When Heads of State, and important underlings for that matter have formal visits like a State Visit or major diplomatic meeting it’s customary to exchange gifts. Protocol and all that. It doesn’t have to be some hugely expensive or rare item and more often than not isn’t. But sometimes it is. Anyway some effort typically goes into selecting the gift to be given to avoid some diplomatic faux paus. Trump of course isn’t typical and while he seems to have at first made an effort to give King Charles something special he wound up saying “screw it” and embarrassed both himself and the United States.
We know Trump is both thoughtless and a cheap-ass bastard. This article from The Telegraph provides a glaring example of pure Trumpiness. For all the hundreds of millions of grift he’s taken in (so far) this term he couldn’t be bothered to buy or have created something special. However, as I said at first Trump wanted to give King Charles a special historical artifact. A literal only one of it’s kind. The problem was it wasn’t his to give. It belonged to someone else! That doesn’t mean Trumpty didn’t demand it be seized and given to him so he could give it to the King.
Trump wanted to give King Charles a sword that had been gifted to then General Eisenhower for his leadership in WWII. Ike was given more than one such gift and as the linked article explains his Presidential Library has several ceremonial swords including the one he got at West Point which likely mattered the most to him. More on that in a bit. Technically the gift thing is handled by the First Lady. It’s easy enough to imagine Melania exploding along the lines of ‘Chrees-muss trees, haveeng to appear with that stinky man and now peak-ing fooking deeplomatic geefts?’ Apparently since staff, as typically happens gave her a list of options. According to the linked article she liked the idea of giving away an original sword of some importance.
Now, given how long that State Visit was in the works there was plenty of time to commission a shiny, brand new sword. A gilded one of course, with a gold (plated) scabbard. Hell, maybe even with the whole thing being gold, say 10 karat so it would be stout enough to resist dings. Hell, a PAIR of them could have been made so Trumpty could have his very own identical sword as the King! It’s easy enough to imagine whipping it out and bragging it’s part of a matching set and who the other one belongs to. It would be fun to see people dodging or running away in fear as he tries to play Elon with the chain saw and pretend he’s a swordsman.
But I digress. It was decided to give the King an actual original and quite special sword. The problem as I’ve said it the sword wasn’t Melania’s or Trump’s to give. Buckingham Palace has been reticent to say exactly what sword the King was given but initial reporting was that it was a knock-off of a sword presented by London to Eisenhower before he became President. The problem was the curator of the museum that kept Eisenhower’s swords and other artifacts said NO. Some thing are actually unique. That’s a word that’s often misused. It means literally one-of-a-kind. Something can’t be ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ unique. It’s either unique as in the only one or it isn’t.
I can see why the curator felt this was an artifact too precious to give away. He DID offer to find something else from the collection or to have a replica made but the WH got all pissy about it. Everyone is pretending like the discussions were cordial. If so, then why did the curator wind up resigning when all was said and done? Was it disgust? Was he forced out by a vengeful Trump? Maybe someday we’ll find out.
What we do know is that in the end Trump gave the King a REPLICA sword. A knock-off. Like a knock off of a designer lady’s handbag. The linked article says it appears in the end the King got a replica of Eisenhower’s West Point sword. Whooptee freaking doo he probably thought. The thing is (and I’ve already mentioned it) Trump COULD have had an original created. There are master metal craftsmen out there (have you ever watched that series Forged In Fire?) capable of producing something beautiful. I have no doubt some are MAGAs and would have crawled over hot coals to make a special sword for Trump to present to the King. As I said there was ample time to submit drawings and pick a winner of some contest.
This is one of those things that will get noticed in Capitols around the world. Just another sign the United States is one messed up country to have put someone like Trump in the White House not once but twice. Speaking for myself I’m glad that museum curator stood his ground. I’ll bet he assumed what I think would have happened if he’d handed over the actual Eisenhower sword to Trumpty. Trump would have KEPT it and secretly had a replica produced. Hell, he stole soccer’s actual Club World World Cup. I’d lay odds the PGA didn’t allow him anywhere near the Ryder Cup when Trump showed up at the event last Friday!
Well, we have ourselves a sorry ass excuse for a President. And he keep showing the world the United States is well on the way to being a sorry ass country.
You are correct he would have kept the sword.
Remember when the football guy (I think) showed Putin his championship ring.
Pootie took it, looked at it, and slipped it into his jacket pocket.