Presidential Quiz: Who Said It—Frank Underwood or Donald Trump?

Behold a tale of two presidents—fictional United States President Frank Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey on the Netflix drama House of Cards, and real-life American president Donald Trump. One is a power-hungry megalomaniac with little regard for truth or decency who is willing to degrade anyone who comes between him and the White House. The other is pretty much the same, but with an orange tint.

The fictional character is unabashedly evil, bordering on Shakespearean, in his rise to power and his associations with those, shady or otherwise, who expedite the process. Yet, in real life, Spacey has repeatedly drawn comparisons between his character and Trump, at times labelling him a fictional character akin to Underwood, calling him a “disease,” saying that Trump couldn’t beat Underwood in a debate because Underwood would have him killed first and even revealing that Underwood has been directly speaking to Trump for the entire four season run of the show so far.

In that vein, we’ve found 10 quotes uttered by Trump and 10 by Underwood, shuffled them up and posted them below. Truth be told, the key to this quiz isn’t only to test the difficulty of discerning a Trump quote from an Underwood quote but to truly grasp, by putting them side-by-side, the distinct similarities between the two men. Simply put, there shouldn’t be any distinct similarities, given one is, if I may, a deplorable fictional TV bad guy while the other is the current President of the United States.

Your political bent will determine how terrifying this comparison between the two proves, but there’s one thing I’m sure of—the next four years of presidential reality in the United States will prove far less entertaining than the Netflix version.

QUIZ (answers on the next page)

1. “[She] is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man—he made a good decision.”

2. “Shake with your right hand, but hold a rock in the left.”

3. “I think if this country gets any kinder or gentler, it’s literally going to cease to exist.”

4. “Politics is no longer theatre‚ it’s show business. So let’s put on the best show in town.”

5. “My entire life, I’ve watched politicians bragging about how poor they are, how they came from nothing, how poor their parents and grandparents were. And I said to myself, if they can stay so poor for so many generations, maybe this isn’t the kind of person we want to be electing to higher office. How smart can they be? They’re morons.”

6. “In the second grade, I actually gave a teacher a black eye—I punched my music teacher because I didn’t think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled.”

7. “There are two kinds of pain. Good pain—the sort of pain that motivates, that makes you strong. Then there’s bad pain – useless pain, the sort of pain that’s only suffering. I welcome the former. I have no patience for the latter.”

8. “I can be a killer and a nice guy. You have to be everything. You have to be strong. You have to be sweet. You have to be ruthless. And I don’t think any of it can be learned. Either you have it or you don’t. And that is why most kids can get straight As in school but fail in life.”

9. “It only takes 10 seconds to crush a man’s ambitions.”

 ANSWERS

1. “[She] is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man – he made a good decision.”
ANSWER: Trump, when discussing Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington.

2. “Shake with your right hand, but hold a rock in the left.”
ANSWER: Underwood

3. “I think if this country gets any kinder or gentler, it’s literally going to cease to exist.”
ANSWER: Trump, as told to Playboy in 1990.

4. “Politics is no longer theatre – it’s show business. So let’s put on the best show in town.”
ANSWER: Underwood

5. “My entire life, I’ve watched politicians bragging about how poor they are, how they came from nothing, how poor their parents and grandparents were. And I said to myself, if they can stay so poor for so many generations, maybe this isn’t the kind of person we want to be electing to higher office. How smart can they be? They’re morons.”
ANSWER: Trump, as told to the New York Times in 1999.

6. “In the second grade, I actually gave a teacher a black eye — I punched my music teacher because I didn’t think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled.”
ANSWER: Trump, from his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal.

7. “There are two kinds of pain. Good pain – the sort of pain that motivates, that makes you strong. Then there’s bad pain – useless pain, the sort of pain that’s only suffering. I welcome the former. I have no patience for the latter.”
ANSWER: Underwood

8. “I can be a killer and a nice guy. You have to be everything. You have to be strong. You have to be sweet. You have to be ruthless. And I don’t think any of it can be learned. Either you have it or you don’t. And that is why most kids can get straight As in school but fail in life.”
ANSWER: Trump, as quoted in Playboy in 1990.

9. “It only takes 10 seconds to crush a man’s ambitions.”
ANSWER: Underwood

10. “A great man once said, ‘Everything is about sex. Except sex. Sex is about power.'”
ANSWER: Underwood