Who could blame him? Biden’s exasperation was entirely appropriate in the moment.
With apologies to Ted Knight, the brilliant comedic actor who portrayed him, my mind immediately flashed on Ted Baxter, the buffoonish anchorman on the classic sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Baxter was a self-absorbed, insecure, unctuous blowhard with no sense of how he came off to other people. Sound familiar? Okay, I won’t compare him to Trump, who routinely exhibited all of those noxious characteristics as host of the NBC reality programs The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice, briefly becoming the toast of Hollywood and a beloved media personality in the process, because Baxter never said anything hateful. In fact, he was oddly likeable – a credit, no doubt, to Knight’s Emmy Award-winning performance. But he could be irritating beyond measure.
Baxter was at his worst in the first episode of season three (