Bone spurs, bad hair, umbrella horrors, rain
This business of blowing off the ceremony at the Aisne-Marne cemetery today because it was raining may even get some of Trump’s fans riled at him. It’s not a good look, Mr Filthy Rich Fat Cat going to France at our expense to attend this ceremony of respect to US soldiers killed in a world war, and backing out because it was too damp…that’s not peak patriotic manly duty. They may start thinking about the bone spurs.
https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1061376205012774912
If a football player kneeling during the national anthem is an act of appalling disrespect to the men and women who serve, what is it when the Commander in Chief refuses to go to the cemetery to honor fallen soldiers because of a little rain?
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) November 10, 2018
So Trump skipped the ceremony to honor the dead of World War One (37 million) because of a light rain.
He then told the 150,000 Californians who had to flee their homes due to fire that he might cut off federal aid.
He did this while sitting in a hotel room watching Fox News.
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) November 10, 2018
That would be veterans, as in, the people Trump couldn't be bothered to go out in the rain to honor https://t.co/lwsfVFd6h1
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 10, 2018
Of all the "imagine-if-Obama-had-done it" stories, Trump's failure to honor the fallen Americans in France because of (light?) rain may be THE most "imagine-if-Obama-had-done-it" of all. https://t.co/lvcb3D74ag
— Jeff Greenfield (@greenfield64) November 10, 2018
Oh, come on, Ophelia: poor man, give him a break: a little drizzle really makes his bone spurs act up in the most agonising way.
Except on the golf course.
Yeah, but that’s golf. Golf is important presidential stuff. Besides, are any of these dead guys gonna vote for him or be arsed to show up at one of his rallies? Please.
The cap he’s wearing is protecting his hair. Maybe he would have gone if they’d let him wear a golf cap.
Nah. He doesn’t have the attention span. Prince George has got better patience and sense of decorum.
And at the expense of the French taxpayer too, of course.
Did they even invite him or did he invite himself?
Pfft you guys are being morans. Why would he speak about people that are dead? They can’t vote for Trump!
Seriously though, I genuinely think that that played a role in why he didn’t bother with rainy conditions to speak in France, when he easily overcomes such conditions to speak at his rallies. Living voters giving adulation beats somber ceremonies about dead people any day, and then he grabs two scoops of ice cream to cap off a fun day at the playpen.
To be fair, staying the hell away is probably the least insulting thing he could do to the memory of the fallen.
Veterans day in the US is a celebratory affair but the Armistice day commemorations in Europe are rather somber gatherings, and since this year is the centennial of the end of WWI, probably especially so. So I thought that maybe Trump was expecting some kind of rah-rah military parade. Instead he was told he’d be standing around quietly in a damp cemetery not being the center of attention, and since he was already in a snit about losing the House and unhappy with the recent media coverage of his press conference, plus a big dose of jetlag, he just threw a temper tantrum and refused to leave his room.
I’m imagining him sat on his bed in his pajamas, pouting and folding his arms over his chest in that way he does when he’s not getting his way, while overwrought aides scurry around trying to appease their emotionally immature God-Emperor.
#9
We Americans, as a whole, don’t have any cultural memory of Armistice Day. We’ve homogenized the observation into a vague, generic ‘veteran’s day’ with no historical mooring. Massive ignorance about basic history is almost a requirement for the right to vote in the U.S.
I think it could have if the bad-enough story was being related accurately, but unfortunately it’s been spun into something so different from the original that I think it’s much more likely his supporters will have a “fake news!” reaction.
The original story is there was projected heavy rain and so the Secret Service decided it wouldn’t be safe to fly the Marine 1 helicopter to the site as planned. This is where Trump should have stepped up and demanded he be transported there one way or another. But he didn’t. This is the bad-enough story.
The caricature story is that Trump noticed it was drizzling so he cancelled his attendance because he’d rather watch TV than get his hair wet honoring American soldiers.
Regardless, it is a pathetic state affairs that he’s not there, and maybe it’ll impact his supporters after all. It certainly should.
Trump has now turned this into a job requirement for occupying the Oval Office.
We should be fair – there may be other issues here…