Welcome to Declassified, a weekly column looking at the lighter side of politics.
At the risk of being billed for massive amounts of therapy … remember Donald Trump?
It seems a long time ago when every passing day felt like being slapped in the face by a giant, misshapen bin bag full of orange stew, but now there’s Impeachment Trial II: Insurrection and soon you’ll be able to relive one of his team’s finest moments thanks to a documentary about Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
The Philadelphia business gained notoriety in November after a Trump tweet promoted a press conference featuring his lawyer and colored sweat enthusiast Rudy Giuliani challenging the results of the presidential election. Alas, the event wasn’t held at the Four Seasons hotel but at a landscaping firm with a similar name located near a sex shop, a crematorium and a jail.
According to the filmmakers, the doc has an “apolitical and feel-good tone” and includes interviews with the company’s owner and employees who “answer the questions we have all been wondering that led to the wild ride leading up to and following the infamous press conference.” There’s only one question: WTF?
The same question could be asked of the United Kingdom’s least fun political party, the Democratic Unionists, which has been trying its best to get rid of the Northern Ireland protocol in the Brexit deal (as have, in different ways, the European Commission and the British government). The DUP set up a petition that’s been signed by 130,000 people from 89 countries including, er, North Korea (famous for the widespread, high-speed broadband needed to sign an online petition), Kazakhstan and that well-known supporter of the Protestant cause, the Vatican.
Perhaps the petition would have received even more backing if instead of being aimed at a contentious part of the Brexit agreement, it had been in opposition to a series of photographs of the British prime minister’s dog, Dilyn, frolicking in the snow that were paid for by the taxpayer and posted on the U.K. government’s official Flickr page (and yes, Flickr apparently still exists).
Dilyn told POLITICO that his boss was unavailable for comment as punishment for climbing on the furniture.
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“If you could just change into the clown costume, Josep, then we can carry on with the press conference. ”
Can you do better? Email [email protected] or on Twitter @pdallisonesque
Last week we gave you this photo:
Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our postbag (there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze).
“AstraZeneca insists it is committed to ‘reasonable best efforts’ as EU Q1 and Q2 doses arrive in Brussels,” by Sebastiaan Jansen
Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.
