“I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. When you’re a star, women let you. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

IS THIS THE REAL DONALD TRUMP OR JUST A BAD DREAM?

The above quote hit the headlines in 2016 when Donald Trump was waging
a boots ’n’ all campaign to win the US presidency. It had an immediate impact on Trump’s chances and on America’s standing around the world.

Surely not, we told ourselves, surely this clown can’t be a candidate for the White House. We know Americans are a weird mob, but surely the Republicans wouldn’t endorse such an oaf. Well, they did, and in a tactical sense they were right. And the world is now paying the price for that stupidity.

Trump said what he said in 2005. His words had been lying around on tape for 11 years waiting for a likely moment. There’s little doubt it is Donald Trump’s voice on the tape, although the White House right now is attempting to rewrite political history, 1984 style. Billy Bush, a member of the Bush political dynasty and a cousin of George W, has vouched for its authenticity.

Playing of the Pussy Tape had an immediate effect on American women. A heap of them came forward and accused Trump of unwanted and improper sexual advances. Only a few days ago E Jean Carroll, an Elle magazine advice columnist, alleged Donald Trump had raped her in the fitting room of a luxury New York department store in 1997. Trump says he has never met the woman. He says she is trying to get a free plug for her new book, What Do We Need Men For? Except New York magazine hit back with a photo of them together.

Trump has denied the rape allegation, saying: “She’s not my type.” He didn’t venture an opinion on what might have happened if she had been his type. He has insulted brown people, black people, Muslims, Jews, the grieving parents of a dead soldier and called into question the late Senator John McCain’s status as a POW war hero, saying “I like people who weren’t captured”.

Curmudgeon has followed Donald Trump’s rise to the White House and beyond with fascination. He seems to be bullet-proof. Eliot A. Cohen, a former State Department counsellor, says: “This is a man who is idiotic and bigoted and ignorant of the law. He has a feral instinct for self-survival, but he is unteachable.”

So, what is Donald Trump’s secret? Has he a magic potion that keeps him safe? Is he divinely guided? Surely not! Is he some sort of hypnotist who has thrown a spell over his people? This blog has done a running commentary on this strange, offensive American. Call it real news, or fake news, call it what you like, but this is our picture of the real Donald Trump.

What’s that post-turtle doing there?

Curmudgeon asked that question a little while ago and we made an honest attempt to answer it. We’re running the pic of Donald Trump in pathetic pose again as we attempt to unravel, with the help of some of our stories, just who this madman is and what he is doing on that post. We will dig deep into our archives to paint the picture.

His womanising

LOVE LOST: How two sultry sirens from the south have trashed Trump’s reputation as an “inappropriate toucher”.

First #Metoo, now #NotMe
Rita Rodríguez, a fashion model and part-time alpaca breeder, is suing Donald Trump for negligence, neglect, false testimony, offensive language and a raft of minor charges to do with his visit to her Venezuelan ranch last year.
Rodríguez, who caused a sensation in 2005 by riding an alpaca naked through the streets of Buenos Aires in the porn movie Lady Godiva, said: “Donald Trump is not a gentleman and he must be punished.”
She has filed for $2.4 billion compensation, plus $3 million in punitive damages.
The swarthy model said that Trump had come secretly to her alpaca spread last year at her invitation. She had become excited when she read in a newspaper that Trump boasted how he was attracted to beautiful women. He was quoted as saying “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. When you’re a star, women let you. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Rita said the US President’s visit had ruined her life. “I prepared for him as thoroughly as I would for a love scene in a movie … exotic unguents and oils on my body, fragrant scents, the works. I met him on my private airstrip, when he touched down. I was riding Roberta, my favourite alpaca and was wearing a see-through negligee as I thought it would be impertinent to turn up naked for the US President.”
She claimed Trump was offensive from the moment her stepped out of his helicopter. “He didn’t even look at me, just started patting Roberta. You can imagine how humiliated I felt.”
Later, when they dined together in an intimate enclosed area of her ranch house that she calls “the love nook”, Trump had played around with the food on his plate while drinking heavily and blabbered on about his golf swing. “He said someone had tinkered with his handicap since he became president and ‘some sonofabitch would pay for that’.

