Name: From covfefe to the Mooch: 10 funny moments from the Trump presidency
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From covfefe to the Mooch: 10 funny moments from the Trump presidency

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Amid four years of corruption, caging children and trashing democracy there were some light-hearted moments – no reallyLast modified on Fri 1 Jan 2021 02.03 ESTDonald Trump’s presidency will soon come to an end, and his time in the White House will almost certainly be best remembered for the chaos and controversy caused by his oft-criticized choices on everything from immigration to the coronavirus pandemic.The president’s habit of making off-the-cuff comments and split-second decisions – either over Twitter or – has repeatedly and sent his senior staffers scrambling to explain the firing of .These moments have often sparked widespread alarm, such as when Trump incorrectly Americans could protect themselves from coronavirus by ingesting disinfectants.But some of those Trumpian moments have been so obviously ridiculous that Americans had no choice but simply to laugh.Here are 10 purely comedic moments from the Trump presidency:1. When Trump stared at the solar eclipse. Way back in August 2017, Americans across the country stopped in their tracks to view the rare total solar eclipse. In the days before the celestial event, ophthalmologists turned to to share this urgent warning: do not stare at the sun without protective eyewear. But those dozens of warnings did not stop one man, our commander-in-chief, from doing just that.2. When Trump came up with “covfefe”. The Trump era has been marked by the introduction of a number of new words and phrases, such as “fake news”, “alternative facts”, “bigly” or, as he argued, “big league”. But arguably the most nonsensical of all is “covfefe”, the made-up word that Trump included in a 2017 tweet complaining about news coverage of his administration. “Despite the negative press covfefe,” Trump wrote in the incomplete tweet. The president quickly deleted the tweet, but the word had already spawned thousands of Twitter jokes.3. When Trump yelled at a boy mowing the White House lawn and became a meme. It all began with a letter to the White House. Frank Giaccio, a 10-year-old from Virginia, said in his letter to Trump that he had started his own lawn-mowing business and wanted to make the White House one of his clients. In September 2017, Giaccio got his wish.As Giaccio mowed the White House lawn, the president stepped out to commend him for his entrepreneurial spirit, apparently trying to shout over the sound of the lawnmower. The resulting photo sparked a meme that was deployed for every major controversy over the rest of Trump’s presidency.4. When Trump and two other world leaders stood around a glowing orb. Trump’s 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia gave the world one of the most enduring images from his presidency. While visiting an anti-extremist center in Riyadh, Trump, King Salman and the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, placed their hands on a glowing orb. The resulting photos of the three leaders standing around a lit sphere, looking as if they were planning global destruction, prompted a widespread reaction of, “Wait, what?”5. When Anthony Scaramucci was fired after 11 days as White House communications director. The rapid rise and fall of “the Mooch” across 11 days in 2017 was an early indication of the chaos that would define Trump’s staffing strategy. Scaramucci was let go after a to the New Yorker, including referring to the then chief of staff, Reince Priebus, as “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic”.The communications director was pushed out by the newly installed chief of staff, John Kelly, who was also dismissed a little over a year later. After his short White House stint, Scaramucci became a fierce critic of the president and took to using the short length of his tenure as a measurement of time.6. When Trump waxed poetic about a steelworker’s late father, who was very much alive. During a 2018 event at the White House, Scott Sauritch, the president of a steelworkers union in Pennsylvania, thanked Trump for imposing tariffs on steel imports. Sauritch noted his father, Herman, lost his job because of steel imports.The president told Sauritch, “Well, your father Herman is looking down. He’s very proud of you right now.” Sauritch replied, “Oh, he’s still alive.” Trump tried to recover by saying, “Well then, he’s even more proud of you.”7. When Trump asked a seven-year-old girl whether she “still” believed in Santa Claus. When Collman Lloyd contacted the North American Aerospace Defense Command to track Santa’s whereabouts in 2018, the young girl probably didn’t expect to speak to the president – or to be quizzed on her beliefs.The president and the first lady were taking calls patched through from Norad on Christmas Eve to speak to children wondering where Santa was on his journey around the world. Trump asked Lloyd, “Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at seven it’s marginal, right?”8. When Trump wanted to buy Greenland. After the president last year that he was toying with the idea of trying to purchase Greenland, the internet jumped to assist him, envisioning a on the island and suggesting a for the transaction. But some people, namely residents of Greenland, did not find the outlandish suggestion to be quite as funny, so Greenland’s leadership issued a statement making it clear that the island, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, was “not for sale”.9. When Trump claimed “fake news” over a picture of his tan line. While returning to the White House from a trip to North Carolina in February, photographers captured a picture of Trump that showed a noticeable tan line on the president’s face.A , which appeared to exaggerate the tan line, later went viral on Twitter, sparking comparisons to and from Cast Away. Trump couldn’t help but weigh in, writing in a tweet, “More Fake News. This was photoshopped, obviously, but the wind was strong and the hair looks good? Anything to demean!”10. When Trump’s campaign held a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia. Hours before Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, Trump sent a tweet saying his campaign would hold a press conference at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. But he then sent another tweet, clarifying that the event would actually take place at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a Philadelphia groundskeeping business located between a crematorium and a sex shop.The mix-up was a major embarrassment for Trump advisers like Rudy Giuliani, who was forced to peddle his baseless claims about election fraud in a parking lot. But it was a huge success in terms of Twitter jokes and for the previously little-known landscaping company.

Amid four years of corruption, caging children and trashing democracy there were some light-hearted moments – no reallyLast modified on Fri 1 Jan 2021 02.03 ESTDonald Trump’s presidency will soon come to an end, and his time in the White House will almost certainly be best remembered for the chaos and controversy caused by his oft-criticized choices on everything from immigration to the coronavirus pandemic.The president’s habit of making off-the-cuff comments and split-second decisions – either over Twitter or – has repeatedly and sent his senior staffers scrambling to explain the firing...

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Joan E Greve is a politics breaking news reporter for Guardian US, based in Washington.

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/joan-greve

Joan E Greve

TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and Guardian Unlimited, is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service.

From covfefe to the Mooch: 10 funny moments from the Trump presidency

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