David Aaronovitch ended his Saturday post — an elegant miscellany that took in audience tittering at a London performance of Richard III, MAGA world’s pro-fascist cosplay, the Trumpite Christers’ takeover of the Kennedy Center — with a note on the latest coup by the Center’s new director and a dive into the depths of the Friday afternoon massacre…
Grenell & The Tates
The Kennedy Center’s new director Ric Grenell wears many hats, none of them remotely artistic. Several involve being a fixer for Donald Trump’s exotic sidelines. So it was that Grenell went to the Munich security Conference alongside J.D. Vance, and while he was there took the opportunity to pressure the Romanian Foreign Minister into releasing the Tate brothers. The Tates were awaiting trial on charges of sex with a minor, rape and sex trafficking, but even if they hadn’t been are two of the most notorious and immoral misogynists in the Western world. Last week, to the disgust of most Americans and of the Republican governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, the Tates flew into Fort Lauderdale.
This begs the question of what kind of Christian Grenell actually is…
Plumbing the depths
If you’ve watched the footage of the ambush of President Zelenskyy in the White House conducted by Donald Trump and his pious veep, J.D.Vance, you don’t need me to characterise it for you. A man whose democratic country was invaded by his far bigger autocratic neighbour almost exactly three years ago, whose nation – against most predictions – has withstood the might of that onslaught ever since at terrible physical cost to its people in the lost and maimed lives of soldiers, mothers, children and friends, was bullied and harassed by the supposed leaders of the free world.
Surprised? Vance and Trump are the same two who lied that Haitian migrants – who simply wanted to work and raise their families in peace – were eating the pets of the people of a small town. You can be dismayed, disgusted, demoralised by the week’s events, but the one thing you can’t be is surprised.
Looking forward, unless something changes I honestly have no idea how that planned state visit of Donald Trump to Britain can be sustained.
xxx
Aaronovitch’s commentary prompted this response by one of his readers…
Trump is a very dim man. He can hold no line of thought that includes conditionality. He is also unable to understand that a consequence of a vile action on train track A could be to derail the train on track B. Connecting different sequences defeats his ability to reason on anything other than a very straight line over a short time period. Clearly, the King & Starmer took him by surprise on Thursday. That he forgets this just one day later speaks volumes of his grasp of how to do soft power. Of course the unprecedented 2nd State Visit now will remain unprecedented; he will claim that the King disrespects him – so what? Given that he and the hillbilly Veep have cancelled NATO – who cares?