Trump wants a nip and tuck

Tt’s noora kushti [a fixed fight] for public consumption

The oldest-ever president to be elected looks jaded — and he knows it! So, he asked a cable news anchor, Mika Brzezinski, about the doctor who recently chiselled her chin. “Donald kept saying, ‘That’s incredible. Who did it? Who did it?’” said Mika. “He kept asking for the name of the doctor. He literally asked 10 times.” The president had invited Mika and her co-host Joe Scarborough of ‘Morning Joe’ to celebrate New Year’s Eve at his gaudy winter resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Last week Trump sparked a tweetstorm when he attacked the two news anchors. “Low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” Mika retaliated with a counter tweet showing a cereal box ‘made for small hands.’ It was an indirect reference to Trump’s small hands and short fingers.

All summer last year, Joe and Mika aired their fears against a Trump presidency, while not offering their full-throated support for his opponent Hillary Clinton. Then something happened. They suddenly changed their tune after Trump tweeted that they were having an affair. Mika had just divorced her husband of 23 years, while Joe had earlier divorced his wife. Perhaps Trump’s tweet that exposed the pair’s romance made them switch gears, take a 180 degree turn and begin to praise Trump. Joe and Mika predicted a Trump win, when the polls and almost all news pundits were certain Hillary would be the next president. Trump won taking the three-some cozy relationship to a new high.

However, a week into his presidency, Joe and Mika reverted to their criticism of Trump’s reckless tweets and boorish behaviour, unbecoming of a president. Each morning Trump’s self-glorification took a beating as he heard his two friends bash him and even question his mental state. On the early morning of June 29, Trump’s patience ran afoul. Blood, he tweeted, was coming out of Mika’s face after a ‘facelift.’ The disclosure was a lie. Trump is known to use his tweets as a ‘megaphone’ to bully the mainstream media, calling them ‘fake news media’ and telling his 36 million twitter followers: ‘Do not trust the people who are trying to hold my administration accountable.’ And yet, the US president is a TV junkie who spends most of his time fixated on how he’s being portrayed. Other than Fox News, the rest of the 24/7 news cycle portrays a negative view of him. White House insiders confide that this makes the 71-year-old egomaniac hysterical, often seen screaming at his TV screen. Trump lives in a parallel universe of ‘alternative facts’ a phrase famously coined by his flaxen-haired mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway.

Inhabiting Trump’s parallel universe are also the media and political celebrities, Joe and Mika included, who love hobnobbing with powerful people and yet go on air to criticise them. The daughter of Washington Post’s former owner Katherine Graham and currently a senior editor at the paper, Lally Weymouth, recently wined and dined with heavy hitters from the opposite side of the political divide. Her guests included Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Kellyanne Conway; billionaires David Koch and George Soros (holding opposite viewpoints); Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, billionaire investor and Trump friend Carl Icahn and Trump deputy national security adviser Dina Powell. Oddly enough, Washington Post along with The New York Times has exposed Trump’s chicanery at every step. Why would Weymouth invite Trump’s associates to her lavish Hampton mansion and why would Trump’s daughter Ivanka and company be seen schmoozing with political opponents out to get them? My answer: it’s noora kushti (a fixed fight) for public consumption. The wealthy and the powerful in America, similar to the upper class in Pakistan, are birds of the same feather that will always flock together despite their diametrically opposed viewpoints.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 9^th, 2017.

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