Donald Trump gets flustered by yet another woman in charge
Britain has had two women prime ministers, both of whom were conservatives. While the American Left has tried and failed to elect one woman as president, Britain has in effect said, “Hold my (room temperature) beer.” It was done here without much fuss and fanfare, it just turned out that when the conservatives were in power a woman was leading them and that was that. Britain two, America nothing.
It may have something to do with the fact that Britain has a long history of being very capably led by women monarchs, and even the stuffy, misogynistic old guard know that it’s perfectly within the realm of a reasonable and obvious option for a woman to lead. That’s a step in the right direction, if you ask me. It’s a step toward the day when the gender, color or sexual orientation of anyone both in power and out will remain as unremarked upon as the color of their eyes. (Quickly now, what color were LBJ’s eyes?)
It may also have to do with the fact that the smartest human to ever lead this “precious stone set in the silver sea” was a woman, Elizabeth I. In any gathering large or small she was always the smartest person in the room. The bellowing idiot that was her father and the conniving witch that was her mother somehow managed to bring forth that miracle called Bess.
Less miraculous though unquestionably competent were Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, the two women Prime Ministers to date. It was Margaret Thatcher’s somewhat more enviable lot to have her premiership linked to Ronald Reagan, and Theresa May’s curse to be forever linked by the hand, as it were, both metaphorically and actually, to Donald Trump.
Like Mrs. Thatcher, Mrs. May is an alumnus of Oxford. While she acknowledged the undeniable advantage of keeping Donald Trump “on side,” she remained his moral and intellectual superior, along with all the other non-criminal members of humanity. That Donald Trump could instruct her in anything is a joke, of course, but like most bits of humor, it was one far too subtle for Trump to “get.”
“I have been very critical about the way the U.K. and Prime Minister Theresa May handled Brexit,” Trump recently bloviated in a tweet. “What a mess she and her representatives have created. I told her how it should be done, but she decided to go another way.”
It’s unclear what Trump told her when he “told her how it should be done” for a reason. Because he did no such thing. As a moron, Donald Trump had absolutely nothing to say to Mrs. May about how to handle Brexit. It’s important to remember that Trump was in Scotland when the Brexit vote was cast in 2016. He congratulated the Scots on their “win,” oblivious to the fact that a majority of Scots voted against it.
Trump is upset because Theresa May stood behind her ambassador to the United States, Sir Kim Darroch, and refuses to fire or condemn him for leaked negative remarks Darroch made about Trump (though he did end up resigning today). Like any spoiled, under-disciplined five year old brat that you may know, this has caused Trump to instantly change his mind about Theresa May, whom he used to praise, when he tweeted, “The good news for the wonderful United Kingdom is that they will soon have a new Prime Minister. While I thoroughly enjoyed the magnificent State Visit last month, it was the Queen who I was most impressed with!” That is to be translated as, “I liked the Queen better. And not you! So there!”
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.