Joey Ramone Tried to Warn Us About Trump (but We Just Won't Listen)

For years I've been trying to tell people that Ronald Reagan - yes, Saint Ronnie - is the natural predecessor to Trump, but I'm not smart enough to lay out the case & too lazy to try but there is one way I can highlight the connection, and it just so happens to be from the greatest American band ever, The Ramones and their idiosyncratic 1985 single Bonzo Goes to Bitburg. It's probably my favorite Ramones song of all time, which I hate to admit because it's not what anybody would call a "classic" Ramones song, but the heart wants what the heart wants and who the hell am I?

Recently I read, oh wait where did I read it oh yeah of course it was on the band's Wikipedia page, about the production of the song:

The song is an emotionally charged commentary on the Bitburg controversy from earlier that year, in which U.S. president Ronald Reagan had paid a state visit to a German World War II cemetery and gave a speech where numerous Waffen-SS soldiers were buried. Lyrically, the song was a departure from the usual Ramones topics. Joey Ramone, a Jewish man, explained that the president "sort of shit on everybody."

"We'd watched Reagan going to visit the SS cemetery on TV and were disgusted. We're all good Americans, but Reagan's thing was like forgive and forget. How can you forget six million people being gassed and roasted?"

Aaaaaaaand here's the connection to Trump:

Before departing for Germany, Reagan ignited more controversy when he expressed his belief that the soldiers buried at Bitburg "were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps."

32 years before the Tiki torches broke out in Charlottesville, Reagan beat Trump to the "good people on both sides" notion.

Fuck Reagan. Fuck Trump. And Thank God for The Goddam Ramones.