If I live to be 100, I’ll never understand how this could happen, but there’s no disputing it: Emily Litella is the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

For anyone under age 60, this may be an obscure reference, but Baby Boomers know who Emily Litella is.

In the mid-1970s, as Saturday Night Live was quickly becoming a national obsession, one of its regular skits was a fictional newscast, anchored initially by Chevy Chase.

At the time, The Fairness Doctrine, an FCC rule that provided for equal time for opposing views on media platforms, was still in force. From time to time, a tiny little old lady named Emily Litella (a character created and played by Gilda Radner based on her childhood nanny) would appear to provide an opposing view to an editorial previously aired on the newscast.

The whole skit relied on Litella’s misunderstanding of the topic.

Litella made 26 appearances in this role.

One example: Litella peers over her reading glasses and says in a high-pitched voice: “What is all this fuss I hear about the Supreme Court decision on a deaf penalty? It’s terrible! Deaf people have enough problems as it is.”

The news anchor politely corrects her. “Miss Litella, it’s not deaf. It’s death.”

Litella pauses for a moment, wrinkles her noise and says meekly, “Oh, that’s very different… Never mind.”

In those 26 appearances, Litella would work up a righteous indignation over such topics as busting schoolchildren (busing school children), preserving national racehorses (preserving natural resources), violins on television (violence on television), endangered feces (endangered species), making Puerto Rico a steak (making Puerto Rico a state) and flea elections in China (free elections in China).

Her last appearances came on Feb. 10, 1979, when she took issue with “Rodeo and Juliet.”

Now, 45 years later, Emily Litella’s incarnation leads the Republican presidential ticket.

I swear it’s even funnier now than it was all those years ago.

For weeks now during his sporadic rallies, Donald Trump has been talking about Hannibal Lecter and how mental patients from other countries are pouring over the Southern border.

The punchline from the old Saturday Night Live skits were immediately recognizable, but with the  Trump version of Litella, you have to turn things over in your mind for a while to figure out what the hell he is talking about. So it takes a while to get the joke.

In every instance, Trump mentions Hannibal Lecter and mentally ill people in the same breath, so there is an obvious connection in his mind.

I finally connected the dots.

Incredibly, when Trump heard about “asylum seekers” at the border, he took it to mean residents of mental asylums such as the one where Hannibal Lecter was confined in the film “Silence of The Lambs.”

In the 10-watt brain of Donald Trump, all of those people fleeing violent places like Honduras and seeking asylum in the U.S. are mental patients let loose from some institution.

The original Litella was a victim of failing hearing. The current Litella is simply stupid and uninformed.

Surely someone in the Trump camp has tried to pull him aside and explain the difference between seeking asylum as a political refugee and a place where mentally ill people live.

The original Litella would respond by saying, “Oh, that’s very different. Never mind.”

Not Trump, though. He keeps right on making these references, probably because his audience (who are a pathology all their own) seem to enjoy it. If Trump were to get a cheer from the audience by saying ox farts, he’d make sure to say ox farts every time he took the stage.

He’s a child in that way. When a two-year-old does something that gets a reaction, he’ll keep doing it over and over and over.

That’s Trump – the childlike imbecile who has carried Mississippi twice and will again in November.

There’s a good chance he’ll return to the White House, too.

The joke’s on us.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].