South Korea Gives King Donald A Golden Crown
And a Happy Meal!
Donald Trump visited South Korea yesterday for the final stop of his tour of Asia, and he got the full royal treatment before he had to come back to a country that will never love him the way he’s certain we should. While he was there, the South Korean government did all it could to stroke Trump’s vanity without the Great American Leader ever realizing how brilliantly he was being played.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung pulled out all the stops to show Trump he was the most important VIP ever, a kind of VIP squared. Every part of the visit was designed to flatter the narcissist, from US and South Korean fighter jets escorting Air Force One to the airport, to a military band greeting Trump with his favorite song, “YMCA,” and guns firing a salute in his honor. It appears that the displays did stop short of a full-on military parade, possibly to hold that in reserve in case he ever comes back for another visit.
Bestest of all, Lee gave Trump a special medal, just for him!
Lee's office said that in recognition of Trump's role as a “peacemaker” on the Korean peninsula, he was awarded the “Grand Order of Mugunghwa”, which is named after South Korea's national flower, a pink hibiscus also known as the Rose of Sharon in English.
“I'd like to wear it right now,” Trump said when presented with the glittering award. A South Korean official said he was the first U.S. president to receive the honour.
We looked it up, and yes, the Grand Order of Mugunghwa is a real thing, not just invented for Trump; it’s typically given to the president of South Korea when they’re inaugurated, but can also be given to their spouse or to foreign leaders of allied nations. The Source of All Knowledge notes that by statute, it’s “the highest decoration in Korea,” but among the public, it’s not considered such a big deal because it’s received for winning an election, not for any huge achievement. Also, there’s this note, which (we checked) was in the wiki well before Trump’s visit: “It is also given to foreign heads of state, not necessarily because of what they have done for Korea, but for what they may do for Korea in the future.”
Reuters reports that the medal was supposed to recognize how Trump ended the Korean War in the final episode of M*A*S*H nuclear tensions on the peninsula by meeting in his first term with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and exchanging love letters with him. At least before that overture fell apart and Kim went right back to developing nukes and even bigger ballistic missiles. But that’s not the point! The point is that Trump received what he no doubt thinks was South Korea’s Nobel! Finally some appreciation of all the wars he’s ended!
But the honors and flattery were only getting started! President Lee wore a specially-made gold-colored necktie, which as Lee’s office explained with a poker face, “reflects President Trump's taste for gold, [and] captures the golden future of the South Korea-US alliance and the status of South Korea.”
And then there was the goddamn crown, for godssake, an actual crown in a glass case. Lee hosted Trump at a museum in the historic city of Gyeongju. In ancient times (57 BCE to 935 CE), it was the capital of the Silla kingdom, which ruled roughly a third of the Korean peninsula while Donald Trump’s ancestors in Europe were probably refusing to rent to Visigoths.
Reuters ‘splains that Trump
was gifted a replica of the golden Cheonmachong crown. The delicate original, which was found in a tomb in Gyeongju, features towering gold prongs and dangling leaf shapes.
“This symbolizes the history of Silla, which maintained a long-term era of peace on the Korean Peninsula, and a new era of peaceful coexistence and common growth on the Korean Peninsula that the United States and South Korea will work together for.”
Reuters was a little vague on whether the replica itself was gold, or whether Trump exclaimed he wanted to wear it during their working lunch.
Not risking any chance to emphasize how great and wonderful their honored guest was, even the menu aimed at pleasing the visiting AmeriKing. Lee’s office pointed out the salad dressing was Thousand Island, to honor Trump’s “success story in his hometown of New York.” Good call, since Russian dressing would have been a hoax.
Was there more culinary hilarity and heavily underlined sucking-up? You bet your sweet bibimbap there was!
The meal also included local specialties “according to President Trump's preferences.”
On the menu were “mini beef patties with ketchup”, a “Korean Platter of Sincerity” featuring U.S. beef and local rice and soybean paste, and grilled fish with a glaze of ketchup and gochujang, a red chilli paste.
Congratulations to the Korean Platter of Sincerity for not constantly grinning and nudging other guests to call their attention to how sincere it was being in its praise for the guest of honor.
New York Times reporter Katie Rogers posted a photo of the lunch menu (archive link) to social media, and if anyone let Trump know he was being Korean Barbecued, they haven’t let on.
Even the dessert was finely calculated to stroke the visiting monarch’s vanity; it was dubbed a “Peacemaker's Dessert,” and featured that traditional after-dinner treat of peacemakers, a brownie with edible (we think) gold adornments. Subtle! We do not, however, encourage you to look up “golden brownie” on Urban Dictionary.
Congratulations to President Lee’s entire protocol team on the wonderful satire, from the brass band playing “YMCA” to the luncheon with hamberders and a couple of nice prizes, which multiple smartasses in the media (social and otherwise; MSNBC’s Chris Hayes said it last night) pointed out very much resembled a very special Happy Meal for a special little dictator.
And what the hell: The pretended brownie-nosing did the job! Lee Jae Myung convinced Trump to agree to a favorable trade arrangement that resulted in lower tariffs, for which South Korea agreed to invest $350 billion in the US that it was planning to anyway before our ICE goons kidnapped all their executives, and Trump will even have the US build a nuclear submarine for South Korea.
South Korea will also buy a bunch of Boeing passenger jets for $36.2 billion, and maybe this time Trump won’t fuck up and confuse the name of the aircraft with the number of planes South Korea is ordering, like he did in September when he bragged that Uzbekistan was purchasing “22,787 Dreamliners.” That’s a hell of a lot of planes for one little former Soviet country, about 10 times as many 787 Dreamliners as Boeing has even built, and 22,765 more than the 14 planes (and up to eight more) Uzbekistan actually ordered.
Art of the Deal, baby.
[Reuters (archive link) / ABC News / Daily Kos]
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In a former life I was asked to write a skit about the organization's CEO who was celebrating their 10th year of making everyone's life miserable. I decided to write it with such over the top praise of the leader that it would be obvious to anyone watching the performance that it was actually one big back handed slap at them and the servile coterie they surrounded themselves with. Anyway, the CEO and the coterie ate that shit up and never noticed anything but the drooling praise.
As Stephen Colbert put it, "They gave him a crown and mini-burgers with catsup. They made him 'Burger King'".