So I went to America and Washington DC last week and came across what I mistakenly thought was a Black Friday sale. But it turns out I'd got my days wrong and Black Friday in America actually always falls on a Friday. And this was a Wednesday. It turns out that that I'd stumbled upon a riot in the capitol building. Literally a once in a lifetime event - unless you were 207 years old.
And on a side note, I bet if you were 207 years old, you'd be interviewed on the ITV Evening News and putting your longevity down to whisky, fine wines or smoking 20-a-day. If there's one conspiracy theory that I absolutely buy into it's that all of these things that the "man" tells us are bad for us are definitely what's keeping us alive, and they tell us sugar is bad for us because the post office staff can't cope with a population with an average age of 150.
Anyway, I was storming the capital and I was following a man with a flag who claimed to be a victim - and to be fair, he did seem like a loser, but that's quite possibly because he was carrying the flag of a side that lost a war.
Now some people get the wrong idea about these guys. And I think the confusion arises because what these fellas want is to find out who won the election and to make sure everything was fair and above board. Now there is a flag for American democracy and it looks like this:
but it's actually really hard to get hold of these in America because, for reasons that will never really become clear, they are often bulk bought in American schools where children have to pledge allegiance to them every morning in a thing that is in no way like a cult. Seems completely unnecessary to me. Flags don't need allegiance. They're flags. They don't want anything. If I went to an American school, I would be writing instructions on flags every night so when people came in the next day and pledged allegiance to them, the whole class have to stand on their desks and dance like Elvis whenever the teacher took a sip of their coffee. Really batshit instructions written on a flag so that all of the students had to obey it or break their pledge. "Move all of your desks to the playground and arrange them in the same rows out there but you may not step outside the classrooms!" Real Taskmaster style stuff.
Anyway the problem is because of all the schools buying these they can be really hard to come by, but luckily nobody wants the confederate flag on account of the fact that they were the losing side in a war and generally accepted to be the side of the dickheads. Unfortunately that means that those turning up just to see a fair counting of the ballots takes place do carry the flag of the side of the civil war who were fighting to preserve slavery and it's all too easy for the media to see a bunch of white people carrying a flag that was adopted by the people who wanted to own black people and leap to the conclusion that actually they're not really into democracy they just want to beat the shit out of someone, ideally someone they own. They're probably just the cheaper flags. We know how much these protestors love a bargain. Just like in the UK you can get a bag of broken or misshapen biscuits cheap in some supermarkets, in the USA you can buy hoodies for the third Captain America film cheaply if they've got the wrong release date for the movie on them.
Weird that they made such a basic mistake when Civil War came out in 2016, before the merch had to be pulled due to the wrong release date and the decision not to rebrand Marvel and Marvels Awesome Great Adventures after all, so this guy picked up a bargain, purely because he couldn't afford to buy a Black Widow or Black Panther 2 sweatshirt with the dates of actual films - being led by women and black actors who I'm sure he'd like to support - that might actually be released in 2021.
Mistakes were made at the Capitol protests. For a start they this confusion could have been avoided if they'd tied the slave owner flags to the railings outside and believe me this was the original plan. We even asked one guy to bring his cable ties in order to do this, but weirdly at the last minute the police moved the very barriers they had planned on attaching them to. And you wouldn't want to argue with a police officer now would you. I mean you could end up dead or receiving directions to the office of Nancy Pelosi, depending on if you were black or white.
Because of course the police are a very powerful presence in America. But it's important to know, in times like these especially, where the source of power lies in a country. Is it with the President or the House of Representatives or the Senate? Well reassuringly the most powerful force in America is actually the same as it is in the UK and the most powerful thing ever created is the velvet rope.
It is genuinely reassuring to know that even during a coup everyone stayed between the velvet ropes. It's the one rule nobody ever wants to be caught breaking and in a way that's good. Sure our next president may be fair game for assassination attempts, mob justice and beatings, but we can sleep a little safer at night knowing that the wax works of the former presidents are safe in Madame Tussauds.
The truth here is that these people just wanted to make their voices heard, and they would have quite happily peacefully kneeled down before a football match if that wasn't the worst kind of protest possible, so really vandalising the home of your nation's proud democracy is the only way.
The capitol building was placed in a state of lockdown! Which meant that rioters were only allowed to steal the art works if they had a substantial meal first.
Joe Biden, a man who shares his name with a van that took all those Trump votes to the recycling plant, went on TV and told the president that he should speak out and tell the rioters to stop, which very unfairly distracted Trump and he missed the putt and the ball went straight passed the hole. So everyone agreed, at the president's insistence, that it was very unfair and they just put it down as a hole in 3, although some fake newser he was playing with pointed out he'd already taken 5 shots getting the ball to the green.
