The level of fandom for President Donald Trump that’s out there in the wild is miles below the level that he thinks it’s at. This Wednesday in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump appeared before the media alongside Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, and at one point, when Trump slapped the Finnish leader’s knee while discussing Finland as a “happy country,” Niinistö very visibly swatted Trump’s hand away. Thanks for standing in for so many of us, Prime Minister — if only he’d just leave us alone.
A reporter had asked Trump considering Finland’s high “happiness rating” what he could learn from the Nordic country, which the controversial U.S. president responded to with:
‘Finland is a happy country… Uhhh — well, if you got rid of Pelosi, and you got rid of shifty Schiff! Finland is a happy country. He’s a happy leader too.’
Towards the end, as an uneasy pause set in, Trump laughed a bit.
Watch:
The President of Finland has a solidly Scandinavian response to physical contact from Trump. pic.twitter.com/vZca7v7zgu
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) October 2, 2019
To be clear though — the president of the United States is suggesting that to make the United States more “happy,” we should “get rid of” key Democratic leaders including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). There’s essentially no way to interpret that besides gross egomania — Trump is turning his personal disdain for Democrats daring to investigate his behavior into something supposedly representative of some kind of existential threat to the United States, and this mess is all playing out publicly in real time.
Most recently, Trump has taken issue (to put it lightly) with Pelosi and Schiff deciding to support a formal impeachment inquiry and get it going. Their change of heart — they’d been one of the eventual minority of holdouts against impeachment — came after details came out about Trump’s attempt to get Ukrainian authorities to unearth dirt on the Bidens that could be useful for Trump’s re-election campaign.
Meanwhile, Niinistö has actually figured prominently in Trump news before. After Trump claimed California should just rake their forests more in order to avoid wildfires, he claimed the Finnish leader had been the one to first tout the benefits of raking. Niinistö denied this.
Check out Twitter’s response…
