No doubt you recall the viral video which shows Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yucking it up with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and French President Emmanuel Macron at President Trump’s expense. The occasion was a reception at the 2019 NATO summit in London.
They were all laughing at the way Trump bloviates – all of them nodding knowingly that he foolishly believes the more he talks, the smarter he, er, looks. More to the point, Trudeau could be heard saying – good humoredly:
He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference at the top [and] you just watch his team’s jaws drop to the floor.
(NPR, December 4, 2019)
I duly piled on in “NATO Summit: They Never Laughed at US, President Trump. But They Are Laughing at You!” December 5, 2019.
When asked about the video, which he’d probably already watched a thousand times, a clearly humiliated Trump lamely “counterpunched”:
‘Well, he’s two-faced,’ but quickly added, ‘He’s a nice guy.’
(NPR, December 4, 2019)
Now comes a second round of humiliation, featuring no less a person than his BFF Russian President Vladimir Putin playing the Trudeau role. It occurred earlier this week during a visit to check up on his Mideast puppet, Syrian President Bashir Assad. And it too was caught on video.
To appreciate the joke in this case, however, you have to know a little about the biblical story of Saul of Tarsus.
In short, he was a warmongering Pharisee who was notorious for persecuting the disciples of Jesus Christ. But, while “on the road to Damascus” to do just that, God struck him with a dramatic conversion to Christianity and Saul became Paul, the most celebrated of all early-Christian missionaries.
With that in mind, here in part is how Putin was caught yucking it up with Assad and head of the Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary in Damascus:
‘If Trump arrives along this road, everything will become normal with him too,’ Assad said.
The two leaders laughed, and Putin told Assad he should invite Trump to Damascus.
(The Washington Examiner, January 14, 2020)
Except that, after composing himself … a little, Putin insinuated that, like Paul, the warmongering Trump needed to be “repaired.” Then he not only reiterated that Assad should invite Trump to Damascus, but assured the Syrian dictator that “he will come” – all of them nodding knowingly that Putin was speaking like a man who knows how to play Trump like a puppet on a string.
In any event, it took Trump less than 24 hours to counterpunch at Trudeau. It’s going on 72 hours since this video surfaced and, so far, crickets.
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