“He didn’t try to kiss me. And as for grabbing me by the … you know.”
When asked what she meant by “you know”, Ms Rodriguez murmured “my feline bit”.
“Donald Trump has demoralised me. I have lost my self-esteem completely and he will pay dearly for that,” Rita said.
She denied that she was out of step with the #Metoo movement. “This is just another instance of how men treat women badly,” she said. “I am going to start a second front in #MeToo called #NotMe.

#NotMe, not at all
More women have come forward to criticise Donald Trump for ignoring them as potential sex objects during a secretive visit to South America last year.
Some of them have sought psychiatric counselling for depression and there is at least one case of self-harm by a waitress at Greasy Joe’s buffet in Valparaiso. The women all complained of suffering low self-esteem as a result of Trump’s indifference.
Maria Gonzales, a spiritualist from Quito, said that after her futile encounter with the US President she had lost faith in men altogether: “Just a bit of inappropriate touching and an off-colour joke which I could have found offensive would have been enough for me to enjoy his visit. It’s not much
to ask.
“I mean, when a man has a reputation as a womaniser, we women expect him to womanise. If he is not over-the-top crude, arrogant, salacious and hands-on, we feel cheated. It would have been different if it had been Obama, who was just Mister Goody Two Shoes. Trump is Mister Two Hands, and whatever else he can lay on a girl.”
Ms Gonzales said she would join the #NotMe movement initiated by Rita Rodriguez in Venezuela last week. Rodriguez, a fashion model and alpaca breeder, told how she had prepared to become a victim after reading a newspaper article in which Trump was quoted as saying, “When you’re a star, women let you do anything … grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” But Trump had tried nothing on her.

Ms Rodriguez said yesterday that applications to join #NotMe were rolling in by the thousands: “There are a lot of bitterly disappointed women out there.”

His foreign policy

PEACE PLAN: Curmudgeon urges the happy clappers of the US and North Korea to ditch their nuclear ambitions in favour of a clapathon.

Arms race, or the clap
In times of delusion, mostly brought on by an excess of fluids or simply high spirits, Curmudgeon has contemplated what would be his first action, or decree, when he assumes his rightful place as Supreme Ruler of the World. (You may wonder how someone like Curmudgeon, an avowed anti-everything, could for a moment consider the possibility of world supremacy: but we assure you nothing is out of reach during a lively session on that excellent sailor’s drink, the Mutton Bird Deterrent.)

In any case, our musings always come to the same conclusion — the Supreme One’s first decree would ban flags. That means all flags — national flags, club flags, school flags, those little imitation flags that kids wave so enthusiastically on parade. Every make and type of flag would have to go. The Country Women’s Association, if it has a flag, would have to surrender it. So would Rotary. We’d have a flag-burning ceremony, just as the Nazis did with books. We’ll take the risk of being branded neo-Nazis; this is too important an issue for us to be squeamish or cowardly. I tell you, comrades, citizens, fellow humans, the flags have to go.

Some may think I’m obsessive about flags. Let them think it; they may be right. I was reminded of my aversion a few days ago when that Make America Great Again guy appeared on the news, addressing a huge audience of “fellow Americans”.

During his two-hour harangue he stepped up to the Stars and Stripes, strategically placed at convenient height for him, and hugged it like a three-year-old playing sand castles might embrace a toy flag. His ecstatic audience of adult and geriatric four-year-olds went into the sort of frenzy that Santa might expect from a kindergarten end-of-year party.

In a perverse way, Trump highlighted the need for urgent action on the flag-waving front. The sight of a huge crowd of alleged adults clapping mindlessly because a master manipulator had played the patriot’s card demonstrated just how far the United States has gone down fantasy road.

Doctor Samuel Johnson said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. He was right about that, as he was right about many things.

Trump’s performance was straight out of the theatre of the absurd, because it was intended to prove that the American President could match his North Korean rival clap for clap. You must have seen the North Korean clappers in action on TV. Once you’ve recovered from your laughter, the sight of all those people banging their hands together with manic force whenever their ridiculous leader appears is spooky.

It may well be that the only tangible thing to come out of the Trump/Kim circus is a hand-clapping race, to add to the nuclear arms race.

His political rivals

FOWL PLAY: We uncover the secret plan to run Donald Duck in drag to unseat the president. But where is Chubby Checkmate?

Donald Duck takes aim at Trump
Hush! This is top secret, don’t tell anyone: we’ve uncovered a plot by rogue Democrats in the US to stop Donald Trump from winning a second term in office “by any means available”.

