COULD YOU ADD A PHOTO OF COMEDIAN STEPHEN COLBERT?
President Donald J. Trump announced Monday that comedian Stephen Colbert will run the administration's newly created Department of Irony.
Trump praised Colbert's qualifications by tweeting: "Stephen is an ironic guy. Very ironic. I should know. Nobody knows more about irony than I do."
During the presidential campaign, Trump frequently promised supporters he would make the country "ironic again."
"We're going to be so ironic, you're going to get sick and tired of irony," he often told cheering crowds.
Trump said last week that he asked Congress to approve the Department of Irony as a cabinet-level department to direct and oversee all irony in the administration.
Colbert, a comedian and a writer, has hosted The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS since September 8, 2015. Before that, he hosted The Colbert Report on the Comedy Channel, a news-parody program in which he played a caricature of a conservative political pundit.
Colbert became famous for inventing, among other words, "truthiness," which he defined as "believing something that feels true, even if isn't supported by fact."
This, Colbert said, is different from what he called "Trumpiness" because "truthiness"
has to feel true, but Trumpiness doesn't have to do that," he said.
"Truthiness" comes from gut. But "Trumpiness," Colbert added, "comes from further down the gastrointestinal tract."
Mordant Sardonic, professor of Ironic Studies at North South Dakota State University, called Colbert "an inspired choice."
Sardonic wrote that Trump has satisfied his campaign pledge because so many of his appointees appeared to be either indifferent or hostile to the department they were selected to run.
This, Sardonic said, included Jeff Sessions as attorney general; Betsy DeVos, as secretary of Education; Tom Price, Health and Human Services; Andrew Puzder, Labor; Steven Mnuchin, Treasury; Ben Carson, Housing and Urban Development; Rick Perry, Energy, and "just about everyone else in the cabinet," he added.
Sardonic said Trump's commitment to irony was also evident in other appointments such as anti-environmentalist Scott Pruitt to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Sardonic said he learned that Trump is expected to pick Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Guzman, who is currently in prison in the United States, would be different from other Trump appointees, Sardonic said.
"He actually has experience for the position he would be running," he said.