Trump has turbocharged the news cycle and I’m struggling to keep up | Stewart Lee

Maintaining pace with the US president's wild outbursts and the mind-boggling media reports about him is no laughing matter

The smelly thoughts of Donald Trump bubble up like brown burps in the sort of bombsite pond Chopper bike-riding children were advised to avoid in 1970s public information films. Do they indicate concrete plans, are they designed to provoke, or do they have no meaning, like the gurgles and gasps that can inadvertently escape from a decomposing corpse? My job here is to try to anticipate if anything Trump says or does is likely to be of any lasting significance and to satirise it accordingly, in the small window of time allowed, for money. And it isn't getting any easier. Yes, Ukraine is suffering, but I am the real victim here.

For example, last Saturday Trump opined: We were the richest... think of this, from 1870 to 1913... because we collected tariffs... We had so much wealth. Wouldn't it be nice today? Of course, now, we give it away to transgender this, to transgender that. Everybody gets a transgender operation. It's wonderful. We give it away to crazy things. But in those days, it was different. It was a different world. It was a different country."

Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf this year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July