The shock of Election Night 2016 pushed a lot of Americans into looking at reality in new ways. Previously oblivious folks became politically active for the first time ever. One man retreated into an elaborate, self-imposed total news blackout. A lot of people purchased the novel 1984.
Comedian Laurie Kilmartin, meanwhile, began to document The New Normal as if it were occurring from a different part of the multiverse–specifically, the part where Hillary Clinton had been elected president. Two years on, she is still doing it.
But Kilmartin’s rendering of President Hillary Clinton has been no liberal fantasia. Rather than channeling the day-to-day doings of an administration that would never be, Kilmartin used her conceit to attribute Donald Trump’s most egregious moments to the fictional first female president. Kilmartin’s Twitter creation is a photo-negative timeline of Donald Trump’s presidency that imagines Clinton doing exactly what he does. The unspoken part of each tweet is the media and the rest of the world reacting to her trying to get away with it.
The comic first started chronicling her bizarro world version of America right after Trump’s inauguration.
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/823053119919636483
At the time, Kilmartin–an author and veteran TV writer who’s currently working on Conan–could have only imagined how relatively tame and quaint Trump’s crowd-size lies would soon seem.
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/847245732809658368
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/910242440618979328
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/950379448502661121
Going down the rabbit hole of Kilmartin’s tweets reveals anew what a farce it is that Trump appears unencumbered by truth or consequences.
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/960675251657977856
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/961984569103720448
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/970102350575632385
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/972947596665745408
Looking at this administration through the prism of Hillary Clinton headlines also offers a reflection of our own biases. Hillary Clinton inspired a unique kind of ire in the people who opposed her, so just imagine the apocalyptic rage haters would be spewing if these Trumpian headlines had actually been attributed to her in real life. The anti-Hillary bile would be the most combustible, but you can sub in any liberal female politician and imagine a response that’s almost as apoplectic. (Hi, Speaker Pelosi.)
The echo you’re hearing right now is all the phantom conservative outrage Donald Trump’s actions somehow still never seems to stir up.
Two years after his election, as women overwhelmingly succeeded in the midterms, this thread is a stark reminder of the gulf separating standards of acceptable behavior between men and women–even the Sliding Doors versions of those women. Have a look below at some more of our favorite examples from Kilmartin’s collection.
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/970392758375477248
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/971218449895538688
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/972940990968315905
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/977396316874539008
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/1006678805216292864
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/1021303376150081536
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/1051658147776090117
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/1053659745490395136
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