Hi, everybody. Welcome to Hot Mike. I'm your co-host, Bill Whittle. Hot Mike can't be here this morning, unfortunately.

He was this week's celebrity guest of honor at the southeastern Missouri Steampunk Cosplay Convention held in Cape Girardo.

He drank too much quinine water during the couple days he was there, missed his flight home, but we expect him back tomorrow.

Well, there's been a second iconic photograph released just yesterday.

That's two in a week, really.

The first one, of course, was the capture of the booster by SpaceX.

That's going down in history.

And then, of course, there's this one.

The first thing I want to say about this is that Donald Trump is a genius.

He's a political genius, which is to say he's a media genius. I predicted back in 2012,

two weeks, two days, rather, after Romney lost the election to Barack Obama, that the next

president was going to be a Republican, but I said he was coming from the pop culture. I had no

idea it was going to be Donald Trump. I don't want to overblow my horn on this. But the one thing

I was certain of was that if a Republican was ever going to win the Trump. I don't want to overblow my horn on this. But the one thing I was

certain of was that if a Republican was ever going to win the presidency again, he would have to know

how to play the media. He would have to know what political theater is, optics, what feels and

looks right and natural, and be comfortable enough to sell people on it. And that's exactly what

he did. Mr. Trump goes to

McDonald's. Now, as I said, he's a political genius. He understands political theater. Going back to

Butler, Pennsylvania, the scene of his previous assassination attempt that missed him by

millimeters in just a fraction of a second was political genius. It not only reminds people that he's willing to

die for his country and go back again, but it also reminds them that he's not afraid. He's not

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