So Jimmy Kimmel and the assorted pundits who could have called out Trump’s attack on Pelosi as fabricated B.S. wouldn’t be around, they’d be on holiday. Most of them wouldn’t even be around to point out that Trump’s subterfuge was blatantly stolen from Jimmy Kimmel Live, either. But even the various news stories about this video/audio smear failed to recognize that this distortion was deliberately intended to make Speaker Pelosi look and sound drunk. Why?

Are media reporters so misinformed or careless that they can’t connect comedy segments on Jimmy Kimmel Live with cheap tricks from the White House and Trumpropaganda?

As long as there are no laws to specifically prohibit Trump’s blatant use of propaganda and no government agencies to regulate his misusage of mass media, we’re all going to be in for a real wacky Presidential election year in 2020. And that’s no joke.