The latest White House press conference was abandoned today after a seemingly innocuous question brought proceedings to a complete standstill. The question in question came, innocently enough, from one Terence Blue-Bottell, attached to Fox News.
“What time is it Donald?”
In response, the Donald pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, and waved it up high in the air, and announced that he had written it down for himself that morning so he wouldn’t forget, and if anyone asked him the time, he could just show them this. Whereupon he looked at the piece of paper and announced that it was 8 o’clock.
I checked my own watch, which said it was 2pm. A lot of others did the same, and got roughly the same result, give or take maybe five minutes either way.
At this point, another of my colleagues, one Henry Crun, asked Mr Trump what he did when the time wasn’t 8 o’clock.
“That’s easy, I just don’t show them.”
So now asked Mrs Minnie Bannister, did he know when it was 8 o’clock?
“Hey, I got it written down on a piece of paper, what more do you want?”
Several of the attendant press corps then demanded to inspect the paper. Trump refused, explaining that this was too important a document to be allowed into the hands of ordinary mortals like ourselves.
At this point, a Mr Dennis Bloodnok asked if the piece of paper was ticking.
“What, like a bomb you mean? Of course it isn’t, you can’t make a bomb out of a piece of paper, that’s just stupid.”
This drew a small laugh from his cronies, but a stony silence from everybody else.
It quickly became apparent that the piece of paper was the only thing anyone was going to ask him about, at which point Mr Trump called the conference to a close and stormed out of the room in a huff. All because he had the time on a piece of paper.
The scary thing was, he believed it.