The plotters have assembled a team of specialists from many disciplines committed to their cause. This think tank includes politicians, senior military personnel, psychologists, Mafia hitmen, prominent fashion designers, whores, beauty queens, gay rights activists, pet owners, plumbers and gun store operators.

An insider has rejected suggestions that they intend to eliminate Trump “JFK style”. “The Mafia is there in an advisory capacity,” he said, “and our friends from the firearm stores are just regular guys with guns. As far as we know the President has no plans to go to Dallas anytime soon.” (Dallas, Texas, is where John Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.)

The organisation is known as No-Trumps. It is examining ways of eliminating Trump outside normal political practice. For instance, does the President’s shortish name give him an unfair advantage with the uneducated voter? Should Democrats play him at his own game by fielding Donald Duck as their candidate? One No-Trump operative explained: “His family name is not only one letter shorter, but also, like Trump, Duck has his own idiosyncratic
speech patterns.”

A psycho team is also analysing whether the triumphal nature of Trump’s name is a factor in his success. “If our studies confirm this hypothesis, we may have to consider fielding a candidate with similar pulling power. Checkmate comes to mind, perhaps Chubby Checkmate. Our candidate Chubby Checkmate could very well trump Trump. The name might also appeal to some of our older citizens from that vibrant rock ’n’ roll era.”

Asked about the presence of beauty queens, gay rights dissidents and fashion designers in the hit team, he said: “It’s obvious that Donald Trump’s penchant for wearing very long overcoats indicates a secret desire to become a cross-dresser. We might have to field our own cross-dressing candidate. A hunky Democrat candidate in a stylish Dior frock might just swing the election.”

If this radical arm of the party has its way, the next Democratic presidential hopeful may well be Donald Duck in a long dress, endlessly quacking ‘Make America Sane Again’, with Chubby Checkmate his running mate.

Our source admitted the difficulty of finding a native-born American named Chubby Checkmate. The Democrats would undertake a nation-wide search for the right person, just as the Tibetans do when looking for a new Dali Lama. “In Tibet, they scour the whole country armed with certain clues used to identify the deity. We will be looking for people who were very active infants and appeared to be dancing the Twist in their cots. We’ll find the real Chubby Checkmate. He may very well be the next Vice President of the United States.

“The secret of the Trump mystique may lie in his hair. We intend to add a high-fashion hairdresser to our panel. You can bet your life we’ll find the answer. We will field a candidate every bit as crass, crude, uncouth, ill-mannered and as away with the pixies as Trump.”

Innocent bystanders

FAIR PLAY: Curmudgeon takes up the cudgels on behalf of all odd-balls and misfits. Ban one from Australia, we have to ban the lot.

Why we should bar Donald Trump from coming Down Under
Well, why should we? It’s a provocative question. The short answer is, as a matter of fairness. But let’s not rush into it. Let’s creep up on this one.

The Morrison Government has just barred an idiotic Englishman named David Icke from entering Australia to deliver a series of lectures. Icke is a 66-year-old, pasty-faced Pom originally from the boring county of Leicester, who has become one of the world’s leading conspiracy theorists. He holds public meetings to propagate his loony views, such as the Holocaust didn’t happen, the Twin Towers terrorist outrage was an inside job and that the world has been taken over by alien lizards who have infiltrated the British Royal family. Icke says, with deprecating modesty, that he is just “connecting the dots” so people can see what is really happening in this world. From where we sit, it’s more like connecting the dotty.

Curmudgeon has never heard him speak, but acknowledges he must have the gift of the gab as his lectures have lasted up to 10 hours. He is a former professional soccer player who apparently headed the ball once too often.

All his theories are fairly staple diet for the conspiracy mob, except perhaps the alien lizards bit. On a cold night, after too many Bundaberg rums, we might be tempted to have another careful look at the Royal Family, give them the once-over for wrinkled, scaly skin and twitching tails. But, no, David Icke is a deluded crackpot, probably sincere in his odd beliefs. The important question is whether he is likely to do any harm to our country or has he been barred because he is offensive to some people in our community.

Old fuddy-duddy that he is, Curmudgeon stands firmly against censorship, except as a last resort to protect the nation and its people. Censorship can start with banning something innocuous, accelerate to burning the books, move on to secret police and secret trials — and the next thing, bang, you’ve got another Holocaust.

