I will break what should be the societal injunction: nobody else wants to hear your dreams. There is a point, I promise.
In a recent dream, I was sitting at a table in a café talking to Joan Chamorro, founder, inspirer and maestro of the Sant Andreu Jazz Band of Barcelona, maybe nursing a Estrella Damm. [“Give me a Damm beer!]
I was belatedly congratulating him for the band’s second place finish at last year’s Essentially Ellington competition sponsored by Jazz at Lincoln Center. [As one of only two foreign bands competing against 28 from the States, second was as high as a bunch of outsiders could hope for.]
Cool, congenial conversation – with the same claim to reality as recent conversations in which President Donald Trump has claimed to have been a participant.
Too many times to count since Israel dragged the U.S. into a Mideast war, Trump has bragged about negotiations, favorable peace talks, hopeful signs that Iranians will capitulate to his demands after he began bombing their country.
Some suggest that these ramblings have been designed to provide administration insiders tips on possible stock market fluctuations.
Regardless, for weeks, after every Trump or administration assertion of “good and productive” talks, the Iranians have denied any conversations. Unfortunately, Trump’s incredible [as in non-credible] track record means that any- and everyone else is more believable.
“This is the first international negotiation in which one of the parties discovers they are negotiating while watching the evening news,” French Senator Claude Mahuret said on March 27.
When Iran finally said talks had started, we could believe it. That’s backwards to what we should expect from our government.
You can decide whether Iranian negotiators are “more reasonable,” according to Trump, or “more radical,” according to those who actually study intelligence. Either way, the Iranians immediately refuted Trump’s claim last week that Iran had asked for a cease fire.
[His April Fool’s Day address to the nation clarified nothing.]
And fresh off lying that a former president had congratulated him on bombing Iran – they all denied it – Trump claimed to have negotiated a massive, cost-saving deal with Sharpie pens.
In the middle of the March 26 Cabinet meeting – with the nation’s motives and maneuverings regarding Iran still unsettled except for unsettling the world economy – Trump launched into a nearly five minute Ode to Sharpie Pens:
“So I came here, and they have $1,000 pens. And, you know, you hand pens out, you’re signing, and you hand them out. You’re handing them to all these people.
“Sometimes you have 30, 40 people, and they are $1,000 a piece. Beautiful pen, ballpoint, $1,000. It was gold, silver, gorgeous. But I’m handing [them] out to kids that don’t even know what they are.
“So I’m saying this is crazy, and it had another problem: They didn’t write well. So I take it out, and I sign, and there’s no ink, and I got all you people looking, and you say, ‘There must be something wrong with Trump.’”
Crazy asides such as this in the middle of a Cabinet meeting in the middle of multiple crises do have many concluding there is definitely something not right with the president.
But Trump was not finished. He then bragged about getting in touch with someone at Sharpie, later embellished into “the head of Sharpie,” where that wheeling/dealing Trump concludes: “It’s a business story. So for $5 … I get a much better pen than for $1,000 and I could hand them out and actually they become hot as a pistol.”
Some might wonder why Trump did not substitute cheap Sharpies for other pens during his first term. [Does he even remember that first term?] But that question was trumped by that old Trump bugaboo REALITY.
A spokesperson for Newell Brands, the Sharpie manufacturer, told The Washington Post: “We don’t have any information about the conversation described. We’re proud to be a beloved brand trusted by so many globally.”
Maybe Trump is working on a short story collection: Imaginary Dialogues. There is a literary history of such. Heck, I’ve written several myself.
Trump’s volume might provide another diversion from the Epstein Files, which would likely fill several stories of his proposed Trump Library Tower.
A sharp move by the Sharpie folks would be to give Trump a gold-plated trophy as the Sharpie Peace Prize Salesman of the Century.
