With ‘covfefe’ and paper towels, Randy Rainbow bids Trump a not-so-fond farewell

To say goodbye to a frequent target of his satire, comedian and performer Randy Rainbow created a special send-off for President Trump Tuesday. Rainbow’s latest song, “Seasons of Trump,” spoofs “Seasons of Love” from Jonathan Larson’s beloved musical “Rent,” recounting a long list of Trump’s misdeeds.

But unlike Larson’s original song, which measures a year in “525,600 minutes,” Rainbow distills the “2,102,400 minutes” under Trump using headlines. His performance, which runs about four minutes, encompasses everything from the president’s penchant for Twitter (and typos such as “covfefe”) to his ordering fast food for a meal honoring national football champions.

Rainbow’s parody also skewers darker moments, like when Trump tossed paper towels into a crowd of Hurricane Maria survivors in Puerto Rico and when he told white supremacists to “stand back and stand by” after being asked to condemn them during a presidential debate.

In Rainbow’s rendition, Larson’s “How do you measure/ Measure a year/ In daylights/ In sunsets/ In midnights/ In cups of coffee/ In inches/ In miles/ In Strife” morph into: “How do you measure/ Four years of this s— / In scandals/ Impeachments/ In porn stars / In Scaramuccis / In rallies / In insurrections and flies.”

“Seasons of Trump” is Rainbow’s latest scathing critique of Trump, coming on the heels of October’s duet with Broadway legend Patti LuPone, in which they longingly envision his exit. “I’d pay for his U-Haul,” LuPone quips.

Meanwhile, Broadway star Laura Benanti, who has been playing Melania Trump on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” parodied the first lady’s departure from the White House, imagining her back in New York, “the Be-Bestest city on earth.”

In her Monday performance, Benanti is seen gallivanting through Times Square, all to the tune of Belle’s opening song from “Beauty and the Beast.” Though mostly lighthearted, the skit mentions the controversial jacket Melania wore to a migrant child detention center in 2018 — the same year that ProPublica released a recording of children who, after being separated from their parents, sobbed so hard they could barely breathe.

After hopping into her limo, Benanti’s Melania takes in the Manhattan skyline, appreciating that, “Nobody puts me in a rage/ Asking about kids in a cage / I don’t really care that much/ Do you?”