De-escalation is everything

von Marcus Krug

Eoin went to Sheridans Cheesemongers last weekend. On Saturday, he had decided that it was time for a treat – delicious cheese and good wine. And so it happened that he ran into Saoirse. Eoin was just talking to the woman behind the counter – a decision regarding the compatibility between wine and cheese had to be made – when Saoirse tapped him on the shoulder. They had been working together for quite some time, but then Saoirse had left for a better position somewhere else. They hadn’t been that close back then, but close enough to share a funny anecdote. Saoirse started to talk about the Christmas party two years ago, and Eoin asked her if she remembered the girl from HR, the little one that was dancing like crazy. He told Saoirse that he had hocked up with her that night, and how they ended up in the girl’s apartment.

While Eoin talked away, bragging in rich detail about that night, Saoirse had a good view at the door and froze when suddenly Donald Trump entered the shop. With one of his little hands he was dragging the aforementioned Christmas party HR girl along. It wasn’t so much the presence of the POTUS himself in Sheridans Galway that struck her, but the fact that she recognised her and that the HR girl herself seemed to recognise Eoin.

“That’s him, Donald! I told you about him! That’s the offender!” the HR girl screamed, pointing at Eoin. When Eoin saw the fuming girl, it took him almost a full round of sixty seconds to put the pieces together. The one piece that really wouldn’t want to fit was: What the fuck was the Don doing here? When the penny eventually dropped and Eoin was able to connect the girl with the just shared and bragged about event from the past, the blood in his veins started congealing.

“What did that freak do to you, my darling?” the POTUS asked the HR girl. The girl took Donald Trump’s red tie and pulled him down to her level. Her narrowed eyes fixed on Eoin, she whispered something into Trump’s ear. The President’s face lit up and a mischievous smile flashed briefly over his face. When the girl was finished, Trump went over to Eoin and patted him on his back.

“That was terrific! Good boy! Well done! That’s how you handle those situations! Want some more advice on these matters, my boy?” Trump asked him beaming. But Eoin just shook his head and looked down at his feet. “Well,” the Don said “suit yourself then, you loser.”

This scene had made the HR girl so furious that she jumped at the POTUS and slapped him a couple of times right across his smirking face. Although her hand was hurting quite a lot, it didn’t seem to have done any harm to Trump’s face, which remained orange and bloated. When she kicked him right in the Trumpian crown jewels, though, his face turned crimson and for a couple of seconds his hair piece seemed to hover quite a few inches above his head.

“Security! Take this fucking bitch off me! Immediately!” the President barked. The men from the Secret Service removed the fuming and clawing bundle of rage and carried her outside. “If something like this happens again, I’ll have the troops send to this godforsaken place! I’ll have it wiped off the face of the earth! Mark my words! Mark! My! Words!”

“Mr. President, I strongly advise against this rather premature approach of yours.” From behind a huge pile of cheese rolls, Kellyanne Conway stepped forward.

“You are right, Mrs. Conway.” said a man who had just entered the shop, coming in from the weekend market. And turned to Trump, he went on, “I can’t but agree with your formidable advisor’s words, my dear Mr. President. There is no need to take this drastic an action.”

“Who are you?” the POTUS asked, but without waiting for the man’s answer, he turned to his counsellor. “Conway, who is this fool?”

“Mr President, my name is Enda …”

“Shut up! I didn’t ask to you, did I?” and to his advisor, “Who is this clown here, Conway?”

“This, Mr. President, is Enda Kenny, their Taoiseach.”

“Their what? And who are they?”

“Their chieftain or Prime Minister, if you will. We are in Ireland here, Mr. President. Two hours to the south from here, there is your Golf Course.”

“Ah yeah, I remember, Doonbeg. But Ireland, wasn’t their leader this horrible … wait … Theresa May woman? The one that came over for a visit just a few weeks ago?”

“No, Mr. President. She is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

“Ireland, there you go again.” Trump said.

“Same, same but different.” Enda Kenny commented.

“Shut the fuck up, will you!” Donald Trump said to Enda Kenny “Or do you need an executive order to get the gist? Conway, if he does this again, we should get the troops ready and bomb the shit out of them!”

“Mr. President, I strongly advise …”

“… against this approach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But why not? I am the President of the U.S. of A., I can do things like that, can I not?”

“Yes, you can, but you shouldn’t, Mr. President. First of all, this might jeopardise your Golf Course business down in County Clare. And secondly, they don’t have any barrel of oil to their name here anymore. The oil they had, they have already bartered away for little money to the highest bidder years ago.”

“Yes, she is right. The oil was sold off in the eighties and nineties.”

“What did I tell you, Kennedy?! You stupid fuck! Conway, call Tillerson! I am pretty sure Rex can do something about this. We! Need! This! Oil!”

“Mr. President, it’s not Kennedy, his name is Kenny.” said Kellyanne Conway.

“Kenny or Kennedy, all the same to me! But this one over there,” Donald Trump points with his little fingers at Enda Kenny, “really pisses me off! We should get the troops ready!”

“If you are really planning to teach the Ayatollahs a lesson soon, Mr. President, we should conserve our energies here. No troops necessary, anyway. This Enda Kenny person is only the same calibre as that Theresa May woman. Just another kissass. Although, they both might come in handy some day in the future. Just keep that in mind. Because you are not exactly making friends at the moment.”

“That’s fake news! I say, fake news! Fake news everywhere!”

“Mr. President, mind your blood pressure and calm down, please. Let’s just call it an alternative fact, shall we?”

 

Meanwhile, Eoin had made a choice regarding the combination of cheese and wine, paid for it and took Saoirse home for a nice cup of hot tea.

 

The next day, Eoin and Saoirse were still in bed and watching the news on RTÉ, when they saw how the Don announced that he was going to bring hundreds of American jobs to Doonbeg in Ireland by building a huge wall around his Trump International Golf Links and Hotel Ireland estate. Right after the announcement, but still on the podium, he went on Twitter, promising his followers that he would make the Irish pay for that wall. Bigly, he said.