Bob Franken: Trump's Russian Comedy

Jul 27, 20170

I can tell you what the cast members of "Saturday Night Live" are doing during their off-season: They are practicing their Russian accents.

It would take pretty much the entire "SNL" group to do a bit on the meeting between Don Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and the gang from the Kremlin. There were altogether at least eight people at that infamous get-together that we now know was called to dish some dirt on Hillary Clinton. "SNL" already has been feasting on the Trumpsters to the point that this season it gathered 22 Emmy nominations, the largest number ever in the show's four-plus decades of existence. The problem the writers always have with the Trump bunch is coming up with a farce that is more slapstick than the real thing.

Take that meeting with the Trumpets and the Soviets -- oh, excuse me, Russians. That, by the way, was the first mistake of Junior and the rest: agreeing to take that meeting. First, they had to find an office big enough to accommodate the crowd. Presumably the ostentatious building has conference rooms, because this gathering featured a cast of characters that could fill one of those TV reality shows. We might call it "The Real Colluders of Trump Tower" or, given young Donald's role, maybe "The Apprentice"? (Nah. Who would call a program "The Apprentice"?)

The others crammed into their meeting room were Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with close ties to the Kremlin, and with oligarchs and mobsters for clients.

Also there was Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist who began his adult life working in Soviet intelligence.

Then there was Rob Goldstone, public-relations person to another oligarch's family (Russian, not American), the one who had enticed young Donald with his email promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." There were a couple of others on the Russian side, along with Junior, Jared and Manafort. It's not clear whether they, too, were on the Russian side.

We can assume that neither Vladimir Putin nor Trump Sr. were listening in on speakerphone, and right now the story from both is that they weren't aware of the meeting. Putin claims to not know any of the participants, which is a little bit more difficult for President Trump to claim.

After all, Paul Manafort is the political fixer who was Trump's campaign leader at the time, until he was shoved aside because of disclosures that he had made millions of dollars from a Ukrainian party with close ties to the Kremlin. Jared, of course, is the Trump son-in-law and presidential advisor who has massive influence on anything that happens in this White House. Don Jr. is the son who enjoys himself by slaughtering unsuspecting big game.

As dramatic as the charges are that Trump's campaign and the Russians conspired to steal the U.S. election, this also is comedy. And it's not just "Saturday Night Live." These players could inhabit a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin might easily be mistaken for Boris and Natasha. And as much as Jared's name swirls around unsavory developments, he's starting to look like Snidely Whiplash. Yes, it's funny burlesque. At the same time, it's deadly serious.

(Bob Franken is a syndicated columnist.)

Distributed by King Features Synd.