CSotD: Grounds for Davos
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Chappatte had the home field advantage in Davos and anticipated Trump’s disruptive arrival with this cartoon for Le Temps of Geneva, and, though it ran Wednesday morning, he included specific elements — in particular the NATO emblem — that came up in Trump’s speech.
I use the term “speech” guardedly. I got in the car yesterday morning and had NPR on the radio, and at first thought they were doing a story on that rambling, incoherent 90-minute press conference from the day before.
However, it went on far too long to be a snippet, and I realized with horror that it was his live speech in Davos. “Speech” may not be the right word, because he was droning in that weird voice he uses when he’s completely off-script, leaping from topic to topic and making up factoids with no relation to reality.
I finally had to turn it off, but not without sympathy for the industrial leaders and heads of state who had to sit through the combination of nonsense and insults, and the poor reporters who had to transmute whatever it was into coherent news stories.
Imagine my surprise when I got to Chappatte’s web page this morning and found not only that semi-prescient cartoon from Le Temps, but this fully prescient one, which also ran prior to the event, in Le Canard Enchaîné, a satiric magazine.
I’m tempted to call Patrick for some lottery numbers, though the real factor here is his willingness to step out with such a prediction, which would have fallen flat if Dear Leader had shown up with an actual script and some intention to behave himself.
You can decide for yourself what odds Chappatte was playing. It was easy enough to assume the disruption in the Le Temps piece, but the Canard cartoon required either a leap of faith or a keen insight, and perhaps a bit of both.
It made me go through the other Davos commentary with an eye towards the “before” and “after” cartoons. Most of the befores were unremarkable, though I did come across this interesting
Juxtaposition of the Day
These aren’t Davos cartoons, but they display an interesting take on the Greenland matter, less for what they say than for who is saying it. Summers has been increasingly critical of Trump lately, but to see Benson voice doubt about Dear Leader is quite a surprise.
Granted, polls show very little support for Trump’s imperialistic lust, with Reuters/IPSOS showing only 17% of voters favoring the move and 71% opposed to a military attempt to take the island. Benson and Summers aren’t exactly on thin ice.
Still, whether they are working to lead opinion or simply to reflect it, their defection from MAGA fundamentalism suggests that the bloom is off the rose, and it will be interesting to watch how Trump’s adventurism in other areas is received by his supporters going forward.
I’m not expecting Jesse Watters to suddenly start making sense, but there are plenty of conservative mainstream voices outside the Fox and Newsmax silos.
The Post, however, not only loyally whipped up a positive graphic for Dear Leader but announced a triumph where most people saw backing down and compromise. The story itself acknowledges that owning “parts of land” refers to the well-precedented possibility of the US acquiring the land upon which its existing military base already stands.
It also admits that the “framework” is purely speculative, casting a little doubt on their announcement of a “deal.” But, golly gee …
A land cession for bases would fall short of Trump’s original proposal for complete US ownership while still cementing him in the history books for expanding American territory for the first time since World War II when the Northern Mariana Islands were taken from Japan.
I don’t remember much about the Northern Mariana Islands in my history books, but maybe that’s why my view of history is so different from the way the NY Post learned it.
Anderson, unsurprisingly, took a different view of Trump’s big breakthrough deal, and he’s not the only person to cite the TACO factor, ignoring the maybe-possibly-could-be deal with Denmark and focusing instead on how Trump Always Chickens Out and has withdrawn his threat of additional tariffs on EU nations who supported Denmark’s rights to its own territory.
Interesting Sidenote: Apparently Trump pressured the organizers to cancel California Governor Gavin Newsom’s address to the group, but guess who originally came up with the TACO phrase?
Yes, the little man who wasn’t there.
Jones got the spirit of Trump’s speech right, but I’d disagree with his depiction of the audience as shocked. From what I’ve seen and heard, commentators were horrified and the factcheckers had plenty on their plates, but the fat cats at Davos didn’t seem blown away one way or t’other.
Trump, after all, is one of them, and whether it was worth an hour of his discursive mumbling, he apparently neither surprised nor dismayed most in the crowd.
Christian one-D Adams riffed on Charles two-Ds Addams to mock Dear Leader’s lack of subtlety in insulting and attacking NATO, in contrast to the famously deft woman skier in the original. Trump lied about their financial contributions, lied about our financial contributions and lied in saying they had never come to our aid.
The worst part is that they may have been embarrassed to hear such outrageous falsehoods in a prestigious setting, but they’ve heard the lies before and experienced the rudeness. No surprises, one would think.
Nor was NATO the only victim of bad behavior and outrageous disinformation, as Bunday plays upon another familiar image to mock Trump’s attempt to humiliate the EU. Ursula von der Leyen, as shown here, is perhaps worried but unharmed as Trump’s effort backfires.
And, really, given the political makeup of the room, how could it be otherwise? It might have been a good audience to advance Trump’s gospel of greed and acquisition, but not the best place to insult the EU.
I don’t know that it was any worse for the host country than anyone else in the room, but Goris employs enviable simplicity in summing up the experience.
Gavin didn’t miss much.
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