We’re not sure if the Queen Mum was just feeling feisty in advance of President Donald Trump’s visit to London this week or what, but her choice of a gift with which to present Mr. Trump was both fitting and — intentionally or not — hilarious.
Seeing as not a single part of the visit so far has been without scandal, missteps, or comic relief, it would have been out of place if something as innocuous as the presentation of gifts went off otherwise, and observers were not disappointed. After failing to recognize the gift he himself gave to the Queen last year during his visit, Trump was presented with a rare, abridged, first edition copy of Winston Churchill’s The Second World War — required reading in civics class for some of us Yanks over 40.
If you’re not already laughing, it’s because you’ve already put most of the horrifying details about Donald Trump out of your mind, and have entirely forgotten that:
- Trump has gone on at length about how he doesn’t read because he doesn’t “have time” to do so (although he seems to have time to tweet and watch Fox News)
- Trump “admires” Churchill but knows less than nothing about him
- Trump has kept a copy of a book by Churchill’s mortal enemy Adolf Hitler on his nightstand, according to his ex-wife
While the Queen was kind enough to give Trump a shortened, single-book version of the multi-volume tome, it is all but certain that the President will never so much as bend the spine of it. But if he were to look inside, he might find not just leadership from the perspective of a man who oversaw both tragedy and victory unlike any seen since the age of spears and arrows, but the making of history that Churchill recounts came largely all at once: The formation of the Soviet Union, the use of the first atomic weapons, alliances forged and broken, the defeat of Japan, and the exclamation point put on European history by the crushing of Nazi Germany.
He honestly probably would have taken a McDonald’s coupon booklet.
Featured image via screen capture
