Things aren’t going very well for Donald Trump and company right now, making the story of what became of his request for a loaner painting from the Guggenheim all the more appropriate. Months ago, the Trump White House decorators requested Van Gogh’s “Landscape With Snow” from the museum, and Curator Nancy Spector promptly flushed those dreams down the drain.
Instead, she offered a piece of art by the name of “America,” which is a solid, 18-karat gold toilet—an exact replica of the one it replaced in one of the museum’s public restrooms. It’s also … um … interactive, so Trump could certainly use it for his favorite early morning public statements. The aptly titled piece was created in 2016, in case there was any doubt about exactly what aspects of America inspired its creation.
This all went down back in September, but was recently revealed by the Washington Post. Sadly, it seems like Trump has declined the generous offer—even after proper installation instructions were offered—which is odd considering how attracted he is to the shiny metal it’s made of.
The longer he’s in the White House, the more perfect a metaphor the toilet seems, as well, as things for Trump have taken several bad, if wholly predictable, turns. There have been revelations that he may have, during the 2016 campaign, paid a woman, Stormy Daniels, to keep quiet about an affair they’d had shortly after the birth of his youngest child. (She’ll be on Jimmy Kimmel Live! after Trump’s State of the Union address.) That story has brought us some weird information, but perhaps nothing as strange as a spike in donations to shark-supporting charities due to news that Trump told Daniels that he hates sharks—no, this is not another “gorilla channel.” This one is real.
Then, there’s the issue of the videos he retweeted from a racist group in the U.K., which he has not apologized for, despite what some headlines may have told you. At Piers Morgan’s urging, Trump said, “If you’re telling me that they’re horrible people, horrible racist people, I would certainly apologize if you’d like me to do that,” which is very different from actually apologizing, and not even close to actually being sorry that he did it. He went on to explain that he retweeted the videos because he wants to fight “radical Islamic terror,” despite that Americans with no connection to Islam are a bigger danger, and stoking far-right hate will only make that worse.
He also drew boos at the World Economic Forum when he went for his standard move of attacking the press, and a group of scientists is trying to get a Trump supporter, Rebekah Mercer, removed from the board of the Museum of Natural History. But all that pales in comparison to the news that Donald Trump tried to have Special Counsel Robert Mueller fired over the summer. Trump is, of course, dismissing it as “fake news,” but it comes in the wake of revelations about Trump associates’ interviews with Mueller’s team, as well as the possibility of Trump himself being interviewed by them in the near future.
If this is what a solid gold toilet flush is like, I suddenly see the appeal.
(image: Frederic Legrand – COMEO / Shutterstock.com)
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