Feb.27

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This Week in Schadenfreude: Smooth Criminal

Donald Trump is a convicted felon, so he's definitely a criminal. And he certainly thinks he's smooth. The U.S. Men's hockey team might not agree, however. At least, not anymore.

One of the big stories of the week, since it was intertwined with both the Winter Olympics and with the State of the Union, was the visit that the gold-medal-winning team made to the White House. By all indications, the 17 players who attended the SOTU, plus the three who did not but were in Washington, showed up. And for their trouble, they were rewarded with... a buffet of lukewarm fast food.

That's right, Trump dusted off the same maneuver that he's used so many times before, and served a championship-winning team a bunch of McDonald's hamburgers. It's also possible—we can't tell from the video—that Trump got fancy, and threw a few Filet-o-Fish in there, too. Or, as the President himself calls them, "Fish Delights" (really).

The first time Trump did this, for Clemson's football team back in 2019, the government was shut down. That meant that there was no White House kitchen staff to do the work, and that Trump not only had to come up with food for 100+ people, he had to pay for it out of his own pocket. Maybe fast food was easier than, say, hiring a caterer. Maybe it was just cheaper. In any event, there was at least some logic to it back then.

But the White House kitchen staff is not part of DHS, so they are not shut down or furloughed right now. Nor has that been a problem on the other non-Clemson occasions—at least four of them—when Trump has backed up the fast food wagon at the White House. What, then, is going on? A few theories:

1. Trump has somehow convinced himself that athletes—people who are in peak physical condition, mind you—really want greasy fast food to dine on, perhaps because athletes (especially college athletes) tend to be young, and young people tend to like fast food.
   
   
2. Trump has somehow convinced himself that everyone wants fast food, because that is what HE wants.
   
   
3. Trump thinks this somehow burnishes his image as a "man of the people."
   
   
4. While Trump doesn't have to pay for the food, it does come out of the White House budget. Maybe he just hates spending ANY funds over which he has control, or maybe he has other plans for that budget (the White House $TRUMP crypto stash?).

In any event, Trump is getting roundly mocked on social media for his "hospitality," while the hockey players are getting mocked for allowing themselves to be used as props and for getting $10 in fast food as their reward. Exactly where the schadenfreude is here, we will leave for readers to decide.

But wait, there's more. Brady Tkachuk is a left winger on the ice, but off the ice he definitely is not, and he was basically the MAGA face of the U.S. men's team. For that reason, after the White House visit, the administration's social media team decided to put up a video on TikTok in which Tkachuk says, "They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple syrup eating fu**s a lesson." There's only one small problem: Tkachuk never said that. He claims the video was doctored with AI, and he's clearly telling the truth, because the AI didn't even do a good job.

As is so often the case, we are mystified by the thought process here. What is to be gained by such clumsy propaganda? And in so doing, the administration hung out to dry a fellow who is less than a week removed from leading the U.S. team to a huge triumph, and who has been singing the praises of Trump for years. Now he is quite rightly pissed off. We don't imagine he will abandon his MAGA ways (though you never know for sure). What we do imagine is that the next time he's asked to serve as a prop, or as backdrop for a photo op, he won't be so eager to say "yes." (Z)