Comedians, we are told, are finding it hard to keep up with the antics of POTUS. What with international gaffes, vitriolic press-conferences, coercive handshakes and a positive hail of presidential edicts, it’s hard to know where to look next. I draw some comfort, in a sense, from the thought that he is royally screwing this up by approaching the Presidency as though it were like being the CEO of some multinational. You go in there, you shake things up, you fire everyone who disagrees with you and then you run things exactly how you want them. As someone recently commented, Trump has to stop behaving like an absolutist monarch (comparisons have been made with Louis XIV) because a democracy is not a company, nor is it an absolutist monarchy. There are checks and balances; there’s a judiciary, there are protocols. You can’t just steam in there and do exactly what you want, much as you would like to.
Yet no matter how much he screws up, his fans still seem to like him. It’s utterly baffling – and the best explanation of this I have yet heard was on the radio (sorry I’m not providing references today because I simply can’t remember where I read or heard anything, but if in doubt it’s probably either radio 4 or the Guardian). Someone on the radio said that being a Trump supporter was like being a football fan. You support your team because you support your team – and moreover, you don’t stop supporting them just because they screw up. They can play abysmally, they can foul up time after time, they can incur penalty after penalty – but you don’t stop supporting them because they’re your team. You get up in the stands and you chant ‘America First!’ Saturday after Saturday.
So that’s my thought for today. Trump is a football team – and though it pains me to say it, he could be Leicester. He won last year against all the odds, but this year he is royally screwing it up and heading for the bottom of the league.
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 