July 19, 2017
Little Donny’s Adventures in Collusionland
by Peter Kranitz
Nothing makes for better internet comedy than some good old-fashioned corruption. Last week, everybody’s second-least favorite Donald Trump made the inexplicable decision to publish his email conversations about a then-upcoming meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya on Twitter. The emails, which were exchanged last June and show Veselnitskaya promising Trump, Jr. damaging information about Hillary Clinton, suggest that members of the Trump camp may have been colluding with Russia during the election. What this may mean for Trumps Père and Fils remains to be seen, but in the meantime, the twittersphere has taken it upon itself to explain the situation in terms that even the two Donalds can understand: through children’s books.
According to Elite Daily’s Alexandra Svokos, HuffPost Comedy created the hashtag #DonJrChildrensBooks when they tweeted out an imaginary cover for Donald Jr. and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (which, by the way, guys…), inviting other Twitter users to contribute more. Some gems include Greed, Eggs, and Scam, Harry Plotter and the Spiller of Secrets, and, my personal favorite, Horton Hears a Who’d Be Dumb Enough to do This Shit Haha No Seriously. Trump, Jr. has tried to argue that this has all been little more than a series of unfortunate events, but he looks a lot like The Little Engine that Colluded.
Personally, I look forward to the day when my grandchildren ask me where I was when history was getting made, and I can say, with a satisfied smile, that I was reading politically relevant book puns on Twitter.
Peter Kranitz is an intern at Melville House.