Skip to content
Culture

Remember When Donald Trump Sang the Green Acres Theme With Megan Mullally at the Emmys?

Donald Trump has been in office just under 100 days. Currently, he’s trying to finance his mythological border wall to Mexico; he’s off, sitting bewildered in some meeting, trying to engineer some impossible, harebrained deception resembling a real health care plan in an effort to topple Obamacare; he’s pronouncing “Nazi” “Nahsee” in speeches about the Holocaust. As The New York Times notes in a recent op-ed, he still hasn’t filled 90% of the jobs in the executive branch.

And in 2006, Donald Trump also performed the theme song to the ’60s-famous TV show Green Acres with Megan Mullally (in character as Karen, her role on Will and Grace) on the Emmy Awards. It was part of an ill-conceived running gag called “Emmy Idol” during that year’s show, as The Hollywood Reporter recalled, which found Kristen Bell and William Shatner competing with Trump and Mullally for the best performance of a classic television theme. (Mullally seems to regret the role their “winning” performance may have played in inspiring Trump to run for public office.)

Among so many other things, it’s one of the rare moments off of the golf course when we’ve been treated to seeing Donald Trump in something other than a loose suit. Trump’s head-bobbing and light hip-popping, as he clutches Mullally creepily close, recalls what passed for dancing in his trauma-inducing “Hotline Bling” parody for SNL, or his arhythmic undulations at his inaugural ball. His singing face recalls the disturbing shout-along to “God Bless the U.S.A.!” at his inaugural concert. Our current President barely sticks on pitch, so excited is he to have a spotlight fixed on him. Like his administration, he seems in danger of tripping over himself and toppling at any moment.

This same year, Trump would stop by one of his favorite shows, Access Hollywood, and have a now-storied conversation with his friend Billy Bush about the joys of “moving on” and “try[ing] to fuck” married women, and his overwhelming compulsion to “grab” women by their private parts whenever it feels necessary.

At the end of the Green Acres clip, the future President of the United States gleefully throws his pitchfork stage right, for no reason, and takes an opportunity to plant an unexpected kiss on Mullally. The entire world might not have been puking up all over itself then, but let’s take a moment to do so now.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AiZqFGLAeAc

[h/t Marcus Gilmer]