Donald Trump is Toucan Sam, Sniffing Out Froot Loops and Little Else.

A friend of mine asked me what I thought about Donald Trump this weekend. The truth is, I’d rather not think about Donald Trump. He’s the canary in the Republican well. Or should I say “toucan”? He‘s Toucan Sam, the Kellogg’s cereal mascot who can sniff out “Froot Loops”—if Toucan Sam had been exposed to poisonous mineshaft fumes.

The American people are so starved for anyone—anyone—to tell them the truth, that they’re willing to give an unprincipled, shameless, self-promoting (but successful) buffoon traction. Why? Because he’s uncensored. He says what he wants, and he’s not scared of anyone. And sometimes what he says sticks it to the establishment’s rodeo clowns (i.e., the biased media) who are paid to distract an angry public from the country’s real problems.

The fact that Donald Trump has any serious following at all should tell us how diseased our culture and our political class have become. It says even worse about the Republican Party, which is short on Paul Ryans and heavy on hucksters selling little more than smoke and mirrors—when what’s really needed are answers to our most pressing economic problems. Take a look into what Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are going to cost the nation over the next ten years. Take a look at what the interest alone on our national debt will mean for the nation. And then listen to politicians who try to convince you that “taxing the rich” or eliminating “fraud, waste, and abuse” will even come close to fending off the economic judgment day approaching.

America doesn’t need a corporate clown from the 80s to run it. Where do has-beens who often don’t realize their best days are behind them wind up? Reality TV. If America were to elect Trump it wouldn’t take a tweed-jacket wearing professor to tell us that it’s all but over — we’d know it. And, while it’s better to be a has-been than a never-was, I can’t help but think that there’s an inspirational leader out there who could remind America what made it exceptional in the first place: free markets, limited government, individual liberties, a strong national defense, and traditional American values.

Thanks for telling us that we’re surrounded by Froot Loops, Trump. Now get back to dealing with some more of them on NBC, where they need you.