Crocodile Don and his Fleurs du Mal

One of Donald Trump's genius ideas

Excerpted from a recent article in The New York Times:

Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down.

I’m not sure whether this will surprise you, or not surprise you in the least — but Trump has denied all of this. Of course, he denies things all the time, even if we’ve seen and heard him say them on national TV. The man is a virtual gold mine of outrage. Locking little children up in cages, separating them from their families, telling people off-camera to “knock the crap” out of protestors, and threatening whistle blowers and Congressmen with death are a few of the other horrors that come to mind.

Nevertheless, walling off the entire southern border with a moat filled with lethal reptiles marks a new something-or-other in the bizarre behavior of the Trump Administration.  And according to Rolling Stone and sundry publications, aides took the, umm, suggestion seriously enough to begin seeking cost estimates for such a moat. 

Not reported was whether the estimate that the White House folks sought included the annual cost of feeding the snakes and alligators. Or perhaps they figured there would be no feeding costs if we just keep pitching enough hapless immigrants into the moat as reptile fodder.

The Ventriloquist. Oddly back in the 1940s
he said almost exactlywhat we've heard
The Trumpster say.

Now I know why, for a quite some time, I’ve been referring to our President as “The Trumpster.” He resembles, to a curiously strong degree, one of the supervillians out of the early Batman comic strips and movies, along with The Joker, The Penguin, The Scarecrow, and The Ventriloquist.

Like all the comic book villains, The Trumpster, who now, thanks to the Reptile Moat, we can also call Crocodile Don, is surrounded by a group of equally evil henchmen. I offer you, as exhibits A, B, and C, his prized fleurs du mal, Stephen Miller, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Pompeo. All three of them look more like cartoons of themselves than they do like real people. And they look even more like comic book cartoons of evil geniuses.

Stephen Miller. I shudder to guess what
his spare time hobbies might be.

Perhaps that’s why, every time I watch Stephen Miller on television, I imagine that his hobby must be pulling the wings off live flies. And perhaps eating them afterward.

Is this Dr. Sivana, or is this Rudy?

Giuliani, on the other hand, brings to mind Dr. Sivana, the evil genius who populated Captain Marvel Comics back in the day. Shazam!

The Penguin. Or perhaps
Pompeo in mufti.

And Pompeo? If you look at him from just the right angle, he does indeed bear a resemblance to The Penguin.

It seems to me that some enterprising college or university — it could even be one of those artsy-leftsy liberal arts outfits like Antioch or Oberlin or Bard — might forever solve its financial problems and score a handsome federal endowment — if only one of them would confer an honorary degree on Crocodile Don. Nothing inappropriate, mind you. It could be an honorary Ph.D in Malevolence Studies. 

Do you think for a millisecond that The Trumpster wouldn’t show up to wear an academic robe and scarf, accept his degree, and make a commencement speech about himself? 

Forever after, he could point to his doctorate as clear evidence of his own brilliance. “Not only am I a very stable genius, I have a Ph.D to prove it.” And furthermore, “The audience at the graduation ceremony where I was honored for my intelligence was the largest commencement audience in history.”

Small and struggling colleges, get cracking on this! Donald Trump isn’t going to be president forever.

I hope.

P.S. And now this: I've just come across a New York Magazine report that The Trumpster once wanted to build a castle-like building with an alligator-filled moat in Manhattan. No explanation of how the cold-blooded alligators would survive the first New York blizzard, although the the author floats a theory. My own theory has to do with packaged frozen alligator meat.

P.P.S. And finally...as long as we're talking about menacing lizards and villainous cartoon characters, you might as well see this to help you have a happy weekend: