Remember last year when a giant racist orange gained sentience and declared it would run for president of the United States and we all laughed because it seemed like a big joke? Well, it turns out that orange wasn’t just an exceptionally angry and loud piece of fruit. It was actually Donald Trump, whom you might remember from his brief/ awkward cameo in 1992’s Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Or his fraudulent, failed “university” scheme. Or his numerous and hilarious failed businesses.
So yeah. That’s the guy who, just a few weeks ago, won the Republican Presidential Nomination, beating out a load of other, very well established horrible people to become one of two horrible people seeking to live in the White House next year. My first thought was utter terror as he spouted filth and vitriol, declaring that he would build a huge wall on the southern border and block all Muslims from entering the country, but then I got the feeling that this wasn’t the first time I’d come across this kind of rhetoric, and I’m not talking about everyone involved in the Leave campaign in the UK a few months ago. I had the distinct feeling that’d I’d heard someone say the same things before and found them hilarious.
Then I saw this photo gallery and it all made sense. Donald Trump is just paraphrasing lines from the great Zapp Brannigan. If you’re unfamiliar with Zapp Brannigan, then A) educate yourself, buddy and B) he was originally a parody of Captain Kirk on the show Futurama and seriously if you’ve never seen it I don’t even know you anymore.
So, I decided we should all, collectively, play a little game. Below are a load of quotes and I want you to decide if they were said by Zapp Brannigan, fictional xenophobic misogynist, or Donald Trump, real xenophobic misogynist who happens to be running for president of the United States.
[Note: some of these have been edited to hide who said them. Because this is supposed to be a fun/terrifying experiment]
1) […] The Army have decided women aren’t fit for service. Not when I’m in charge.
2) I have great respect for women. I was the one that really broke the glass ceiling on behalf of women.
3) I have made it with a woman. Inform the men.
4) Someone is doing the raping. Who is doing the raping?
5) [My] law is like [my] love. Hard and fast.
6) My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are other parts of my body.
7) The beauty of me is that I am very rich.
8) I find the most erotic part of a woman is the boobies.
9) My IQ is one of the highest — and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure; it’s not your fault.
10) Look at those hands, are they small hands? And he referred to my hands: ‘If they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem.
11) You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.
12) I’ve never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!
13) In the game of chess, you can never let your adversary see your pieces.
14) Come on. Show me something. Anything. Seriously, I’d take an armpit.
15) Your face has been declared a weapon of mass disgusting.
16) We know nothing about them, their language, their history, or what they look like. But we can assume this – they stand for everything we don’t stand for.
17) The way to a woman’s bed is through her parents. Have sex with them and you’re in.
18) There’s nobody bigger or better at the military than me.
19) I like your style. You remind me of a young me. Not much younger, mind you. Perhaps even a couple of years older.
20) Sometimes losing a battle is a new way to win a war.
Answers:
Trump: 2,4,6,7,9,10,11,18,20
Brannigan: 1,3,5,8,12,13,14,15,16,17,19
So there we have it. Donald Trump is our universe’s Zapp Brannigan, destined to be given positions of power that he’s horribly under-qualified for at the expense of everyone around him while his charisma and complete lack of any integrity allow him to pawn off any failures as someone else’s fault.
I guess we can look forward to four years under our Tangerine Overlord…
A Yank in York 