There will be people who will tut-tut at this attitude, who believe your average Joe and Josephine Blow need protection from ideas outside the accepted norm. Often these are people of a religious bent who have forgotten that pioneers in their chosen faith (often known as martyrs) were persecuted for their beliefs.

The censorious also ignore the obvious — that it is impossible to put the lid on ideas, no matter how insulting, crass, false, misleading or offensive they are. Modern communications channels have seen to that. There’s no stopping the cyber world, or the trolls, the weirdos, the scum of society, from spreading their malicious messages.

While the brain-damaged footballer is spreading his at loony lectures to, perhaps, a few thousands gullible half-wits, social media, websites, blogs (including Curmudgeon) — collectively reaching billions — are sprouting opinions and notions that might be offensive to some and might be even more idiotic than alien lizards or little green Martians.

Frequently, the only message to penetrate is the message the audience wants to hear. Former British prime minister Tony Blair wrote a Facebook page which informed readers that California had instituted Sharia law, Bill Clinton had become a serial killer, immigrants to the United States were defacing the giant rocky heads of American presidents on Mount Rushmore and that Barack Obama had dodged the Vietnam draft — when he was nine years old.

It was satire. Tony became a touch discouraged when he realised his readers took it as Gospel truth. Readers kept lapping it up, Blair said, “no matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we got” — thus echoing Hitler, who advised that the bigger the lie, the more people would believe it.

Which brings us back to Trump (told you we’d get there). Donald alerted the world to fake news and he obviously supports Adolph’s theory. He has referred repeatedly to record crowds at his inauguration when television footage clearly shows not milling thousands, but giant gaps in the crowd. Donald Trump has done more damage to the cause of truth and accuracy in
a few minutes than the brain-damaged footballer could do in a lifetime
of lectures.

David Icke is a deluded dill spruiking to even more brainless dills. Trump is a megalomaniac who only recently reminded everyone he is commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful arsenal of destructive weapons. Icke offers no threat to Australia, except a threat to our intelligence. Trump is a threat to the world.

Curmudgeon rests his case

Danger! Danger!
PARTY’S OVER: Between them, Donald Trump and his executive chef Lo Fat press the start button for the greatest war of them all.

Bombes away for World War III
General Alarm leaned across the ovular desk in the Ovoid Office and said: “We have to do something, Chief, the rabble are storming the Wall. We’re teetering on the brink of World War Three.”
“There’s no war until I tweet there’s a war,” his boss responded. General Alarm sighed. He reached across and flicked on the TV. The picture showed a few thousand US Marines being overrun by a million Mexicans.
“What do you call that?” General Alarm demanded.
“Fake news,” his boss replied. But his features softened. He couldn’t resist a good stoush. “Okay,” he said, “have it your own way. Call in High Command.”
General Alarm breathed a sigh of relief. He quickly put in calls to General Alert, chief of the Army, General Mal Laise, homeland security, and General El O’Quent, the Irish-born specialist on Spanish American languages. General El E. Gant, OIC. uniforms and supplies, could not be contacted; he was later found drunk in a nightclub with his batman Corpulent O’Bese. General Assembly, head chaplain, refused to answer his phone.
Alarm was about to ring General de Bility, head of Defense Medical Corpse, when his boss reached across the desk, snatched Alarm’s cell phone and flung it out the Oval window.
“Why’d you do that?” the general demanded. “How we gonna patch up our wounded?”
“We won’t have any casualties. I’ve already tweeted. No casualties.”
When High Command was seated around the ovular desk, President MAGA Trump called in his close friend and top adviser, the executive chef at the Chop House, Lo Fat. They didn’t beat around the bush. Lo Fat handed his chief a menu. MAGA looked Lo Fat in the eye and asked: “What do you recommend?”
“Bombe Alaska,” said Lo Fat.
The President tweeted. And that was the start of World War III.

His provenance

TWEET TIMES: Tyrannosaurus Trump’s twittering gives us the low-down on how evolution missed its mark.

Fossil find and genetics hints at reptile revival
The president slapped his palm down on the Oval Office desk and whooped like Sitting Bull at Little Big Horn. The vice president sat up straighter in his chair across the desk from the president.

