And the Gohmert Award Goes To…

…who else but multi-award winner Donald Josephine Trump himself, who, let’s face it, rates a Gomey every day, about three times a day, but really caught our attention last week with a series of truly transcendant episodes of assholery.

Before we begin, a couple of parish notes. First, yes, under the rules established by the Needlefish Awards Panel, Donald should long since have been handed his Standing Gohmert, to the effect that at this point all of his utterances should simply be deemed to qualify for the prize, and none should merit any special attention. We know. Maybe next time. Second, we’re well aware, here at Needlefish HQ, that one might reasonably take the position that Trump’s malignant second term is no laughing matter. Left unchecked, he’ll shift the global balance of power in favour of the dictatorships and autocracies he wishes so fervently to emulate, and he’s probably already undone, permanently, the post-war global order that allowed western liberal democracy to thrive for the past 80 years. Not to mention his ongoing effort to destroy the global economy. Etc. We know. It’s important, though, to never stop laughing at Donald’s sheer, almost indescribable buffoonery. Wanna-be potentates hate it when you laugh at them. It really pops their over-inflated balloons. Besides, with Donald, you just can’t help yourself. There may never have been a national leader as hilariously unfit for office, and there’s almost certainly never been one as jarringly, uproariously, inconceivably flat-out stupid. Sweet Jesus, the bastard is stupid. Honestly, it’s ludicrous.

Which brings us to this delicious little bit of idiocy. It arose during one of his many disastrous interviews, this time with a fellow from ABC News, who had questions about the administration’s mistaken and unlawful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Garcia, recall, is an immigrant with a job, wife, autistic kid, and no criminal record, who came to the U.S. to flee violent gangs in his home country of El Salvador, and was living under the protection of a court order expressly forbidding what Trump’s ICE hooligans went and did to him. As the reader will no doubt be aware, SCOTUS has ordered Donald to arrange for Garcia’s return from the Salvadoran gulag to which he, and doubtless many other innocents, have been exiled for life, and Donald, being Donald, has thus far refused to comply. As part of making the case that Garcia actually belongs in a Soviet-style prison camp despite being rounded up by mistake, as they’ve been happy to admit in court, Trump’s MAGA propagandists have been struggling to portray the poor guy as a member of the feared MS-13 criminal enterprise, to which end they’ve circulated doctored photos of his hand tattoos. They’re claiming, falsely (of course), that the marijuana plant, skull, etc. are known gang symbols that spell out “MS-13” in pictographic code, as indicated by the handy typewritten characters photo-shopped on to the original image. Here’s Donald in one of his pathetic on-line bleats asserting as much:

Note that apart from his entirely made-up claims about what various Highly Respected Courts are supposed to have found, Donald clearly believes that the photo-shopped captions reading “MS-13” are actually part of Garcia’s tattoos. He thinks the guy’s knuckles actually read “MS-13” in one of Microsoft’s stock fonts (Calibri, I think, or maybe it’s Arial), as if Garcia decked himself out in coded symbols to signal his membership to insiders, sort of like the tattoo equivalent of a secret handshake, but then decided he’d better translate the imagery for the benefit of the lay public. That’s how mind-numbingly brainless Trump is; and when asked about Garcia in the interview, he repeated this utter, imbecilic nonsense, refusing, like a petulant eight-year-old, to let the reporter “agree to disagree” and move on to a new topic. Schoolyard bully that he is, Donald wanted the journalist, who “wasn’t being very nice”, to admit he was right before continuing. Just say I’m right! Say it! Don’t hit yourself! Why are you hitting yourself! Say it!

You’ve all seen the clip, I’m sure, but here it is again, just to make you angry:

Honest to God, if you didn’t hate the moron with such searing, visceral intensity, you’d feel embarrassed and sorry for Donald. It was an awful spectacle, really, and here’s the worst part, from where I sit: that poor reporter would probably have been fired if at that point he’d simply sighed, announced that there really wasn’t any point in posing further questions to anybody as befuddled and pin-headed as Donald, and simply walked away, leaving Orange Idi to fume on camera by himself for a bit. Sadly, fitting and proper though such would have been, it would have been frowned upon by the spineless corporate media.

Stupid spineless corporate media…sanewashing and both-sidesing everything, the cowards…grrrrrrrrr…

Where was I? Oh yeah, so fine, he’s a weapons-grade dumbass. So what else is new? Well, how about an astoundingly inappropriate display of narcissistic megalomania? O.K., he’s always been a self-aggrandizing, narcissistic megalomaniac, sure, but never as transparently as when he actually told reporters that he thinks he’d make a dandy Pontiff, now that Pope Francis has kicked the bucket and left an opening. “I’d like to be Pope”, he said on camera, unironically and apparently unabashed, “that would be my number one choice”. In case you think he was just goofin’ around, this AI-generated image was then circulated on the Donald’s own official Truth Social account:

All hail Pope Donald the First!! Boy, he really looks the part too, don’t you think? Ecclesiastical garb really suits him! All that pretty gold! Why, Donald’s a natural, after all he does love his shiny gold things, and he’d obviously be a terrific Pontiff, everybody is saying so, listen, he’d Pope like nobody’s ever Poped before, nobody knows as much about Poping as he does, and just last night one of the guys from the College of Cardinals phoned him during a break from deliberations and pleaded with him to throw his hat into the ring, he said “Sir!”, and you could hear he was choking back the tears, “Sir!” said the big strong Cardinal, “We’re here in conclave and none of the candidates can compare to you! Please put yourself up for Pope! Billions of Catholics would praise the Almighty!!”.

Oy. Dude ain’t right in the head.

He sure does love his juvenile taunts, too, they’re real crowd-pleasers. Here he is during a recent speech, locking down today’s Gohmert with his classic imitation of a female weightlifter, as she struggles to hoist enough iron to compete with her formerly male trans competitor, trans athletes being, after all, the most pressing issue of the day, as anyone in the MAGA ranks could tell you:

Gee, Donald, you sure do look Presidential when you carry on that way. I love how he pulls little fictitious details out of his ass to make his stories sound more grounded in objective reality, like how trans athletes in women’s weightlifting have just broken a record that stood for 18 years. Not 20 years – that would sound made up, you never use round numbers in the grift, they sound phoney and the marks catch on – so 18 years it is. You know, a long time, but neither too tidily nor implausibly long. It’s the little touches like that that really sell the performance, you know?

Parenthetically, it’s not even Donald who pisses me off the most in this one. It’s the Whitest Generic Sorority Girl on Earth, laughing along and thoroughly enjoying the comedic stylings of her Beloved President, Emperor, and Orange God King:

Yuck it up sister. I’m sure the gals back in Kappa Kappa Gamma are with you all the way.

Jesus Christ.

Anyway, here you go, jackass. Another one for your burgeoning trophy case. You can put it right next to the empty space you’re reserving for that Nobel Peace Prize you’re never, ever going to win.

The internet meme factory kicks into high gear: