Thursday 26 April 2018

Trump-Macron: unrequited love in the White House


The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has been in the US on a State visit. While he was there, something very strange happened. Now read on.

Their hands touched lightly. Their lips brushed against each other's cheeks. Even in public, they couldn't stop pawing each other. On the knee. The back. A speck of imaginary dandruff, flicked from a shoulder.

'We have to make him perfect. He is perfect.' The words were barely audible. If this wasn't true love, romantic fiction was dead as a literary genre.

But then, the very next day, such hurtful words, designed to wound -- how could the young Frenchman -- young? Oh yes, he was young -- say such terrible things?

'We will not let the rampaging work of extreme nationalism shake a world full of hopes for greater prosperity.' The words were like a red-hot dagger to the Older Man's heart.

Everyone was looking at him. They knew. The whole world knew. The Younger Man had known what he was doing -- it was so obvious, so deliberate.

The Older Man felt the ground sway beneath his feet. When they were holding hands, it was as if there was nothing they could not do together. They had even kissed. But now -- he was angry. Humiliated. Confused.

This was not how a Younger Man should behave. How big had the crowd at his inauguration been, after all? Nothing like as big as the Older Man's crowd. Everyone knew that. The Older Man's crowd had been the biggest anyone had ever seen. Anywhere. It had been the Biggest Crowd Ever Seen On Earth.

He had bared his soul. He had spoken openly of his feelings. What was it he had said? 'I like him a lot.' A lot. He had never said that about anybody before. Not even at New York Military Academy when he was thirteen years old.

The young Frenchman's words echoed in the Older Man's head. 'Commercial war is not the proper answer.' How could he? He couldn't have forgotten that only last month, the Older Man had said exactly the opposite.

'Trade wars are good and easy to win.' That was what the Older Man had said. Yet the Younger Man had ignored it. No, it was worse than that. He had contradicted it. 

The Older Man had done everything he could to show his love. And this was how he was repaid. Before the Younger Man had left town, he had even called him 'insane'.

Insane? I'll show him what insane looks like. Wait till he sees what I do to the Iran nuclear agreement. Wait till he sees how I twist Rocket Man round my little finger (which, by the way, isn't little at all. Fake news, folks!) when we finally get to meet. Correction: if we finally get to meet. Keep 'em guessing.

The Older Man was in a rage. He would not be treated like this. He was the Humiliator, not the Humiliated. He would never, ever declare his love again.

The Younger Man had said: 'I do not share the fascination for new strong powers, the abandonment of freedom and the illusion of nationalism.'

Yeah, right, fumed the Older Man. Just watch me as I hold hands with that virile young Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, or bare-chested Vladimir Putin. I even hugged prime minister Narendra Modi of India -- and he's got a beard! (Author's note: there is nothing wrong with hugging men with beards.)

Who knows who I'll hug next? But I can tell you this: whoever it is, I won't say I like them. Not in public, anyway. Never again.

(Note: every single word in quotation marks above was actually spoken. The rest -- I hope -- is largely imaginary.)

1 comment:

Ingrid Lustig said...

Hilarious - poor old man.