There was no fooling Mike Pence; he knew something big was happening. He hadn’t worked two gruelling years with Donald “Make America Great Again” Trump without picking up something from his moods and manners. His boss was staring past Mike’s left ear at news footage of the demonstrations in Hong Kong. Two million people crammed the streets — men, women, teens and babies — as if they were part of a monstrous human sardine contest.

Pence couldn’t hear what was happening because MAGA kept the news sound off; it interfered with sports coverage on the other TV channels. The president sprang from his chair, skipped around his big desk and confronted the television. He moved so close, staring into the overheated set, that his golden coif, the spearhead of his hair, started to sag and droop. The president flipped it back into place.

“So, they’ve backed down,” he bellowed. “They’re finally showing us the real pictures.” Mike bit his tongue. He knew when silence was golden. “You got nothing to say about this, Mr Vice President?” MAGA put on his pouty face, a throwback to his 11-year-old self throwing a tantrum.

Pence had to do something or his afternoon was ruined. He took a punt. Maybe his boss had mixed up Hong Kong’s constitutional crisis with MAGA’s trade war on China. “Looks like they’re all on your side, Mr President.”

“Of course they were on my side! I’d just been elected their president, hadn’t I? They were loyal Republicans showing their pleasure and support, I was holding the hand of the best looking-woman for her age in the world, I was going to revolutionise modern America, save it from the socialists and black scum and the spics and wops storming our borders, I was going to build the wall and drain the swamp. Why wouldn’t they be happy as ruttin’ hogs in a mud hole?”

Clearly it still grated with MAGA that many of the elite refused to acknowledge the overwhelming acceptance of his victory by the people.

Some days Mike Pence wondered why he had taken the job. This was one of them. But deep down he knew why. They’d come to him on bended knee. We need someone to balance his excesses, they said. They’d looked at Mike’s home page and knew in their hearts that he was the one.

The page revealed that Mike was the son of a wholesome heterosexual couple, Edward and Nancy Pence; his grandfather, Richard, had come to America from the non-Muslim country of Ireland. As a former US congressman and state governor Mike had been proud to serve the white and Christian population of America for more than two decades.

Crucially, he had signed up for the Billy Graham Rule, which was a pledge to avoid sexual temptation by not spending time alone with women other than his wife. This challenging promise was named after the famous evangelist, but recently has been called the Mike Pence Rule in tribute to the vice president’s strong compliance. The makers and breakers figured that Mike’s obvious abstemious piety would balance Donald’s promiscuity.

The only minor worry was an advertisement across the bottom of his home page “Paid for by the people for Mike Pence”. It stated: “This is a reminder to kill all your tiny dogs” and it instructed readers to “Sign up to receive email notifications regarding best ways to do so, including strangling, drowning and others.” Ah well, we all have our little foibles.

“Snap out of it, Mike,” MAGA shouted in his ear. The president was thumping out a tweet on his mobile phone.

“The people will always decide,” he read slowly as his nimble fingers danced across the keyboard. “You cannot fool the people.”

“Jackpot! You’re right on the money, chief,” his deputy enthused.

MAGA walked over to the TV again. Hong Kong’s big crush was still playing. It was big news. Donald bent in close to the screen, holding his coif for protection.

“Something funny about it, Mike,” he said. “They’ve photoshopped every face in this crowd, made them all look like Chinese. Millions of them. I don’t remember any Chinese at my inauguration.”

Mike Pence smiled. Just another work day at the Oval Office.

What if Trump is trumped?

Curmudgeon’s rambling rumination above raises the question of how America and the world would fare if Trump were to die, or be incapacitated, or be successfully impeached, or be officially recognised as insane and put away for the safety of himself and humanity. Would we be better or worse off under an uninspiring President Mike Pence?

Before we explore that question, let’s look at the past. Four US presidents have been assassinated, creating four occasions when the vice president automatically moves up a rung and into the White House. Lyndon Johnson’s takeover after JFK’s murder in Dallas in 1963 was the only occasion this has happened in any of our lifetimes.

It was only sheer chance that Johnson was the vice president. But he made the most of it. He dragged out that war that should never have been in Vietnam as a matter of personal pride: “I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the president who saw South-East Asia go the way China went.”

He was bellicose, but he was at least rational. That’s not the way of all vice presidents. US vice presidents, when they run for office, are often unknowns outside America. They are people with tentacles deep into the nation’s political machinery; people backed up by money, who have pulling power, at least in a local or regional sense.

Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon’s offsider, had a colourful turn of phrase to match a colourful personality. He has recently been tagged “Trump before Trump”. Spiro avoided a lot of scrutiny early in his term because attention was focused on his crooked boss. When the spotlight fell on him, Agnew was judged a suitable running partner for Nixon. He was crooked as an old shillelagh and was forced to step down.

Here’s a slice of Agnew’s take on life.

Spiro had no time for the esoteric: “The intellectual is the man who doesn’t know how to park a bike.”

Or women: “Three things have been difficult to tame: the oceans, fools and women. We may soon be able to tame the oceans; fools and women will take a little longer.”

Or critics: “In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.”

And he didn’t bow out with great grace: “I apologise for lying to you. I promise I won’t deceive you except in matters of this sort.”

Of all the vice presidents, Dan Quayle set the gold standard for mangled language and muddled thinking.

He became famous for his linguistic slip-ups and in some ways was America’s answer to England’s Dr Spooner, although possessed of a totally different approach.

The Reverend Spooner, an Oxford don, unintentionally but habitually transposed the beginning of two or more words in the same sentence. He probably suffered dyslexia. We’ll come back to Spooner later. Or, as the man himself might have said, “we’ll come back to looner spater”.

First, let’s browse through just a few of Dan Quayle’s hundreds of wordy mishaps..

“When I have been asked during these last weeks who caused the riots and the killing in LA, my answer has been direct and simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are
to blame.”

Hmm… deep, Dan, deep.

“What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.”

A subject he turned to time and again …

“We’re going to have the best-educated American people in the world.”

“Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teaches our children.”

Because we need to be prepared for the future …

“[It’s] time for the human race to enter the solar system.”

“The future will be better tomorrow.”

“It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and our water…”

“For NASA, space is still a high priority.”

“I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.”

“We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.”

And finally…

“The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make.”

So, how does quirky Quayle stack up against the Rev. William Archibald Spooner, Oxford don, English eccentric and a person beloved of cryptic crossword compilers?

To be honest, they are in different divisions of the Addled Aphorism Association. Spooner’s linguistic slips came out unconsciously. Announcing the next hymn in New College Chapel, Oxford, in 1879, he intoned: “Kinquering Congs their titles take…”

And he is said to have dismissed a student, one among those whom the outraged Spooner complained had “hissed their mystery classes”, with: “You deliberately tasted two worms and you can leave Oxford by the town drain.”

Quayle was equally aware of his problem and equally powerless to stop it. In the end he said: “I stand by all my misstatements.”

So, what’s the post-turtle doing?

Yankee-speak is altogether different. Although Curmudgeon is deeply distressed by the wholesale massacre of Oz slang through the invasion of American film, television and literature, we accept the Yanks have a genius for making new words that simply breathe meaning. Wimp is a good example.

There were various theories about its origin when it popped into the language a few decades ago, one of them that the US broadcaster and bigot Rush Limbaugh coined it as meaning Women Influenced Male Person. For readers lucky enough to be unaware of Limbaugh, we can tell you he is somewhere to the right of Genghis Kahn and Ray Hadley, regularly mocking the poor and disadvantaged on his national radio show.

On television when Bill Clinton was president, Rush did a segment about dogs while a photo of Bill and Hilary’s daughter, Chelsea, was displayed on screen. He later claimed it was an accident caused by one of the TV crew. But Curmudgeon reckons Rush is avoiding the truth; he is a wimp.

Our mate Peter Lander says it helps if you bring to mind the picture of a typical American redneck in bib ’n’ brace overalls, sucking on a stalk of grass. This old guy drawls: “When you’re driving down a country road, son, and you see a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a post-turtle. You know he didn’t get up there by himself. He doesn’t belong there; you wonder who put him there; he can’t get anything done while he’s up there; and you just want to help the poor, dumb thing down.”

It’s as American as apple pie or starting wars, and naturally various politicians have used it as a down-home illustration of whatever they’re about. The most famous was Bill Clinton’s explanation of the relative peace and prosperity during his reign in the White House. He’s saying it didn’t just happen by chance. It was like a post-turtle, someone had put it there.

Well, that’s it, folks: The Curmudgeonly view of a very strange, offensive, dangerous leader of the Western world. And we are certainly not alone
in our sense of alarm. Here’s a taste of what plenty of Americans think of their President.