Dear Diary,
The date is March 15, 2017. Donald Trump was sworn in as our 45th president less than two months ago, and we are already on the brink of WWIII. It’s so surreal. For the umpteenth time, I ask myself aloud, “How the fuck did we let this happen?”
Most of us knew he was a madman. Hillary was headed for an electoral college landslide. But just one week before Election Day 2016, the Wikileaks bombshell was finally dumped. When the media got wind of the now infamous 2003 email in which then-NY Senator Hillary Clinton called Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld a “pussy,” it was all but over. Led by CNN, trying to add balance to its 24/7 coverage of Trump’s 22 sexual assault victims, the media pounced. Hillary Clinton had used the “P” word, the very word Trump had used when boasting about sexually assaulting women.
The media smelled menstrual blood in the water. A frenzy of wall-to-wall coverage ensued. “I can’t believe she used that disgusting word,” shouted an angry Trump at a rally in rural Ohio. “Imagine what the mainstream media would do if I said something like that!” Within a week, Hillary’s poll numbers plummeted, and Donald Trump won in a squeaker (assisted by third-party candidates, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson). And less than five months later, we are now literally on the brink of the Third World War.
The “Great Conflict” all started with a January 21, 2017 Russia Today (RT) TV interview, when an emotional Vladimir Putin recalled a painful moment that took place more than three years prior, on November 9, 2013, the day the Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow.
Months before that event, Donald Trump had tweeted an exciting announcement: “The Miss Universe Pageant will be broadcast live from MOSCOW, RUSSIA on November 9th.” It will be “a big deal that will bring our countries together,” added the billionaire beauty pageant owner. “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant?” he asked in a tweet later that day. “[I]f so, will he become my new best friend?”
Vladimir Putin was excited for the November 9th beauty contest. He had long been admiring the United States reality-TV star from afar: “He always seemed to surround himself with the best people. The best. He had a tremendous lifestyle. I couldn’t help but want to be a part of it,” Putin recalled in the January 21, 2017 interview. The dictator went on: “When I saw that tweet in which he asked if he and I would become new BFFs, I was excited.”
But as the Russian leader explained in the same exclusive RT interview, the events that day didn’t unfold as he’d imagined: “I’ll never forget it. We were in the Moscow Room of the Lotte Hotel,” a luxury five-star hotel which was not yet open to the general public. “I knew he was in the hotel business, and I wanted him to see it. It is tremendous. Anyway, we were standing next to each other talking about his Russian investments, when, suddenly, he forced me up against the north wall and kissed me hard on my lips. I barely had time to react when he forcefully grabbed me by my balls,” said Putin, tears streaming down his face. “The attack ended when a butler entered the room,” he added. “We later shared a sandwich before going our separate ways.”
Putin admitted that, before now, he’d never told anyone about the 2013 incident. When asked why he didn’t come forward earlier, the Russian leader stated, “I was embarrassed. I didn’t think anyone would believe me. It was a ‘he said he said.’ And I was ashamed. I am a Russian judo champion, and I just let him violate me like that. I was also afraid my masculinity would be questioned.”
Asked why he’s coming forward now, after the US election, Putin said it was something Trump had said in his first inaugural address: “He claimed he’d never met me and that I was a weak and ineffectual leader.” The interview ended with a red-faced Putin looking directly in the camera and exclaiming, “Donald Trump is a liar and a superpredator!”
No one will ever forget where they were the night that shocking interview aired in the United States. Nor will they forget what came next: the most watched tweetstorm in history. President Trump went off. And everyone watched it live:
“He’s a heinous liar.”
“A disgusting pig.”
“Look at him! Not my type.”
“Have you seen that picture of him with his shirt off? Photoshopped. Believe me.”
“I saw him in person. Not impressed.”
“He’s a pathetic and sad man.”
“I call him Sad Vlad.”
“He’s a weak leader. Worse than Obama.”
“Why is he just coming forward now?”
“No witnesses!”
“Where is the butler?”
“I’ll tell you where the butler is. He’s in a body bag.”
“If I did that to him, why would he share a sandwich with me?”
“A martial arts expert does nothing. Just stands there. Yeah right.”
“He lost all credibility when he called that hotel tremendous.”
“Worst hotel ever! That fifth star was a joke.”
“Why would I go into to that flea bag motel with him?”
“Liar!”
“I have tremendous respect for men. No one respects men more than I do.”
“You could tell he was lying by all that sniffing.”
“Who sniffs like that? 30 times in one interview.”
“He doesn’t even have a cold.”
“Many people say he’s a coke head.”
“He was going to lose the election. Big time.”
“His poll numbers were a disaster.”
“Anything to distract his people.”
“Did you see him crying in that interview? What a pussy!”
“Crooked Hillary Clinton is behind this. I have proof.”
“She will be in jail by the end of the week.”
“The rigged US media is a propaganda arm of Russia.”
“They should’ve never run this hit job.”
“ABC = joke”
“CBS = joke”
“NBC = joke”
“CNN = joke”
“Only Fox News had the courage not to run it.”
“I have instructed my lawyers to sue the mainstream media for airing this pathetic story.”
The epic tweetstorm went on and on all night long and well into the next morning. It didn’t stop until Vice President Mike Pence cut off the power in the West Wing, and Trump ran out of cellphone charge. But the rant-heard-round-the-world had gone on for nearly seven hours by then. It broke the internet. And a new term was born: tweetshitstorm.
Predictably, this did NOT sit well with Vladimir Putin. He felt that Trump had violated him again with these insults. He didn’t have a twitter account, or even an iPhone, so he couldn’t fire back with a counter-tweetshitstorm of his own. Moreover, he was already suffering politically from the immediate aftermath of his interview. The Russian people were calling him weak for letting Trump sexually assault him and for sharing a sandwich with him afterwards. He needed to exert strength. By mid-February, he had ordered troops back into Crimea.
Although Trump had already ordered the United States to withdraw from NATO as his first presidential act, he quickly reversed the order. And in a major primetime address, he informed the American public that we could “NEVER” abandon our NATO allies and that he had ordered General Stanley McChrystal to lead American ground troops into the Ukraine. Dozens of other countries pledged allegiance to Russia. The Republican-controlled Congress passed legislation to reinstate the draft, and President Trump signed the bill as soon as it reached the Oval Office.
And, now, here we are, less than two months later, on the brink of a massive war. And I ask myself aloud, yet again, “How the fuck did we let this happen?
- Peace out