And to be fair to Trump he did go on TV and said "the election was fraudulent and we love all the people rioting in Capitol Hill." Now Trump is "not a stupid man" (source: Donald Trump speaking in 2018) and "has all the best words" (Source: Donald Trump speaking in 2016) and so sometimes you have to read between the lines. Whenever my wife says "Dan, I love you but..." it usually means that I should stop doing whatever it is I'm doing.
But the problem with rioters is that very often nuance and reading between the lines don't stand a chance. That's why Donald Trump had to spell out for them exactly how and when to march on the Capitol building in a public speech before hand rather than be more subtle about it or try to pass off the responsibility to Alex Jones or one of the other right wing thugs - honestly why they still let her host the One Show, I do not know.
If you missed the footage of Donald Trump stoking up the crowd by calling the election results "bullshit" by the way, then please don't worry, as it will not the last time that you see an angry mob in front of Donald Trump chanting "bullshit."
But I know we don't want to give Donald Trump credit for anything, but he did actually come out on TV and ask for rioters to stop what they were doing. He did that on Wednesday 13th of January, just ONE WEEK after the rioting. ONE WEEK! That's literally the lowest number of weeks. How could someone be expected to act sooner? I mean, yes I guess you could have minus weeks. He could have said "please don't start rioting" on 31st December 2020 minus one week after the riots happened, but honestly is he supposed to be able to predict the future? Look none of us could have acted quicker. The first indication that anything was even going to kick off was right at the very last minute...of 2016.
I don't want to come over all Fox News here, but Donald Trump's election that he won happened during the Obama administration, so isn't all this really Obama's fault?
Look the President really didn't have time to address the rioters any sooner. He was too busy on the phone to the president of Iraq who was sarcastically calling every 20 minutes to ask if he should send peace keepers to America to secure it's democracy. Meanwhile Trump considered mobilising the national guard, to attack Twitter who it was claimed had a little blue exclamation point they could deploy in 45 minutes.
Twitter had an interesting role to play in this as people across the globe spent the night glued to their smart phones doom scrolling through the latest developments on Twitter. And it made you realise what an astonishing future this really is. We were able to see what was going on live from the scene as it was happening thanks to reporters and bizarrely the people committing the illegal acts taking photographs of the people committing the illegal acts. And this is where crime has really gone down hill these days. Back in the good old days of wholesome Victorian prostitute murders (you know the kind of family friendly thing you could build a tourist attraction around, not these new grizzly murders that happen to people today and which absolutely nobody should profit off except for podcasters) back in the glory days of the Victorian Prostitute killings when a murderer did in a prostitute they might leave a calling card by which you would know it was them but not know who they were like a single rose petal, an origami ostrich or a glove that only fits OJ Simpson's hand if he really tried but he doesn't. You know the kind of mark that nobody could trace back to an individual. They didn't leave their literal calling card with all the details you'd need to trace them along with photographic evidence of them committing the crime. The Great Train Robbers would have been a lot easier to catch if Ronnie Biggs had been on Instagram.
I do think part of the reason a coup like this wont work though is because we're amazingly privileged to be able to watch events play out in real time on our mobile phones. I can't imagine what it was like for my parents generation who, when Watergate happened for example, would have had to gather in the hallway to read twitter on the landline.
A man called @Jack, the CEO of Twitter, was being deluged with tweets about how badly behaved twitter was being. Kind of like a letter writing campaign complaining that there were too many pictures of the Queen's head in profile. Eventually Mr Atjack displayed all the financial ingenuity you would expect of a man who's twitter bio just reads "#bitcoin" and took one of the most talked about people on his platform off his platform for 12 hours. Now in the old days someone who committed treason could be hanged but I take comfort from the fact that as a more enlightened civilisation, I can sleep through two thirds of a man's punishment for treason these days. Again, could twitter have acted sooner? Maybe. I mean, I guess if someone had previously tweeted an explicit threat such as "when the looting starts the shooting starts" you could then look at whether this person is the right "look" for your company, but again there were no signs that anything like this was going to happen until it was already half way through...the year 2016. And Twitter are strict! I once got a week long ban for telling people that they should leave stable doors open. Admittedly the horse was 1,600 miles away in Estonia by the time I got the ban but my point still stands.
Twitter is an interesting platform. One of the best things about Twitter is it never forgets, so it would be really embarrassing if the president of the USA who started these riots had tweeted say threats of harsher jail sentences for anyone who vandalised public property or had said say "when the looting starts the shooting starts" because imagine if people found those during the riots, you'd be quite red in the face if you forgot to get out of your sunbed while reading the news.
