The Real King Of Queens Will Be President!

Is it just me, or is Trump channeling Elvis here? Squint if you must.

So, as disturbing as it is for some of you out there to believe, Donald Trump will win the U.S. Presidential election today. I know; it took me until just a couple of months ago to accept it, too. But Wednesday morning, it won’t matter what you think. What will matter is that Donald Trump will be our next president. So strap yourself in, because we are about to take off on a pretty wild ride.

In (almost) retrospect, Donald Trump won for perfectly understandable reasons. Donald Trump has much more in common with Joe and Mary Beercan than he ever will with the Clintons or the Rockefellers. Why, then, couldn’t the “experts” see it?

Because the experts, as they usually do, let money blind them. Except that this time, the money belonged to Donald Trump. You see, the Enlightened Ones painted Donald Trump as an elitist billionaire, a one-percenter at heart, a rich New Yorker who could never relate to the common man. But they were, shall we say, projecting.

There are a lot of very different cultures in New York City. Donald Trump learned early in his career that that mattered to the political power brokers, internationalist bankers, and CEOs of Manhattan. Yes, his father was rich, but his father was rich in Queens, a working class borough just across the East River. Young firebrand Trump elbowed his way into Manhattan real estate with his persistence, savvy, and leverage, but he never found his place in that culture of elites. He barged in everywhere; he didn’t care much for social protocol, and he liked too much the attention of a public fight. Donald Trump was, and is, a brawler from Queens.

And that’s what independent, under-represented working American voters want, as well as the millions who have decided to vote for the first time in decades, or, for some of them, ever. These groups want someone who cat calls women, curses publicly, has no filter, rationalizes every means with an end, makes no apology for any of it, and, by the way, has billions of dollars. It feels familiar, even endearing, to watch someone constantly speak before they think. Why? Because that’s who they all are, minus the billions of dollars. They crave authenticity, even ugly authenticity, rather than the polished, empty pandering that they’ve heard for the last nearly 30 years or so. No, that’s not everyone who voted for Trump today. But it’s everyone who voted for Trump today but didn’t vote for Romney in 2012.

And the feeling’s mutual. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Both Trump and his supporters are using each other to do the same thing, which is to stick it in the eye of those who want to control them without accepting or respecting them. Sure, Trump is a Cretan, but he’s their Cretan.

Donald Trump is the Deadpool of the political universe — shameless, fearless, foul, unapologetic, with a laser-like focus for getting the job done, even if it promises to get messy. For better or worse, the Archie Bunkers, Doug Heffermans, and, for that matter, the Johnny Knoxvilles of the world are about to put their antihero over the top to have their day. Starting tonight.

Amy Schumer, Barbara Streisand, Miley Cyrus, and Chelsea Handler, please pack your bags. Your plane will be leaving in the morning. All Hail, the real King of Queens, President Donald Trump!