Hello, Smarties: It’s Your Weekly Recs!

100 Days of… Something! Plus: Florence Pugh, Conan O’Brien, Keeley Hawes, Colman Domingo, Dame Ruth Buzzi and More…

Relax. He’s not a Manchurian Candidate. He’s the universe’s most diabolical algorithm-juicer! Poster: United Artists/Photofest

Let me enrage you,
Let me make you scowl.
Let me spin a few lies—
Some whoppers and some crude lies,
I’m very volatile!

And if you’re real mad,
That makes me feel glad—
I spike your rage every time!

So let me enrage you,
And we’ll have a real bad time.
Yes, sir!
We’ll have—
A real bad time!

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Dear Wags,

Happy 100 Days of Calami-tude! We keep humming the lines above — to the tune of “Let Me Entertain You,” by Wag emeriti Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim — because we seem to be hurtling toward the sun, or maybe just the apocalypse of empty shelves at Walmart. During this Great American Defenestration, we’ve sometimes wondered: who, right, left, or muddy middle, could possibly be enjoying all this?

Then we remembered: El Jefe himself is having a gay old time, even if his poll numbers sink seven layers beneath the earth’s crust. “I run the country and the world,” says the fellow behind the Resolute Desk — and you know what? It’s “fun.”

Having fun yet?

Here’s what we know, from firsthand experience, about this charismatic rascal: it’s all a show. A game. A performance. A mad scramble for the next headline. And it works! Honestly, we shouldn’t waste your time — 700 more outrages will be flushed out of the Oval Office by Tuesday. And its 78-year-old occupant has more diabolical pep than ever.

He’s having a blast. And have you noticed? He looks unnervingly spry. Trim, alert, and well-lacquered. Could he be getting younger while he gives the world more gray hairs?

From the Acela corridor, the president’s vengeful executive decrees play like a Michael Bay movie—bombastic, relentless, and racing us toward oblivion. But he’s got apparatchiks to take the heat: Little Marco, shrinking by the day as he dismantles the world order he once claimed to care about. Pete Hegseth, hanging by a makeup brush at the Defense Department. Mike Waltz, already out (you gave up a safe House seat in Florida for this?). Robert Kennedy Jr., promising to banish food dyes and cure autism by brunch. Elon Musk, crashing Tesla by becoming a one-man MAGA combustion engine. Pam Bondi, crowing like a North Korean commissar about fentanyl seizures saving a preposterous 258 million lives. Kristi Noem? Well, at least they caught the guy who stole her purse.

At some point, their boss will forget he ever met them. “Very fine person. It’s a shame we had to make a change.” When it comes to the icky stuff — due process, summary deportations, rising prices, America’s isolation heading into a trade war with China, the shivving of Ukraine — he’ll give one of those Jamaica Estates shrugs and say he had nothing to do with it. His people were supposed to handle details!

What people who’ve never met Trump don’t get is that he can be quite funny — and disarmingly self-aware. In the interviews he gave to mark the first 100 days, a few things came into focus:

First: He’s become wholly convinced, backed up by considerable evidence, of his ability to defy political gravity.

Second: Having done that, he’s no longer going to be hemmed in or second-guessed by haters, doubters, and nobodies.

So what if he’s way out over his skis? That’s his favorite piece of real estate (and he knows from real estate).

Of course he’s having fun! All he ever wanted was to be the biggest headliner on Earth, a titanic figure. Pity those who thought they could manipulate him for their own ends—or vanquish him with old-fashioned politics. His driving ethos never amounted to more than Made You Look. And no matter how badly this show ends, we’ll still be talking about its indestructible star.

Yours Ever,

M.V. Fenwick

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Do Svidaniya, Heroes!

Thunderbolts (Theaters). Readers tell us to cut Marvel some slack. We say: we are the Thanos of popular culture, crushing tired franchises beneath our intergalactic gravity boots. That said, we’d watch Florence Pugh recite the alphabet. Here she is as Yelena Belova, a super-duper secret operative with a world-weary Russian accent, joining a gaggle of depressive action men on a mission that turns out to be a plot to liquidate them. What do you expect from a CIA run by Julia Louis-Dreyfus? The well-compensated cast includes Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, and Lewis Pullman.

—Tatiana Romanova