Josh Radnor Image by Getty/Dimitrios Kambouris/Staff

By PJ Grisar June 22, 2020

Bob Dylan isn’t the only Jew who can sing longform ballads about presidential tragedies.

“How I Met Your Mother” star Josh Radnor has set President Trump’s protracted monologue about his careful descent of a ramp at West Point to music. By the musician’s own admission, the speech is pretty bad lyrically.

If you haven’t yet seen the clip from Trump’s Saturday rally in Tulsa, Radnor does a good job cramming its many asides into six minutes. From Trump’s grousing about his leather-soled shoes and slippery surface of the ramp to the mentions of embarrassing presidential tumbles and stomach upsets past, Radner brings some vitality to the rant with music many are likening to a late-career Mark Kozelek track.

“HIMYM” fans may appreciate the many times the word “general” is dropped in the video and the president’s frequent references to his salute of graduating cadets.

The track is the furthest thing from an earworm, but, as recent Radnor efforts go, this one’s pretty good at least as a substitute for the real thing. That’s not to say the clip is everything it might have been.

Had Radnor capped his performance with a steady, one-handed sip from a glass of water, then we’d really have something.

Thankfully, Henry Winkler’s got us covered.

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture fellow. He can be reached at Grisar@Forward.com.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount