What Does Trump Win If He's the Last One Touching

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What Does Trump Win If He's the Last One Touching the Orb?

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town

By Charles P. Pierce


May 22, 2017



See that? That's President Calvin Coolidge in 1927, wearing an Indian headdress. Up until this past weekend, for my money, anyway, that was the strangest picture ever taken of a sitting president. I felt comfortable in saying that it would never be surpassed. But I had not reckoned on the advent of the current president*.

I had not reckoned with … the Orb.



That photo alone guarantees at least two more seasons for…The Most Awesome Man On Television.

President* Annunaki pronounced himself all tuckered out on the second day of an admittedly brutal nine-day foreign trip, which includes a stop at the Vatican and concludes with a NATO Summit and the G7 meeting—just the two events for which you want your president* as tapped out as possible. Especially if that president* is a guy who doesn't sweat the details in the first place.

Even when he was as fresh as a wilted daisy, reading his big speech to the assembled autocrats very…very…slowly on Sunday, the president* managed to commit the United States to the Sunni side of a religious conflict that dates back to the Seventh Century and that continues today with modern weaponry, $100 billion of which the president* has just sold to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis also pledged $100 million to whatever it is that Ivanka Trump is doing with her eponymous foundation.

In return, her father told an audience full of oppressive plutocrats gathered in a country where women can't drive and are regularly beaten for wearing the wrong clothes, that he was proud to partner with them in the search for political freedom in the region.


"But no discussion of stamping out this threat would be complete without mentioning the government that gives terrorists all three—safe harbor, financial backing, and the social standing needed for recruitment. It is a regime that is responsible for so much instability in the region. I am speaking of course of Iran. From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms, and trains terrorists, militias, and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region. For decades, Iran has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror. It is a government that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing the destruction of Israel, death to America, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room.

Among Iran's most tragic and destabilizing interventions have been in Syria. Bolstered by Iran, Assad has committed unspeakable crimes, and the United States has taken firm action in response to the use of banned chemical weapons by the Assad Regime -- launching 59 tomahawk missiles at the Syrian air base from where that murderous attack originated.

Responsible nations must work together to end the humanitarian crisis in Syria, eradicate ISIS, and restore stability to the region. The Iranian regime's longest-suffering victims are its own people. Iran has a rich history and culture, but the people of Iran have endured hardship and despair under their leaders' reckless pursuit of conflict and terror."

Iran, of course, is a brutal, dying theocracy, and it's surely no friend to the Enlightenment. But it actually held a national election last week. If his father's new BFFs have anything to say about it, Barron Trump will be selling condos on the moon before Saudi Arabia holds a national election.

But the sheikhs have deigned to allow women to vote on who will pick up their town's garbage, so I guess it's OK for the president* to position us as arms dealer to the Sunnis so they can settle once and for all who the true heir to Muhammad is. Not that I see how we should have a dog in that fight, but what the hell?

And Wilbur Ross, our Secretary of Commerce who apparently has lived his entire life in a Cypriot bank vault, was very impressed with how popular the Saudi autocrats must be. From Tiger Beat On The Potomac:


"There's no question that they're liberalizing their society," said Ross, who joined Trump on the Saudi Arabian leg of his first international trip as president. "The other thing that was fascinating to me, there was not a single hint of a protester anywhere there during the whole time we were there. Not one guy with a bad placard."

God, we've sent the Clampetts overseas.

One thing about the Saudis, though—they can see a sucker coming from a hemisphere away. They know that the United States now has a president* you can buy with some flattering palaver, a red carpet, a gold chain, and the privilege of placing his hand on the Orb.

The traveling party has moved on to Israel now, where Bibi Netanyahu gets to play them all for tin fiddles. Thence, to the Vatican, where Papa Francesco will be completely amazed at the suggestion that what the Sistine Chapel needs is an escalator.

No wonder Ringling Brothers went out of business over the weekend. The competition for traveling circuses is way too ferocious these days.

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