Actor John Lithgow is returning to one of his new favorite hobbies: trolling President Trump through poetry.
Lithgow read two poems from his upcoming poetry collection, Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age, on Stephen Colbert’s A Late Show with Stephen at Home on Thursday. The collection is a sequel to his 2019 book Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse.
Lithgow told Colbert that being in quarantine helped him complete the book. “I never would have been able to meet my deadlines if we hadn’t had a global pandemic,” he said.
The actor first read the title poem from the collection, which begins, “Trumpty Dumpty wanted a crown / To make certain he never would have to step down / He wanted a robe made of ermine and velvet / The Constitution? He wanted to shelve it.”
Lithgow then took aim at Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani in a poem called “Rabid Rudy.”
“What goes with Rabid Rudy / Monster of ineptitude-y?” Lithgow read. “Dumpty’s spinning weathervane / Botched his mission in Ukraine / Mixing bribes and dirty tricks / He soiled our geopolitics / Filled with rage and babbling bluster / America’s Mayor has lost his luster.”
Although he’s best known as an actor, Lithgow is a prolific author, mostly of children’s books such as Marsupial Sue and I’m a Manatee. Last year, he told Jimmy Fallon that his book of Trump-themed poems originated when he did a parody of a Gilbert and Sullivan song for a New York Public Theater gala.
Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown is slated for publication by Chronicle Books on Oct. 6.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
