“We’re All Trying to Find the Guy Who Did This!”: I Think You Should Leave and Donald Trump
After the election of Donald Trump in 2016, a common sentiment among some cultural commentators was that the new President would inspire a wave of incisive and exciting comedy. In his 2018 standup special Kid Gorgeous, John Mulaney lamented this notion, comparing writing comedy in the Trump era to “building a gazebo during the Civil War”. In a now-infamous bit, Mulaney likened the Trump presidency to a horse loose in a hospital, a galloping blur of volatility and confusion. Most sincere attempts at portraying the Trump presidency through comedy either fell flat (Alec Baldwin’s non-impression on Saturday Night Live), missed the point (Stephen Colbert’s often-cutesy Our Cartoon President), or evaded public consumption (Anthony Atamanuik’s overlooked The President Show).
While comedy fans searched for the defining art of the Trump moment, it turned out to be right under their noses: Tim Robinson’s sketch opus from 2019, I Think You Should Leave. In Robinson’s world, social gaffes are doubled down upon, morals are loose, and apologies are never given. Now that the Trump administration has come to an (in)definite conclusion, I am staking my claim: I Think You Should Leave, a potent examination of bullshit logic, is the definitive comedic portrait of Trump’s America.
I Think You Should Leave is the brainchild of Tim Robinson, a Detroit native whose CV includes three seasons on SNL (one in the cast, two as a writer), his Comedy Central sitcom Detroiters (with frequent collaborator Sam Richardson), and one episode of Netflix’s sketch anthology series The Characters, alongside his writing partners Zach Kanin and John Solomon. Robinson coasted just below his deserved popularity for several years; his SNL experience probably doesn’t ring many bells and Detroiters was cancelled after its second season was delayed. Akiva Schaffer, one-third of the dick-rap phenomenon The Lonely Island, put the idea into action after a meeting at Netflix about expanding their sketch comedy offerings. In a roundtable with Vulture’s Jesse David Fox, Schaffer recalls telling Netflix exec Robby Praw, “if you give [Robinson, Kanin, and Solomon] a show, they’re not going to waste it. They’re gonna know how to do it”. Robinson’s high-stakes drama of perpetual embarrassment had a perfect home at Netflix, where he, Kanin, and Solomon (also SNL alums) could work on longer-form sketches for 15-minute episodes without pausing for ad breaks. Netflix’s ubiquity among consumers of all ages leant I Think You Should Leave a unique reach.
Social gaffes are central to the comedy of the show, a theme made clear in the very first sketch, featuring Robinson as a man on a job interview. After the interview ends, the man attempting to exit the cafe where the interview is held, pulls a door that is meant to push. After the common mistake is pointed out, Robinson’s character remains steadfast, claiming “it does both… it actually goes both ways”, laboriously pulling the door and eventually breaking the hinges. Robinson’s face is in close-up, a vein building in his forehead, as intense sound design blares. Robinson’s character would rather cause property damage than admit he may be wrong. The characters created by Robinson tend to be eager to impress but are also looking to prove a point, like the man who eats a whole paper receipt to ensure his friend likes his housewarming gift, or are simply looking to get out of a jam, as seen in “Hot Dog Car”.
When a hot dog-shaped car crashes into a storefront, employees and customers spring into action. Robinson appears in a hot dog mascot costume, urging “whoever did this” to speak up. The patrons quickly notice the obvious color synergy between Robinson’s costume and the car. He evades, blames others, and eventually turns patronizing when asked his name. As he grandstands about modern lack of connection and internet porn, he attempts to steal clothes and drive away, only to be foiled by two police officers. Like many of the sketches on I Think You Should Leave, “Hot Dog Car” encapsulates a man’s conviction at odds with his environment.
