Etan Cohen and Mike Judge created Idiocracy in 2006 in order to hold a mirror up to America’s growing obsession with fame and celebrity, and how that obsession was resulting in the general collapse of our society. Reality, of course, caught up to Idiocracy very quickly. (Idiocracy takes place in the year 2505.) So quickly, with the rise of Trump, in fact, that Cohen felt the need to tweet the (now viral), “I never expected #idiocracy to become a documentary.” Well, in a recent interview with BuzzFeed, he’s revealed that he and Judge have been at work on creating new campaign ads for President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, the athlete-turned-president played by Terry Crews in Idiocracy. (Crews will reprise his role in the ads.)
The problem, of course, is that to parody the absurdity of Trump is difficult; everything he does seems like it’s from a fictional film.“If you’re making Idiocracy 2, and you’re trying to write whoever’s the heir to Camacho, if you put in Trump, it would be too silly to be in a movie,” Cohen said. Perhaps, at this point, it might just be smarter to have Camacho seem rational compared to Trump? But then, perhaps he already is. As Cohen points out, “The most dangerous contrast to Trump is that Camacho actually realizes he needs advice from other people, and knows that he’s not the smartest guy in the room.”
The whole idea of these ads is great, of course, but they’ve yet to clear the use of Crews as Camacho with Fox, who has the rights to the original film. Check out our Camacho vs. Trump quiz for a direct look at how similar these two really are.
For now, you can enjoy these clips of Crews as Camacho from Funny or Die.