By Tony Deyal
I almost got cardiac arrest. First, it was knowing that on the street where I lived in my youth, armed bandits demanded money from what used to be “Chin shop”. More than sixty years ago we played cards under the street lamp a few yards from the shop and all we feared was a police raid. Actually, my first cardiac arrest almost happened when the police armed with what we call “bull-pestles” raided I ran into what was known in those days as “Cassava Alley”, flew up the steps of Mrs Pussin’s house and she made me sit down at her table with her two young grandchildren, put a cup of tea and a piece of bread in front of me, and told me, “They can’t do you nothing. You here to teach the children English.”
The second cardiac came when a few minutes ago I thought that, for a change, I would write about the games people play including cards, dominoes, and more important in day-to-day life, the strategies we use to get what we want from others. I made the mistake of starting with the game “All Fours” which goes back to the 19th century and is still popular in Trinidad and other places where Trinis live and gather. One of the interesting highlights of the game is “Kicking Trump” so it might have been banned in the US if the gentleman of that name had got a second chance. I did a quick search for (and not on) “All Fours” and found, “In the beginning man walked on all fours. Then he met woman. And ever since he has walked erect.”
That was definitely not the all-fours I grew up with or on, and then after reading a constant stream of “This joke may contain profanity”, I tried a different tactic. I searched for a situation that is known as “Down to trump” when an entire suit is nominated as “trump” and outrank the other cards. In general use, it means any sort of action or policy which prevails over all others. As a Bridge player and columnist, I love the idea of a game where No Trump is worth more than any Trump, and Seven No Trumps is the highest you can reach. Maybe the Democrats should start up a Bridge school before the next election.
So I asked “Google” for “Down to trump” and got pure, unadulterated, never-ending Donald Trump. There were a few I liked. Did you hear that the US bobsled team put Donald Trump’s picture on the front of the sled? Apparently nobody else can make America go downhill faster. How does a Trump supporter explain why he cannot perform in bed? Erection fraud. This then took me to a Vanity Fair article of October 18, 2021, which started with, “Earlier this year Donald Trump announced to a room full of Republican donors that his sexual kinks do not involved being peed upon. Why did he do this? Had someone in the audience raised their hand during a Q&A session and asked, ‘I was just wondering do you enjoy having women pee on you?’ According to a report from The Washington Post, the ex-president offered the information totally unprompted, which, it has to be said, is a very odd thing to do if you’re trying to assure people you don’t enjoy being treated like a toilet.”
Behind the story, there is a rumour of a tape of Donald Trump, around 2013, “employing a gaggle of prostitutes to perform a golden shower for him on a Moscow hotel-room bed.” The reason I find the story credible is that in October 2016, just before the presidential election, Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer at the time, arranged a payment of $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to stop her disclosing an affair she alleged that she and Trump had in 2006. What made it even more believable is a “New York Daily News” headline claiming “Stormy Daniels and Melania Trump accuse each other of being a hooker.” In fact, according to the News, “After hearing audio of Melania Trump seeming to call her a hooker, porn star Stormy Daniels accused the first lady of being the one who has sex for money.”
Having dealt with the “pros”, I decided to look at the “cons” which, according to some people, is a group Trump already heads. “The six essential cons that define Trump’s success” by Investigative journalist, Jonathan Greenberg in the Washington Post include, “To borrow billions, Trump lies to inflate his net worth; To avoid taxes, Trump lies to deflate his net worth; To be a winner, Trump makes losers of those he does business with; To win in politics, Trump makes voters believe that his presidency benefits them; To avoid accountability, Trump makes the media, and truth, the “enemy of the people”; and, to stoke fear, Trump recasts perpetrators as victims.”
In an article “Is Trump the Greatest Conman of All Time?” poet and author, Jay Sizemore, writes, “Donald Trump’s success as a con artist may be unrivaled. There are many conman success stories throughout history, but few who have been able to sustain their grifts for as long as Trump has managed, and among them, only Donald Trump can claim to have risen to the most powerful role of leadership in the free world. He was elected to the office of president of the United States despite all known examples of his character, utilizing only his celebrity status and a list of empty promises, having a grand sum of absolutely zero political experience or expertise.
A successful con if ever there was one. Trump has had a long history of defrauding people out of money, a habit that has had him brought to court over four thousand times… The more you dig into the Trump name, the more dirt, corruption, greed, and examples of audacious fraud you are apt to find.”
Yet despite the pros and cons, Trump still not only has many allies but also tells a lot of them. CNN in “The 15 most notable lies of Donald Trump’s presidency” includes what is considered “The most telling lie: It didn’t rain on his inauguration.” It did and, like his leadership and presidency, got worse. It poured. CNN says that Trump’s most dangerous lie was that CORONAVIRUS was under control and the most ridiculous subject of a lie was the Boy Scouts. Trump boasted that “the head of the Boy Scouts” had called him to say that a speech Trump made at the Scouts National Jamboree was “the greatest speech ever made to them.” This never happened. Obviously, Trump was up to his usual scouting for plaudits.
If there are any pros in this lie-centious tale it is what CNN considers “The most traditional big lie: Trump didn’t know about the payment to Stormy Daniels.” Of course, the most depressing lie at the time was that Trump won the election and worse, that he might be the GOP candidate in 2024.
*Tony Deyal was last seen saying that unlike Trump, male leaders in the Caribbean don’t have any stormy public reactions to their womanising. It is always weather for leather.
