Trump Revives Pipelines for “Those Mario and Luigi Guys”

Today, Donald Trump signed executive orders to enact construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. Disregarding environmental issues and native rights, Trump’s directives are controversial for a host of reasons, especially for their emphasis on “cool, new pipes for Mario and Luigi.”

Trump stated, “Those Mario and Luigi guys know pipes. They use them and build them all the time — and they get the princess! That’s what America’s all about.”

In Trump’s view, the two animated characters (of Japanese and arguably Italian origin) are emblematic of the plight of American construction workers, even if the brothers are foreign plumbers who fight turtles and punch bricks.

Trump’s only clearly articulated platform was to create jobs, but there is no guarantee of job retention after pipeline construction, nor a promise that these projects would in fact generate more jobs — not to mention American ones.

Like immigrants Mario and Luigi, the proposed pipelines are also not domestic entities: they involve both foreign steel and foreign oil. This directly conflicts with Trump’s statement,

“From now on we’re going to be making pipeline in the United States. We build the pipelines, we want to build the pipe. We’re going to put a lot of workers, a lot of skilled workers, back to work. We will build our own pipeline, we will build our own pipes, like we used to in the old days. Mario and Luigi represent the American man, and we need to build them up!

Aside from Mario and Luigi being famed Nintendo characters, there is no record that they have ever constructed a pipe, only that they have travelled through them.

That however, is reminiscent of their ardent supporter Donald Trump. Aside from his current position, he has never done anything in government, only manipulated it for his own benefit.