Right wing nutter Tomi Lahren tweeted in November that "If @realDonaldTrump were to lose (he won’t) his supporters will go to work tomorrow just as we do everyday. When Biden loses, his “supporters” will likely loot and riot. Tells you everything you need to know! #Trump2020" Well she was half right and also alt-right.
Washington DC bought in a curfew, and told the Qanon guys it was passed their bedtime and they weren't allowed any supper. So the business of counting the votes could continue. But not before Mike Pence gave a lovely speech about how much of a dick "a certain someone" was without naming names. He was just slower than Twitter but took well under six years to condemn a bully so good for him. Mitch McConnell even said some nasty things about the same certain someone and over here Boris Johnson was also having trouble remembering the name of Donald Trump when it came to calling out his actions. A lot was said about the disgusting scenes, but failing to directly name the man who caused them. Like if there was a racist painting or a scene in a play where an audience member was tied to a radiator while their life was threatened, you wouldn't just say "I don't really care for the painting" or "I felt the second act suffered a bit from the lack of musical numbers and the threat to rape Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez," would you not just complain about those scenes but also call out the artist and play write who wrote and painted those scenes?
Around the world people reacted to the news. Inspired by what they'd seen Lawrence Fox, both members of his fan club and a member of the Billie Piper fan club who never unsubscribed from the newsletter, stormed the Didcot Sainsbury's Local, and posed for photographs with their feet up on the fish counter demanding to know why one of the actors they employed was black.
Meanwhile Virgin #72 turned to her fella and asked "Why so glum?"
"Because I told them they were silly when they said I should play the long game and host The Apprentice instead," replied Osama Bin Laden with his head in his hands.
Of course others around the world were not surprised. I don't know for a fact that foreign powers were interfering but this guy clearly has a French flag painted on his face
You may think that a French Flag might be the stupidest thing to wear to a riot. Or maybe a hoodie that advertises the date and time of your riot (honestly, how could the police ever have seen this coming?). Or a Camp Auschwitz T-Shirt which is very very disgustingly stupid but in a slightly different way to our competition winner, who wore the stupidest thing to the riots:
His work ID. He was subsequently fired. I don't want to pander to pre-existing prejudices here but I think we all secretly knew already that people who wear their work lanyards after work were twats.
It's all over now and that just leaves one question: What next for Donald Trump?
While the president's immediate plans are obvious: hiding mouldy fish behind every radiator in the White House, shitting in the bottom drawer of his desk and dialling a premium rate number before leaving the phone off the hook until Joe Biden moves in, it seems like he may not have as much time for that as he wants.
You see it turns out that if you incite armed rebellion against the lawmakers of the country you govern, you might get impeached. Democrats - and Republicans numbered into the double figures (lets just leave it at that, it could be 99, it could be 10, I'll let you work it out) - voted to impeach the president an unprecedented second time, and this time America could be unpresidented.
With only 10 Republicans backing the call for impeachment, you wonder what could make the party of law and order and the constitution actually indict a president. Well again, this is maybe a good thing. A sign that America is becoming a more lenient and accepting place. You'll remember they were particularly harsh on Barack Obama during his term for sins such as wearing chinos. So perhaps they've rightly decided to lighten up. In fact when we broke into the offices of the senators we found a document in a Republican desk that they drew up outlining a softening of the rules in 2016. Remember at this point they hadn't named Donald Trump as their candidate and so their first choice of candidate appears on the document.
I guess the question now is, with just a week to go, will Donald Trump try for the hat trick? I think he should, but where can he go from here? As I see it he has three options to guarantee making history for the impeachment hat trick:
1. Use his Myspace page to tell an angry mob of thousands of armed men and women to storm and desecrate Tom Hanks
2. Use his Habbo Hotel to have a "perfect email exchange" with Boris Johnson offering a post-Brexit trade deal if Boris Johnson seduces Dr Gill Biden.
(Incidentally, Sir Kier Starmer did ask the Ukranians for any dirt they had on Boris Johnson's children. The Ukranian's are still working on the report and expect to have it ready within the century)
3. Put the nuclear codes in his MSN messenger name.
So one way or another that would appear to be the end of the Trump presidency. We hope we wont see much more of him. We already know he wont turn up to Joe Biden's inauguration, but fortunately at short notice the "what a sad little life Jane" guy from Come Dine With Me was available to replace him.
Let's see what happens next. Hopefully a return to civilised debate and reasoned politics, but if all else fails I guess we could just shout "Hunter Biden's Laptop" for a year and hope that makes a difference.
