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Seven Stories Press

Works of Radical Imagination

Gullible's Travels

A Comical History of the Trump Era

by Marvin Kitman

Book cover for Gullible's Travels
Book cover for Gullible's Travels

Marvin Kitman describes the land of Gulliblesylvania as a democratic country ruled by 34.9 % of the people, "a minority better known as 'the base,' of whom a candidate said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they would still vote for him." At first Kitman assumed that Trump's candidacy was a publicity stunt. After he realized it was serious, as a satirist he felt very lucky and began to keep a comical journal, modeled after A Journal of the Plague Year which Daniel Defoe described as "Observations of the most remarkable occurrence, which happened in London during the last great visitation in 1665"—which is not to compare the Trump administration to the bubonic plague, Kitman hastens to add. "For one thing, as our POTUS has been telling us, he's made America Great again—AND IT ONLY TOOK A YEAR AND A HALF!" Kitman adds, "And I have never before had such a good time observing and writing about the follies of our country."

Gullible's Travels includes 32 "Trumponicles; the debate over the president's intellectual capacity; "That Russian Thing;" "Who is Agent Orange"; and a CODA that asks the question, "How Will It All End?" Impeachment? 25th Amendment sacking? Resignation? Or reelection?

Book cover for Gullible's Travels
Book cover for Gullible's Travels

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“If Jonathan Swift were alive he would steal from Marvin Kitman at every opportunity. Kitman merges satire with history and the horrible reality of present-day politics better than anyone writing in America today.”

“What this country needs is more Kitmans, fewer Trumps.”

“Like every book by Marvin Kitman, this one will make you curl your hand into a fist and beat yourself in the head, hoping that will make you stop laughing. Don’t waste your time. Marvin is seriously funny. When they come to get you for laughing at political satire, you’ll be at the head of the line. Have fun.”

“We will have from historians an abundance of accounts, but our Humorist Laureate, Marvin Kitman, has given us a rara avis, a scrupulously detailed comic history of The Trump Years.”

“Marvin Kitman is the funniest registered Republican ever to run for president, and when you read his hilarious new book, Gullible's Travels, you will laugh until you weep. My only reservation is that it is subtitled 'A Comical History of the Trump Era' when in fact it deals seriously with such issues as whether Trump is a patriot or a traitor, closer to Hitler or Mussolini. Buy it, read it and decide for yourself.”

“So you think there’s nothing funny about the Trump era? Marvin Kitman, who once ran for president (and is still young enough to do so again) knows better. His new book is the perfect antidote to Trump Derangement Syndrome. Better to die laughing now than wait for the Trump apocalypse.”

“"The same investigative acuity that unearthed George Washington's Expense Account has been applied to our Gross National Bill for the Trump Administration. Read Marvin Kitman's Gullible's Travels. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll want your country back.”

“...One of the funniest guys since Calvin Coolidge, the only Republican with the guts to take on Trump.”

“In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man may not be king, but he probably is Marvin Kitman, pundit di tutti pundits. In Gullible’s Travels, he uses his well-honed wit to survey the desolate landscape of Trump’s America, in search of pearls left behind by swine. Kitman paid me to say this.”

blog — May 26

There Is an 80 Percent Chance There Will Be an Election in 2020

We're pleased to present a short excerpt from Marvin Kitman's new book, Guillible's Travels: A Comical History of the Trump Era, out today!

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Will there be an election in 2020? Or will our President wake up at 3 a.m. one morning and announce he is signing an Executive Order delaying the election? The Twitter bulletin, where important news often appears first, will explain the slight delay is necessary due to threats to our security at the border.

As he might be clarifying his action later in the day at   a campaign rally in a Michigan airplane hangar, before a random cross section of average corporate executives and campaign donors, to chants of send them back, the president will explain that we must unite to stop the invasion. They are coming through the windows and doors left open by Obama and the open-door Democrats who won’t fund the wall real Americans want.

