Jeffrey Epstein puts Donald Trump in a Tim Robinson sketch

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• Harris says Biden’s “ego” led him to run for reelection

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• Members of US biker gang were hired at Gaza aid site: BBC

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Not worried about any of this

From the very first sketch of Tim Robinson’s Netflix series “I Think You Should Leave,” it’s clear that the “SNL” alum is obsessed with pride.

That opener shows Robinson leaving a job interview at a coffee shop, only to pull on a door he needs to push to exit. The interviewer notices Robinson’s mistake, saying “Looks like you push.” Robinson insists that the door “goes both ways,” as he pulls the door against the way it’s hung. For the next half-minute, Robinson maintains eye contact with the interviewer, a grin plastered on his face as the door jamb breaks and the hinges snap.

“See?” he says after walking through the broken door, drool running down his chin. “Hope to hear from you soon.”

Across three seasons, Robinson delighted in examining the lengths that reasonably comfortable, entirely unexceptional men would go to save face.

A co-worker uploads a painfully unfunny dub of Bozo the Clown to cover his embarrassment at drawing a blank on funny videos he’d seen. A man nearly chokes to death in a restaurant to avoid humiliation in front of a celebrity. Little white lies spiral into revenge plots, watching your wife dance with a more talented lead leads to insomnia-induced hallucinations. These men are doing okay and deathly afraid that it will all crumble upon closer inspection. They’re worried that someone is going to realize they’re a sham.

Recent revelations around Donald Trump’s relationship with late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein have uncovered a similar fear in the president.

(Full transparency: This is not the first time I’ve compared Trump to a Robinson sketch in this newsletter. “ITYSL” references are as foundational to millennials as Wendy’s slogans are to boomers. If I was slightly older, this newsletter might be full of references to high-end audio equipment and Steely Dan. Back to it…)

Trump’s strong stance that the Epstein case files were a “hoax” orchestrated by the Democratic Party left him wrong-footed when a letter that appears to be from Trump was shared by Epstein’s estate.

The letter, surrounded by a doodle of a naked woman and reveling in the president and Epstein’s shared “wonderful secret,” has left the White House riffing through an obvious lie. Trump fidgets behind the Resolute Desk, denying he would ever “draw pictures,” instead of coming clean about a friendship that can be found in the archives of Getty Images.

In the reporters who keep poking at the Epstein story, Trump sees the Manhattan developers who sneered at a jumped-up Queens slumlord. He sees the people who treated his pageants and casinos like a joke. He sees Barack Obama clowning him in front of an entire gala. Cornered by a blatant falsehood, he’s terrified that letting his guard down will expose him as a complete fraud, some who isn’t worthy of his wealth, his office, his life. To (overload this post with millennial signifiers and) quote Merrill Garbus, “The worst thing about living a lie/ is just wondering when they’ll find out.”

Trump is living through the “find out” stage. His biggest fans are openly wondering, “If Trump was faking his anger at a possible cabal of pedophilic elites, what else might he be faking?” His life is nothing like he thought it should be and everything he was worried it would become because he once associated with the monsters in the world.

What do you think? Will Trump ever be able to admit he sent that letter? Can he ever say he was wrong? Click the speech bubble icon to sound off in the comments.

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Before you go …

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