Disaster Advice from the Donald
By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO−As Notre Dame burned down, President Trump tweeted: “So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out.” Given his prior advice on how to handle catastrophes, I would have thought he would have chided the groundskeepers for the property around the church for not raking the leaves. If Twitter and Trump had been around in past disasters, here’s what he might have tweeted:
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Eruption of Mount Vesuvius: “I like to build things. I don’t know why the people of Pompeii couldn’t have capped the volcano with concrete. Kind of like my Wall, but to stop the flow of lava.”
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Black Plague: “This is what happens when you have free trade with China. The Silk Road was the first multilateral trade agreement. Not to mention that the rats on the boats were vermin. They smuggled fleas and germs. None of them were good animals.”
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Titanic Sinking: “The designers of that ship forgot the most important safety device for North Atlantic crossings, namely, flame throwers. An iceberg can’t pierce a hull if you melt it first.”
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Tsunami of 2004: “Why do people vacation at beach resorts? A few more inland golf courses in India, Indonesia, and Thailand and the numbers of people swept away by the tidal wave would have been bigly reduced.”
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Ebola Outbreak: “If we you live in shithole countries, then this can happen. Don’t get the wrong idea! I’m not suggesting the populations of these places should immigrate to someplace with cleaner water, modern housing, sanitation systems, and state of the art hospitals.”
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Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com. San Diego Jewish World points out to new readers that this column is satire, and nothing herein should be taken literally.
Very funny and clever. How do you continually come up with these things?
XO, Bonnie