Brother Jonah Goldberg and my darling, Jessica Melugin, two people I love—albeit in very different ways—have both compared former President Donald Trump to the 30 Rock character Dennis Duffy, played by Dean Winters, the “Mayhem” guy from the Allstate Insurance commercials.
Duffy is the terrible ex-boyfriend of protagonist Liz Lemon, played by Tina Fey. And his signature line to Lemon, “You’ll be back, dummy,” is very Trump. Lemon thinks she can do better, but again and again finds herself returning to him when she doesn’t want to put in the effort to have a more suitable partner.
“That dumb creep makes me laugh. … Being with Dennis is easy. If you give into it you just start feeling kind of numb and warm,” she says. “And then you just get sleepy.”
Chris Stirewalt is a contributing writer for The Dispatch, the politics editor for The Hill and NewsNation, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, co-host of the Ink Stained Wretches podcast, and author of Broken News, a book on media and politics.