Another man with relentless conviction despite this circumstances is Donald Trump. After years of criticizing Barack Obama for playing golf while in office, Donald Trump went golfing 287 times as of November 15th, 2020. Trump would swing from denigrating the Black Lives Matter Movement to comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln in his efforts for the Black community. In a heavily-memed moment, Trump bullishly stared directly into the solar eclipse in 2017. While Trump offered a lot of hearty chuckles to liberals and the left, the grimmer legacy of Donald Trump’s presidency is that of an administration seemingly allergic to giving apologies. Before he was even elected, Trump claimed that the grieving mother of a slain veteran featured at the Democratic National Convention was not allowed to speak by her husband because she was Muslim.
Trump made a habit of insulting the disabled, including journalist Serge Kovaleski (he claimed he was generally imitating groveling), veterans, such as deceased Republican Senator John McCain, and nearly any of his political opponents. Trump’s behavior is a grim reflection of the frantic posturing that Robinson presents in sketches like “Hot Dog Car” or “New Printer”, featuring Patti Harrison as an office worker in a Sisyphean struggle to land a joke. But Robinson’s comedy also inadvertently portrays how Trump’s faux-populist appeals attracted a following fervent enough to look the other way from his graceless behavior.
Quite a few of Robinson’s sketches are ensemble affairs, illustrating how easily crowds are swayed into madness. Take “Baby of the Year” for example, starring Sam Richardson as the host of the titular award show. The crowd is whipped into a frenzy by the asinine competition, going so far as to hurl insults at “the bad boy of the competition”, Bart Harley Jarvis, as the judges come close to breaking down. In perhaps the most-memed sketch on the show, “Focus Group”, a car focus group goes haywire after a rogue member, played by breakout star Ruben Rabasa, turns the group against one of their own. Rabasa’s character makes a series of bizarre suggestions including a “good steering wheel… that doesn’t whiff out the window when you are driving” and “no room for mother-in-law”. The focus of the group’s ire, Paul, played by Kanin, is ruthlessly mocked by all participants, including the facilitator, played by Robinson. “Focus Group” parallels how Trump’s crass and authoritative rhetorical style attracted so many die-hard followers. In the same way it’s suggested that Paul should marry his mother-in-law, Trump’s floating of baseless conspiracy theories brought attention to QAnon and other far-right conspiracies. Rabasa’s character’s nonsensical suggestions are obscured by the negative energy directed to Paul, just as Trump’s following has continued to ignore his shortcomings as a leader by directing their ire elsewhere, spewing vitriol in the name of Making America Great.
As of this writing, Trump is for all intents and purposes out of office, and I Think You Should Leave is set for a second season. Will Robinson’s comedy work under a different administration, whose focus is to “restore the soul of America”? As long as America jockeys to be the Greatest Country In The World, it will. As professed in an interview with Vulture, “somebody being so embarrassed to admit they’ve made a small mistake and denying it is really human” to Robinson. Trump’s confidence, even as he said and did stupid and cruel things, was really part of a relentless quest to prove his infallibility. In the same way that Trump’s presidency exposed the true darkness of this country, I Think You Should Leave is a perfect snapshot of what America really is: a place where more effort is put into denying mistakes than fixing them.
Questions of how comedy would fare under Trump were ultimately too focused on the brand of dry, biting political satire popularized by Jon Stewart and his many acolytes. Coupling facts with laughs rang didactic as people died from a preventable illness and families were separated at the Southern border. The pundit class couldn’t get a clear enough look at Trump and his failings to strike the perfect blow. I Think You Should Leave’s chaotic energy doesn’t focus on thoughtful dissections of policy. Instead, it distills Trump’s America through depictions of horrid behavior. In Robinson’s comedy, the hopelessly confident are depicted in a variety of circumstances: working overtime to cover their tracks, basking in undue accolades, or simply not understanding what is wrong. The Trump presidency may be defined by the very same characteristic: a toxic helping of self-confidence, often to the detriment of those in the surrounding area.
special thanks to Christiane Swenson and Lou Barcott
