‘You Can’t Throw A Brick, It’s Too Heavy’ & Other Trumpisms

This story originally appeared as part of my newsletter in January 2021.

We finally said a long-awaited ‘cinnabit, lad’ to Donald Trump this week! As he’s being dragged kicking, screaming and shouting “ELECTION FRAUD!” from The Whitehouse, it feels only right that we take a moment to look back at his final, and most chaotic, year as president.

I don’t mean from a political analysis point of view, of course, I’ll leave that up to the experts.

I just fancy revisiting some of the best (or worst) Trumpisms from a year where the man came out with so much utter shit that, at times, it felt like he was trying his very hardest to become a Saturday Night Live parody of himself.

Here are some of my personal favourites.

“Disinfectant… knocks it out in a minute. Is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside?”

Scientists, stand down! The Donald’s got this one!

In perhaps the most bizarre bit of medical advice since Gwyneth Paltrow suggested that consuming nothing but goat’s milk for eight days will detox your entire body (presumably because you’ll be shitting yourself for a week straight), Donald Trump suggested that a humble syringe full of Detol could be the key to killing off Coronavirus — and that wasn’t his only ‘bright idea’, either.

“Supposing we hit the body with a very powerful light, a UV light…”, he said, explaining his theory that light (???) kills Coronavirus (??????),“and supposing we brought that light inside the body, which you can do through the skin or… some other way.”

This comment is strange for a number of reasons, but one that jumps out to me is that he didn’t just explicitly say ‘put a torch up your bumhole’. I know it’s crass, but he’s not exactly recognised for his way with words.

I suppose I just think that, had he said it more clearly, we could have at least had reports of Trump fans across America ringing 911 and declaring ‘help, I’ve accidentally got a lamp stuck up my arse’ to brighten up that first lockdown.

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Turns out our Donald is a secret poet, a fact which he decided to reveal to the world with this neat little rhyme endorsing the shooting of black protesters by police!

As it turns out, he didn’t coin the term himself. Instead, he echoed the words of former Miami police chief Walter Headley, a man infamous for his abhorrent treatment of protestors during race riots in the 1960s.

“We don’t mind being accused of police brutality, they haven’t seen anything yet,” Headley said at the time, “I’ve let word filter down that when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Understandably, people were pretty pissed off about Donald Trump’s use of the phrase earlier this year, forcing Trump to take to Twitter and clarify that it was because he felt that the looting ‘thugs’ were ‘dishonouring the memory of George Floyd’, whose death at the hands of police had sparked the riots.

It’s a bit strange being taught about ‘honour’ from Donald Trump, but then these are unprecedented times we’re living in. Maybe he can teach us about honesty, grace and respect next.

Anyway, funnily enough, I do a bit of poetry myself. I did try to write a haiku about Trump, but I couldn’t think of seven syllables to go in between the lines “please assassinate” and “the mad orange fuck”.

“This is just soup for my family!”

In a bizarre rant which needs to be heard to be believed, then heard again to double-check that he really is coming out with this absolute madness, Trump condemned the throwing of soup cans at police during the Black Lives Matter protests.

“You can’t throw a brick, it’s too heavy,” he helpfully explained, “But a can of soup, you can really put some power into that, right?”

Yes, bricks are too heavy and you physically can’t throw them — news that will devastate the Gloustershire village of Stroud, which has held an annual brick-throwing contest for over sixty years and now, due to this new scientific discovery, can’t do that anymore.

It’s a shame, really, since brick-throwing is one of the only sports which actively requires social distancing to take place without risk of serious injury.

“And when they get caught, they say ‘no, this is just soup for my family!’ They’re so innocent. ‘It’s soup for my family’.”

In all fairness, how do you know that it isn’t? Soup is known for its comforting, restorative qualities. I wouldn’t be surprised if some Americans really are bulk-buying soup for their families — they might just be hoping to feel something other than complete and overwhelming dread.

“Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed some really great drugs and knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”

There’s so much to unpack in the tweet that Trump sent after being treated for Coronavirus that it’s almost impossible to know where to start. Odd really, because surely the first thing your brain should go to here is the fact that he’s telling his 87 million Twitter followers not to be afraid of a disease that has killed almost 500,000 Americans under his ‘leadership’.

Unfortunately, you’re distracted by wondering whether or not this is the first time that a world leader has actually admitted to being high as a kite on their social media. I’m not sure which ‘really great drugs’ he was on — Covfefe, maybe. Or crack, which would explain a lot.

Either way, this tweet was quickly overshadowed by the ridiculous mini-movie he posted to Twitter shortly afterwards, showing him returning to the Whitehouse via helicopter. Soundtracked by a rousing orchestral score, the video managed to perfectly capture the opening of a ‘Judge’s Houses’ episode of The X Factor whilst somehow being even more underwhelming — in fact, an appearance from Louis Walsh probably would have lifted it hugely.

I watched the video again on YouTube whilst writing this and found that there are a surprising number of people willing to openly admit that it made them cry! People cried real tears at this!

I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that it’s because, whilst watching, the disturbing reality of the dystopia we’re living in where this sort of political dick-swinging contest is commonplace suddenly hit them and left them with a feeling of impending doom that was so incredibly overwhelming, it could only be expressed through tears. It certainly makes a lot more sense than the alternative.

Either way, now that Biden has been sworn in, the button Trump used to summon his ‘Diet Coke butler’ (I wish I was making that up) has been removed and Melania can finally file for divorce, it seems that things might be looking up for America. In all fairness, they couldn’t have been looking any further down if they had tried.

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