When I was a kid, one of my favorite late Saturday night past times was to watch reruns of Rod Serling’s anthology series known as The Twilight Zone. I loved the show because the stories usually weren’t exceptionally scary (except for an episode called Living Doll, which featured actor Telly Savalas, who I knew more for the Kojak detective series, doing battle with a sinister and eventually murderous doll named Talky Tina).

The show was popular on network television for five seasons (1959 – 1964), but I watched it in reruns in the early 1970s. The show was so well done, however, that many of the episodes held up well then and still do today. It was also fun to see actors who had become big stars by the 1970s performing in many of the early Twilight Zone episodes.  Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner and George Takei made appearances prior to their Star Trek fame. Carol Burnett, Elizabeth Montgomery, Burt Reynolds, and Robert Redford appeared, among others.

The episodes were usually simple. They were filmed in black-and-white, with few special effects. However, the unusual twists at the end of many of the stories could range from heartwarming to downright creepy; yet they never failed to entertain.

I would never have imagined that now, more than 50 years later that I would find myself living in what could be considered a real-life version of a Twilight Zone episode.

Donald Trump, the supposed billionaire businessperson, and host of the television show The Apprentice rode down the golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for President of the United States. I’ll admit that I didn’t take it seriously. The speech itself was bizarre (Trump, 2015). He started off by talking about how the United States was “in trouble” and that our enemies were “beating us” and “laughing at us.” When he started to rant about Mexico sending its “drug dealers and rapists,” I thought, “He’s cooked. There is no way that anyone will vote for him after he made such openly racist remarks.” Although I didn’t realize it at the time, my recent research has shown that the speech was also filled with misleading statements and outright lies.   He claimed that there were “90 million” unemployed Americans (Trump, 2015), but according to a news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) there were actually only about 8.3 million unemployed Americans in June of 2015 and the unemployment rate had decreased by 375,000 Americans from the previous month (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015).He claimed that there were “50 million Americans living in poverty” (Trump, 2015), but failed to mention that as a percentage of total U.S. population, the poverty rate was, in fact, decreasing. According to a U. S. Census Bureau report the percentage of Americans living in poverty was 13.5%, however, that was down from 14.8% in 2014 (Proctor, 2016).

That didn’t seem to matter, and during the GOP primary debates Trump insulted moderator Megyn Kelly in one debate and made a tasteless joke about the “size of his hands” in another. He was booed by the audience on two separate occasions. In the first debate, Trump drew the wrath of the audience when he indicated that if he were not the eventual GOP nominee, he could not say unequivocally that he would support whichever candidate was the nominee. Additionally, in the eighth debate (were there really eight?) he was booed again for telling Jeb Bush to “shush” ( (Frazier, 2023) and still he continued to lead in the polls.

By this time, I began to feel as if mobster John Gotti should be stripped of the “Teflon Don” nickname so that it could be awarded to Trump. Nothing seemed to stick to this guy, not the vulgar comments about women in the leaked Access Hollywood interview (Alberta, 2019), not the wisecrack he made on the campaign trail just before the Iowa Caucuses when he now famously said,  “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” (Dwyer, 2016).

I remember the feelings of shock and disbelief when Trump won and except for the respite we received during President Joe Biden’s term, those feelings have not only continued but also have intensified. The dark and dystopian inaugural speech, sending press secretary Sean Spicer to lie about the crowd size, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Muslim travel ban, the downplaying of the COVID-19 pandemic and finally, the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol seem like one long and uncharacteristically frightening Twilight Zone episode.

Then, in November 2024 came the horrifying realization that a segment of the American public was willing to sign up for the “mayhem and foolishness” (Nash, 2003) yet again. Now, as we wait for the draconian effects of the “big, beautiful budget bill” to take effect, the ICE raids and deportations to be ramped up, and for racists across the country to feel secure in the knowledge that they can parade their bigotry on full display, I am reminded of perhaps the scariest Twilight Zone episode of all. Airing originally on January 23, 1963, the episode entitled He’s Alive (Serling, 1963)should give us all pause. It is frightening on a number of levels and while I won’t give any spoilers here, I’d encourage you to watch it – if you dare.

References

Alberta, T. (2019, July 10). ‘Mother Is Not Going to Like This’: The 48 Hours That Almost Brought Down Trump. Politico. Retrieved July 8, 2025, from https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/10/american-carnage-excerpt-access-hollywood-tape-227269/

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2015). The Employment Situation. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Labor. Retrieved July 8, 2025, from https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_07022015.pdf

Dwyer, C. (2016, January 23). Donald Trump: ‘I Could … Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn’t Lose Any Voters’. Retrieved July 8, 2025, from https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029/donald-trump-i-could-shoot-somebody-and-i-wouldnt-lose-any-voters

Frazier, K. (2023, August 8). Looking back at Trump’s biggest GOP debate moments. Politico. Retrieved July 8, 2025, from https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/22/republican-debate-trump-skip-00112238

Nash, N. (2003). Clean House. Style Network.

Proctor, B. D. (2016). Income and Poverty in the United States:2015. Washington, D. C.: United States Census Bureau. Retrieved July 8, 2025, from https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.html#:~:text=The%20official%20poverty%20rate%20in,before%20the%20most%20recent%20recession.

Serling, R. (Writer), & Roseberg, S. (Director). (1963). He’s Alive [Motion Picture].

Trump, D. J. (2015). Announcement of Candidacy speech. New York, New York: C-SPAN. Retrieved July 8, 2025, from https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20191211/110331/HMKP-116-JU00-20191211-SD1001.pdf