Trump Started a Whole-Ass War and Still Wants a... · Storyflo

Trump Started a Whole-Ass War and Still Wants a... · Storyflo

It has not been a good week for Donald Trump, which is becoming a recurring feature of the American calendar. On Tuesday, his brand-new White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, announced that Kimberly Guilfoyle had been asked to resign as ambassador to Greece following a string of embarrassing reports, including an allegation that she tried to get a Republican donor to pay off her credit card.

Now, I understand that being Donald Trump Jr.’s former fiancée probably introduces a person to some creative interpretations of financial responsibility, but asking a political donor to handle your credit card bill while serving as a United States ambassador is a remarkable way to confuse diplomacy with a sugar daddy application. Greece gave the world democracy, philosophy, and the foundations of Western civilization. America sent them Kimberly Guilfoyle, who seemingly thought the diplomatic corps came with a complimentary balance transfer.

And poor Katie Zacharia barely had time to explain why Guilfoyle was being shown the door before somebody came looking for her office keys. By Friday, Zacharia was out after just five days, making hers the shortest tenure of any White House press secretary in history. Five days! That’s an orientation session with a severance package. Somewhere in the White House, human resources is still trying to determine whether she qualifies for unemployment or whether the whole experience counts as a particularly unfortunate field trip.

With Guilfoyle getting bounced out of Greece and Zacharia getting bounced out of the briefing room, you might think Trump would have spent the week dealing with an administration where everybody gets fired before their direct deposit clears. But the president had more pressing concerns. Somebody in Norway had committed the unforgivable offense of giving an award to somebody other than Donald J. Trump.

Hours after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year’s Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a former International Criminal Court judge, Trump took the stage at a rally in Syracuse and proceeded to have the kind of emotional breakdown normally associated with a six-year-old discovering another child got the bigger slice of birthday cake. He called Pillay a “mystery person,” declared the decision “an indelible stain on the country of Norway,” and delivered the ominous warning, “And we will not forget, Norway.”

Excuse me? Won’t forget what? That an independent committee didn’t hand you a trophy? This man sounded like Tony Soprano threatening a Scandinavian country over a participation ribbon. He even informed the crowd that he deserved eight Nobel Peace Prizes for the eight conflicts he claims to have ended during his second, nonconsecutive term. Eight! Most people would be embarrassed to publicly beg for one award they hadn’t earned. Trump was demanding a bulk order. At this point, the Nobel Committee might want to invest in bulletproof glass and ask Norway to change its locks.

Of course, we’ve seen this ridiculous production before. Trump threw essentially the same tantrum last year when the Nobel Peace Prize went to María Corina Machado, who eventually presented him with her medal in January while seeking American support. That forced the Nobel Committee to explain something most functioning adults already understand: you cannot transfer a Nobel Peace Prize like the title to a used Toyota. The medal can change hands. The honor cannot.

And what actually made me laugh was that Trump accepted the damn thing! Think about the psychology of that for a moment. This grown-ass man spends months whining that somebody else received the award he deserves, sulks like a petulant child because the grown-ups won’t give him his shiny object, and then acts pleasantly surprised when the winner shows up and hands him hers. What a remarkable coincidence! The very award he’d been publicly begging for somehow found its way into his hands. I’m sure he was completely blindsided. Maybe he thought Machado was delivering his DoorDash.

And then he posed with it! Imagine spending months demanding an award, accepting somebody else’s medal, and proudly displaying it as though the committee simply misspelled your name. Trump has been walking around with a Nobel hand-me-down while remaining just as much a Nobel Peace Prize winner as I am the heavyweight champion of the world. He’s shopping at the Nobel Goodwill, and he’s still complaining that the merchandise isn’t new.

But there’s one rather significant difference between Trump’s Nobel tantrum last year and his Nobel tantrum this year: the man started a whole-ass war. On February 28, Trump launched a war against Iran alongside Israel, and two days later, he told Americans the operation was projected to last four to five weeks. By the end of March, he was assuring everybody we’d be out in “two weeks, maybe three.”

Seven and a half months later, the war is still going, global energy supplies have been thrown into chaos, gasoline prices are punishing American households, and nobody seems particularly interested in explaining where the exit is. Yet the commander in chief, who couldn’t deliver the peace he promised in the war he started, is furious that nobody has rewarded him for promoting world peace.

You cannot make this shit up. This is like an arsonist setting fire to an apartment building, watching the residents scramble for their lives, and then demanding to know why the fire department hasn’t nominated him for Firefighter of the Year. At this rate, Trump will be asking the Nobel Committee to recognize him for ending the war in Iran while American troops are still fighting it.

And perhaps the most remarkable thing is that Trump cannot even summon the basic theatrical skills necessary to pretend he gives a damn about the people suffering through his decisions. George W. Bush, for all his blunders, disastrous policies, and warmongering, at least understood the political value of looking concerned. Bush could furrow his brow, lower his voice, and give the impression that somebody had briefed him on the existence of human misery.