Donald Dates Vladimir

Forth to Alaska

I dunno, the summit doesn’t feel like a gangsters’ conclave to me. It looked and sounded more like one of those staged proposals of marriage, you know, like when the guy goes down on one knee and holds up the engagement ring to the beloved. No, seriously. OK, Donald just wants to go steady with Vladimir. Desperately. Did he punctuate the plea with an offer of a blow job in that short trip from the airport?

That question isn’t merely impertinent. Look at the red carpet greeting, then the obsequious demeanor of Trump, listen to the gushing language he uses in referring to Putin, including the first name address. Or read James Bennett at The Economist, writing as ‘Lexington’ on August 14th. Do these texts from Trump (in boldface) not make him sound like an abject 30-something sharing his worries and dating strategies on social media (my italics throughout)?

“For months, as Mr Putin made a mockery of Mr Trump’s promises to end the war in a day and of his calls for a ceasefire, the president who once threatened ‘fire and fury’ against North Korea and tariffs as high as 245% against China indulged in no such bluster. He has sounded less formidable than plaintive. ‘Vladimir, STOP!’ he wrote on social media in April. His use of the given name betrayed a touching faith that their shared intimacy would matter to his reptilian counterpart, too.

“When Mr Putin kept killing Ukrainians, Mr Trump took a step that was even less characteristic: he admitted to the world that he had been played for a fool. ‘Maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along,’ he mused on April 26th. A month later, he ventured that his friend must have changed, gone ‘absolutely CRAZY!’ Then on July 8th he acknowledged what should have been obvious from the start: He is very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.’ Mr Trump threatened secondary sanctions on Russia but then leapt at Mr Putin’s latest mixed messages about peace, rewarding him with a summit in America.”

I would add one visual detail to this sad portrait of unrequited desire. When seated in a formal setting, next to a visiting statesman in the Oval Office or in a family photo, Trump normally leans forward in his chair, legs spread and arms hanging vertically between them, with his fingers carefully positioned to create a triangle that frames his crotch. It is literally a dick move that ushers your attention not merely toward the lower topography of this body, but at the genitals, upon which, if loosed upon the public, the too-long red tie would flop.

Yesterday, when seated next to Putin, Trump assumed the normal posture, leaning forward in his chair, arms vertical—for once wily old Vlad wasn’t slouching, looking bored and insolent—and his tiny fingers kept seeking their triangular shape, but they never quite got there. Instead, they kept colliding, twisting, separating, and rejoining, but never reposing or folding neatly, as if the signals from HQ were mixed, as they must have been in the presence of a bigger dick whose crotch was thrust forward on its chair. The president’s hands were blocking our view of Trump’s crotch, not framing and thus foregrounding it.

This was the attitude of abjection in general, a gestural expression of confusion and a plea for recognition in particular. Trump neutered himself for all to see, but especially for Vladimir. Is that what he thinks a bid for the Nobel Peace Prize takes?