The world is a wacky place right now, and it seems like a large number of us aren’t even aware of the extent of the craziness. Either that or things have been getting crazier and crazier and, like when you’re outside when it goes dark, we haven’t noticed it happening and now suddenly it’s pitch black and we can’t find our way home.
The so called ‘Leader of the Free World’ is a third-rate comic supervillain who’s origin story is an explosion in a turmeric factory. He tweets (about not to) world leaders in all caps to show them that he’s a big boy not to be messed with because he himself does not mess around with those POXY LITTLE LETTERS. It’s easy to imagine the tango clown in important presidential meetings sticking his fingers in his ears, and going lalalalala i can’t hear you when somebody says something he doesn’t like. It’s often said that the world would be a better place if leaders had the mindset of children – I put it to you that we currently have a 72 year-old man-child holding the most powerful office in the world and it is going far from swimmingly.
It seems that every day Trump is doing something ever more thick-headed, almost as if he’s trying to prove what a colossal mess he is. He said, standing next to Vladimir Putin, “I don’t see any reason why it would be Russia” meddling in US elections, going against all the information obtained and presented to him by the US’s own intelligence agencies, instead choosing to accept Putin’s word that he didn’t do it at face value. Trump believed what he was told as if Putin, had he sanctioned election tampering would, like he had just been found in a game of hide and seek, have said you got me! well done Donny.
And, like you when you were eight, Trump tried to make up for his wrongdoing by telling a little lie – saying that, actually, he made a whoopsie and meant to say wouldn’t, not would. In my experience, it’s very unlikely that, if I mean wouldn’t, I would say would and, if I did, I would most likely correct myself rather than carry on as if nothing had happened. If someone asked me if I would like a cup of tea and I wasn’t thirsty I can say with almost 100% certainty I wouldn’t accidentally say ‘I would’. In the bizarre event that I forgot how to say the word in my mind and instead said a different one, I certainly would not just leave it be, let my friend make me a cup of tea, force myself to drink it and then the next day say to them that, actually, I didn’t want that cup of tea but accidentally said I would like it, rather than I wouldn’t. That’s one of the great things about speaking, you can correct yourself as you go, you don’t have to proof-listen to what you’ve said, then get your mum to also proof-listen to spot any errors your proof-listening missed before you submit your speech for the rest of the world to see.
So we are left with three possible, and, rather inconceivably, almost equally likely reasons for Trump saying would instead of wouldn’t:
1. Trump was scared to say, in front of Vladimir Putin, that he thought Russia had meddled in a US election, so said would instead of wouldn’t, on purpose, out of fear that Putin would either wrestle him to the ground or poison him in a small UK town.
2. Trump actually believed Putin, so said would on purpose. White House staff were horrified, and, after ten minutes of trump yelling lalalala I can’t hear you with his fingers in his what I can only assume are disgustingly waxy ears, they convinced him first to wash his hands and secondly, that he really needed to backtrack on what he said because it might not go down that well back home.
3. Trump is actually still learning the English language, in keeping with previous evidence that he is actually six years old, and he hasn’t quite learned the proper way to negate his sentences and he made a mistake. Unfortunately the mistake was in a press conference in front of the world and not in his bedroom where one of his mummies (mothers not long dead ancient Egyptians covered in bandages) in his staff could correct him saying ‘that’s right Donny, I don’t see any reason why it would not be Russia either.
As I said above, my inclination is towards number 2. That Trump believed Putin when he said he didn’t do it, and after his speech was told by many of his staff that, actually, that was a stupid thing to say, and Donny, you fucked up and now you need to sort this mess out. So Trump resorted to something he has been so keen (so keen (so keen)) to avoid since he started running for President – fake news. Or, in plain English – he lied.
This is just the latest in a long string of childlike behaviour and childlike thinking for Señor Trump ( I bet he loves being called that). Without getting into debating the premise that immigration is bad (it’s not), Trump’s bright idea to stop those pesky Mexicans getting into America to improve their lives (how dare they) was, yes, to build a wall. If that isn’t evidence of a simple mind desperately coughing and spluttering it’s way into action, desperate to work just for a little while like your Grandma’s car the one time a year she takes it out, then I don’t know what is.
So it seems we live in a world where a man displaying all the attributes of a child, right down to his tiny hands, can come to hold the highest office in the most powerful country in the world. There is a long list of reasons why this happened, from his appealing to people’s worst instincts with his policies to corporate funding in American politics to the justified unease people feel towards the way our world is heading.
But it’s always good to laugh about things like this because, if we can’t see the humour in this frankly ludicrous charade, then we’d all be very miserable – and that’s coming from a man with depression and anxiety.
Scholey Scribbles 