Welcome to Worst Hot Take of the Week – a weekly column in which NEO, AKA @MULLET_FAN NEO, pits two of the wildest takes the world’s great thinkers have rustled up against each other. We’d also like to take this moment to give thanks to Angus Harrison, who used to write this column when it was called Angus Take House – the single best pun ever published.
Videos by VICE
What’s the story? The Queen gave Donald Trump a book and a pen set as a gift.
Reasonable take: Two incredibly powerful and wealthy people – one of whom is responsible for rolling back LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, separating families at the border and making climate change worse; the other we last saw giving a speech in front of a gold piano – having a slap up meal together, exchanging gifts that would send my family name into liquidation if I bought them.
Brain rot: The Queen is Antifa.
This week saw Donald Trump arrive in the UK for an official three-day state visit as part of his trip to Europe to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The US president marked the occasion by calling London Mayor Sadiq Khan “a stone cold loser” just before landing.
The Queen welcomed Trump in ceremonial fashion on Monday, and hosted a lavish white tie banquet on his behalf at Buckingham Palace. As a gift, the Queen gave Trump a gold-tooled crimson first edition of Winston Churchill’s account of World War II. Trump, a self-proclaimed fan of Churchill, failed to realise that this was no ordinary gift – and that the Queen was in fact spilling some scalding hot tea, according to many liberal political commentators who have once again begun the process of projecting the online persona of POC SJW on to a 93-year-old monarch who has been married to Prince Philip for seven-decades.
“Slay his ass, your Majesty!” cried out large swathes of Twitter.
Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman tweeted “Giving Trump a book is such quality shade from the Queen”, complete with smiley sunglasses and crown emoji, adding: “Honestly, if some people can’t enjoy Trump – a man who has never read a book in his life and quite possibly can’t actually read – being given a book by the Queen, I weep for the future.”
Haha! Illiteracy! Haha! Imagine not reading books all day! Haha!
Freeman was far from alone in her incisive analysis of the exchange. Seeing liberals rebrand the Queen of the British Empire – a brutal system of colonialism that plundered countries and murdered millions of people – as some shade throwing “got his ass” character to a right-wing head of state who undoubtedly loves the symbol of unimaginable, unearned, inherited power and privilege that is royalty, genuinely makes me want to put a bullet in my dome.
If the book-as-a-burn take alone doesn’t make you feel like you’ve been given some form of incurable disease, Queen Elizabeth’s choice of banquet jewellery was apparently an additional “subtle serving” to Trump. The Queen not only wore a broach given to her by former US President Obama, but her Burmese Ruby Tiara, made of 96 red gems and diamonds, with matching earrings, and a necklace that was “gifted” by the people of Myanmar as a wedding present, the subtle ownage coming from the fact the “ruby stones are believed to protect the person wearing it from illness and evil”.
Damn, is there no tea her Highness won’t spill?
What’s the story? Jeremy Corbyn attends an anti-Trump rally.
Reasonable take: The Labour Party leader refused to attend a lavish state banquet at Buckingham Palace, instead speaking at a protest rally against the US President’s visit in light of their very different political stances and Trump’s desire for the NHS to be part of a post-Brexit trade deal
Brain rot: Corbyn has betrayed the working classes, who love Trump, by speaking at an anti-Trump rally.
In the midst of Donald Trump’s stay in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn asked to meet with the US President in an attempt “to have that dialogue to bring about the better and more peaceful world that we all want to live in”. In response, Trump rejected the meeting, saying the Labour leader is “somewhat of a negative force”.
The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg said on News at 6 that Corbyn had been “embarrassed” by Trump, while Sky political editor Beth Rigby wondered, “What happens to the special relationship” between the US and UK “should Corbyn become PM”? A question whose answer is probably “just not blindly follow them into illegal oil wars”.
As with everything Corbyn does, his actions were weaponised against him by the British media, and this is where a take so large came in that if you stared at it too long your fucking head would probably turn into a zeppelin and you’d simply float off into the cosmos.
ITV’s political editor Robert Peston couldn’t help but muse as to why Jeremy Corbyn would boycott the state banquet and turn his back on his working class voters, who are apparently “pro-America”, by speaking at the anti-Trump rally. In a thread so long we can’t even feature the whole thing on this website, Peston claimed Corbyn wants to be “Northern working class on Brexit” but London “metropolitan middle class” on Trump. Peston stated that by Corbyn refusing to have a confirmatory referendum on the EU, Labour weren’t willing to turn their back on Brexit-voting supporters, so he finds it “confusing” the Labour leader has refused to attend a lavish Royal banquet full of inbreds dripping in pillaged Empire jewels to kiss the ring of an American president.
Peston claims this is a betrayal of the working classes, who have these “North Atlantic leanings” that are in “part a legacy of WW2”.
Despite Peston’s and others’ claims that boycotting the banquet with Trump would somehow alienate the British working class, a YouGov poll showed only 25 percent of British working classes actually like the President.
Corbyn used his opportunity at the rally to speak out about how the government should not be “offering up our precious, wonderful National Health Service” in pursuit of a Brexit trade deal with America, among other important issues, after Trump said the “NHS, or a lot more than that” would be on the table when they we were ready to sign a “phenomenal” future trade deal with the UK post-Brexit.
Don’t get me wrong: there are definitely twee “gin o’clock” elements to the anti-Trump rally. There were some cunts holding up signs that read: “feed him to the corgis” and “We’re British, we’re polite, but fuck off (please)” – but if a leader of the Labour party didn’t speak out about Trump, or his racist policies, or his plans to give US healthcare companies access to the NHS in a trade deal, there would be no point in having a Labour party at all.
Winner: While Corbyn snubbing the Yankee-loving working class by speaking at a Trump protest is a flame take, Her Majesty forming the resistance – in the heads of liberals – for wearing “shade” jewellery and giving some cunt an expensive gift wins for me.
