I used to talk a lot. I mean, I did it for a living. When that’s your life, gaffes, mispronunciations, and faux pas come in batches. I blame it on being sleep deprived. Reason I couldn’t sleep was because I couldn’t stop agonizing over the last stupid thing I said in public and what would inadvertently pop out of my mouth next.
Talkers and all manner of speech-makers make mistakes. Yet, I have to say that just this last week the leader of the free world has boosted my self-esteem by taking first place in the Hot Mics category for public talkers.
The week began at the Rose Garden Club gathering when Mr. Trump declared that “Nicki Minaj” (instead of Kelly Loeffler) was doing a heck of job leading the Small Business Administration. If you’re not aware, Nicki and Kelly look nothing alike. Plus, Nicki’s a rapper and Kelly is, well, she’s not. Unless she raps in the shower. Nicki is the one that thought the ceremonial Trump Gold Card she was given was real and not a souvenir. I don’t think the actual head of the SBA would’ve made that mistake. Not to be deterred, Trump went on to say, “they call it small business Nicki.” Mr. President, my advice is if you want out of that hole, quit digging!
Not to pile on, but did you see the press conference where he couldn’t get “TikTok” out, so he just went with “Tic Tac”? One’s a social media platform and the other a breath mint. But these things happen. You gotta feel at least a little bad for the people in attendance who knew better than to break out with hearty guffaws. Their jobs are always near or on the chopping block already. But holding back even a chuckle can be painful. And they looked in pain.
The next day, not to be undone even by himself, with the lights on him and the mic hot, again he brings up TikTok and intermittently bounces between TikTok and Tic Tac. But that’s not the worst of it. The man absolutely can’t help being anything but the best and the first, so he compares his fame with one of his favorite nemeses, Taylor! Remember when he said, “Has anyone noticed that since I said I hate Taylor Swift, she’s no longer hot?”? Which must’ve been quite a blow to her, not to mention her fans.
But that was then and now is now. The man with the nuclear codes had to crow that he’s in first place on TikTok. “It was announced. You know who the number one person on Tic Tac is by far? Trump. Me.” (Just gotta say, he had to add the “Me,” just in case someone didn’t realize he was talking about himself.) That’s not all. “I’m number one,” He said, and “Taylor Swift was number eleven. I’m number one in TikTok, BY FAR,” he said raising the volume at the end. Thank you, Mr. President for pointing this out. Yes, you are ten points up in the polls from Taylor Swift’s popularity. [Strained smiles and polite applause in the press corps.]
Wait, we’re not done. Donald J. Trump is not merely number one on TikTok and always the smartest man in the room, he’s number one in the minds of those Iranian “scum.” (FYI, he called them that, not me.) He said, “I’m Number One on the Kill List for Iran!” What a stud! Straight out of a John Wayne film. And just for good measure he added the reason for his blue ribbon for this most likely fictitious “kill list” is that he’s doing his “job better than anyone who has ever done it.” G. Washington and A. Lincoln, step aside.
How many things can one person be “Number One” at? Reminds me of the kid to me in Junior High History class. He claimed Numero Uno status in every category known to man. Just ask him. He’ll tell you. (I saw one of his test scores once. He wasn’t.)
Speaking of school, I’ve often suspected that world geography might not have been Donald’s strongest subject. To be fair, it’s easy to get confused between countries. Though not particularly near each other: Armenia, Albania, Acetaminophen, and Azerbaijan (or is that “Aberbajan”?) do sound so much alike. He claimed to broker peace in these places, but didn’t know exactly which was which. Don’t forget the time he confused Hungary and Turkey calling the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “the leader of Turkey” and then said his country has a “front” with Russia. (Neither Turkey nor Hungary have a land border with Russia.) Oh well, he can’t be number one in every subject.
But top two on the gaffe hit parade for a seven-day period are those that immerged at the NATO summit in Turkey. The second-place ribbon goes to our Chief Contestant, who when sitting right next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, pointing directly at him, asked reporters, “You have a question for President Putin, please?” When they couldn’t help but chuckle and tried to correct him, he quickly spun his mistake by claiming that’s what he meant. And that he has some questions of his own for Putin, who obviously wasn’t there.
Making a mistake is simply not on the table for our favorite son. He was probably just a little sleepy from staying up all night trolling Tik Tac. Plus, like I said, when you talk a lot for work, and no one talks more than our Tweeter in Chief (now known as the Executive Xer), you’re gonna have bad days and badder ones. Mistakes will be made but, if I’m being real, the badder days seem even badder these days and more frequent.
And they said the last Chief executive was diminished. But honestly this is starting to feel like a prequel to Doctor Strangelove.
Drum roll, please, for the winning blunder of the week. And please remember no one ever accused him of being a geopolitical scholar. Just minutes earlier in Turkey our MVP swung back to the topic of Iran, and said: “We had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan.” To be fair, anyone could’ve made that mistake. Japan does rhyme with Iran and they are in the same hemisphere. Then again, he did invent a whole new government and brought into the conflict an entirely innocent country (unless he’s still miffed about Pearl Harbor). After all, it is an unreasonably high standard to expect one with the combination to the Situation Room to remember the names and places of the countries with whom one is at war. There are so many of them.
Think about how the Japanese felt. Waking up the next day being accused of launching missiles at America and discovering that somehow they’d switched on religious preference on their Wikipedia page from the category of “Pretty Much None” to “Muslim”.
I really feel for his communications team, don’t you? They must have regular spin meetings on how the president didn’t really say what we heard him say, or didn’t really mean what he said when he said it. It’s all done with mirrors. Surely they are running out of obfuscations, fabrications, and misdirections––whataboutisms, woke strawmen, and half-court hook shots back to the stolen election! Well, at least it’s job security.
barney wiget 