Then President Four-More-Years will argue the next morning on Fox & Friends, the Pravda of the Trump administration, that your president loves his country too much to abandon it in time of crisis.

On the Sean Hannity Show later that day, he will ask why we have elections every four years. Some of our fellow democracies, even in shithole countries, have presidents who serve the people for twenty or thirty years, and even lifetimes.

The next night Tucker Carlson will remind us that the president’s role model, Idi Amin, served twenty-eight years.

Across cable network news, authorities like Kellyanne Conway and her legion of yespersons are debating the need for elections in a democracy. They were a nice idea before trains and TV were invented and before we had sources of reliable information and enlightenment like social media and cable network news. Elections today are repetitive, cost-ineffective, polarizing, a waste of time and money, and a general nuisance.

Besides, old-style elections are not that popular. Only 68 percent voted last time, and that was a third more than usual. So sad.

Night after night at campaign rallies across Trump country, the best president we have is explaining more important things need to be done than waste our resources on elections. One third of the nation still has clean air and drinkable water. One third of the nation still has health insurance to eliminate. One third of our nation is still getting food stamps to avoid starvation. One third of our nation voted for Trump in the last election. Deplorable.

And let’s not forget eliminating funding for “K through 12 public education,” “early childhood education,” “work- force regulation,” and that huge glut of federally owned land standing in the way of good clean real estate development. Especially those National Parks, on which the building of condos and skyscrapers is still banned.

Keep in mind, the more elections we have, the greater the risk of the Russians meddling in them.

On Trump talk radio, constitutional scholars like Laura, Rush, Hannity, and Ann Coulter point out the Floundering Fathers came up with the idea of the Electoral College as a way to make what is known as “the raw vote” more meaning-less. Neither did they anticipate the power of social media as the true Fourth Estate (replacing fake media). The likes are the new Vox Populi, thanks to the public service heroes like Mark Zuckerberg, who was only looking for another way to sell advertising to the boobousie.

As a backup, polls confirm in advance the winning candidates, so why bother with elections, as President Trump’s mentor Putin often stated.

You must be kidding, Kitman. None of this could happen. Why not?

Well, there is the Constitution.

You mean that document the president swore to uphold on Inauguration Day? But there is nothing in the Constitution requiring the document be read or understood, especially with all the big words like “emolument.” Nada, except 229 years of tradition, against preventing a president staying in office as long as he deems necessary for public safety and defending the country’s values from terrorism or other threats, such as a lack of a wall on our southern border.

Then there is the Senate. They can do another impeachment. Yes, we are lucky to have Majority Leader Moscow Mitch McConnell—sorry, I keep forgetting—Novosibirsk Mitch, such a strict Constitutionalist he wouldn’t even let his Republican troops do the “advise and consent” thing on President Obama’s Judge Garland for the Scalia seat.

Irkutsk Mitch can always count on his brave band of Republican brothers to back him up by doing nothing in his Do-Nothing Congress, except do away with anything Obama did to save the environment and all the other examples of government overreach. McConnell Republicans can always be counted on to support Mr. Constitution Mitch from under their desks, where they have been cowering the last two years for fear that Trump will give them a killer nickname on Twitter.

And, of course, there is the Citizens United Supreme Court, which voted to recognize that corporations have the same rights as people to keep a friendly president in power, something the founding fathers never anticipated. By 2020, another associate justice might be hanging up the robes, doing a Justice-Kennedy-retiring-ahead-of-time act, making it 6–3 for the real Americans who want the wall.

Some might call the negating of the three branches of government in a system of checks and balance a coup, a bloodless coup d’état. But that’s FAKE news for you.

2.

If I am wrong about any of this, and there is an election in 2020, may I be the first to congratulate President Trump on his second term in office.

Humorist and author MARTIN KITMAN is a former columnist at New York Newsday and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He is the author of, among others, Gullible's Travels: A Comical History of the Trump EraThe Man Who Would Not Shut Up: The Rise of Bill O'Reilly, and The Making of the Prefident 1789