Aaron Sorkin: As a fictional president, Trump would be "simply implausible"

Marc Tracy, Aaron Sorkin Thinks Life Still Imitates ‘The West Wing’, NYTimes, Sept. 19, 2024.

We are speaking to each other the day after the only scheduled debate between the two presidential candidates this year.

If I had scripted last night’s debate, you would have said that I made Kamala Harris fight a straw man. A lot [of shows and movies are] going to be written about this time that we’re living in now. But my prediction is that you’ll never see Donald Trump as anything but an offscreen character. You’ll see him on a television set on the news. Because he is simply implausible.

There is a movie coming out about Trump, but to your point, it is set 40 years ago.

Sebastian Stan is playing Trump in the ’70s and ’80s. I mean President Trump. Even saying it doesn’t really sound right.

It has been a pretty dramatic summer politically. What have you made of it?

Over the years, cable newscasters have used the phrase “‘West Wing’ moment,” as in: “There’s a clash over the debt ceiling. There’s not going to be a ‘West Wing’ moment.” They’ve used that to mean: an unrealistically high expectation of character triumphing over selfishness, and in the real world, there are not “‘West Wing’ moments.” I believe that the morning Biden stepped out of the race, that was a “West Wing” moment. That’s the kind of thing we write stories about.