Trump has microwaved my Cornetto of hope | Stewart Lee

9 hours ago 2

I’d say writing comedy about the ever-shifting opinions of Donald Trump, the Speedy Gonzales of on-the-hoof policymaking, is like playing pin the tail on the donkey, but it’s unfair on donkeys. No donkey ever sexually assaulted someone in a department store changing cubicle.

It’s 4.30pm on Wednesday and I’m done. Last week I filed this column on Thursday, and then on Friday DJ Trump and JD Vance beat up Volodymyr Zelenskyy live on TV in the Oval Office to try to grab his minerals, as brazenly as Trump might grab a pussy, like a performatively cruel Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Sopranos suits.

Teenage thugs caught on a security camera roughing up a petrol station attendant and tipping the contents of the till into an Adidas bag have more dignity and honour than Trump and Vance in that now immortal moment. At least they spend the money on drugs and put cash back into the local economy. The postwar order as we understand it melted before our eyes, and the funny “jokes” I had already submitted were suddenly so 24 hours ago, as DJ and JD microwaved the Cornetto™® of hope.

Since I sat down to write this at six this morning, Greenland, which seemed to have disappeared from Trump’s gadfly mind for a week or two, has wandered back into his line of fire, the adjudicated abuser having told congress nine hours ago now that he will seize the rapidly thawing mineral-rich territory “one way or another”. Who is writing Trump’s lines? 1940s Batman comics have better dialogue. And less two-dimensional sidekicks.

“I have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland,” the convicted fraudster declared. “We strongly support your right to determine your own future. And if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We will keep you safe. We will make you rich.” In Inuit folklore, the evil spirit Idlirvirissong looks like a clown with a funny nose, but if you laugh at its dance it will slice you open, put your intestines on a plate, and feed them to its dogs. Qimitiaka nexessaqtaqpaka! Ring any bells, Inuits? I don’t think Donald Trump would bother with the plate.

The Inuit probably need to check out Trump’s treatment of Indigenous Americans before they spill their guts for the orange Idlirvirissong’s beads and baubles. Back on the mainland, Navajo people have reportedly been swept up in immigration raids, due to being kinda foreign lookin’, and Trump’s attempt to overturn birthright citizenship muddies the waters of First Nation nationality. Greenland is called Kalaallit Nunaat in the native language, meaning Island of the People. I predict that within seconds of the purchase, Google maps will have renamed it, after Trump’s favourite snack, as Island of the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish-People™®.

The ghostwritten self-help manual author’s support for self-determination for the Greenland Inuit runs counter to his belief in the self-determination of the people of Ukraine, who he thinks should live as Tolkienesque mineral-mining dwarf-slaves at the behest of whichever evil warlock has the most powerful magical eye. But, as we are rapidly realising, pointing out the bathroom document archivist’s inconsistencies, or placing any value on anything he promises from one day to the next, is pointless. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994, signed by Russia and the US, forbids the use of both military force or economic coercion against Ukraine. Ah well. Money talks! Budapest walks!

Face it. America is now our enemy. JD Vance is desperate to destabilise Europe, supposedly because of our fear of “freedom of speech”, but perhaps because steps towards internet safety might prevent profiteering American techlords pumping falsehoods and filth into our waters, and saying it’s illegal to pray in Scotland. And Trump’s vision of the future sees a global turkey carved up between Russia, China and the US, while the rest of us fight over the giblets. Our Trident missiles require American tech to service them. Our “deterrent” is dependent on the ongoing cooperation of a man who thinks the Chinese invented global warming and that Keir Starmer rules Ireland. But that isn’t the worst part of it.

Sometime in the spring of 2020, as the breathless euphoria of lockdown’s early days slowly mutated into existential despair, I lay on my back long into the night, in the garden we were lucky enough to be able to go into, and stared at the stars in the now much clearer sky. Suddenly I saw a long caravan of lights moving at regular speed in a twinkling but sinister convoy across the static stars.

Was it a coordinated Russian air force attack? Or the second wave of an extraterrestrial invasion, our planet already weakened by their alien virus? No, the internet told me, it was a chain of 60 “Starlink” communication satellites of 7,000 that ostentatiously orbit the Earth, all owned by someone called Elon Musk. Until that moment I had been blissfully unaware of the ketamine-gobbling cap goblin’s existence.

Two weeks ago, when Ukraine continued to resist Trump’s attempts to commandeer its minerals, Musk reportedly threatened to shut off the country’s access to Starlink, which would have crippled its military defences. We are beholden to American tech companies in every aspect of our lives, via Google, Amazon, PayPal, Facebook, and multiple social media platforms. Musk has shown their Trump loyalist owners will use them as weapons of war against those who disagree with him. It’s sick to sacrifice the soft diplomacy of foreign aid to spend on flash tanks while continuing to expose our tech flanks.

Starmer thinks he can keep both an antagonistic Trump and our natural EU allies in play, and perhaps he can. To be fair, at the Edinburgh fringe in the 1980s, I saw a man swing a massive claw hammer from a hole in his penis while swallowing a fluorescent light tube at the same time.