In a revelation that will shock precisely no one who has ever glanced at a newspaper, British intelligence has reportedly spent taxpayer money analysing the social media output of Donald J. Trump. Their conclusion?
A ‘pattern of destabilisation.’ One can only imagine the heroic civil servants, hunched over terminals in Cheltenham, decoding the semantics of ‘covfefe’ and ‘Lyin’ Ted.’ For the price of a few hundred thousand quids, they have confirmed what my cat already knows: The man tweets like a bull in a china shop that’s also on fire.
But let us not mock their earnestness. These are the same minds that brought us the term ‘hostile state activity.’ They are the swivel-eyed guardians of our democracy, and they have decided that Trump’s online ramblings constitute a genuine threat.
Or perhaps they simply needed a win after missing the entire Russian interference business. ‘He is, how you say, a complete weapon,’ murmured a source, wiping gin from his moustache. The analysis, which runs to 47 pages and is written in language so dense it could be used as a mortar, apparently identifies a pattern of unpredictable outbursts designed to ‘confuse, divide, and undermine democratic discourse.
’ So, for clarity: Donald Trump, resident of Mar-a-Lago, possible eater of well-done steaks, and former leader of the free world, is being blamed for democracy’s fragility. The report, leaked to the Guardian by a man who looked like a retired geography teacher, allegedly notes that Trump’s Twitter feed ‘systematically attacks the very concept of factual reality.’ This is, I suppose, the polite way of saying he lies like a cheap rug.
But the Government is worried. Very worried. They see a man still capable of influencing global politics with a single thumbs-up emoji.
They see a shadow network of far-right maniacs sharing his every word. They see, in short, a threat. Meanwhile, in the real world, Trump is currently trying to sell gold sneakers.
The report’s release has caused the usual panic: thinkpieces calling for regulation of social media, MPs demanding a debate, and a brief spike in bottle sales as journalists try to forget they live in a timeline where truth is optional. The irony? British intelligence might well be right.
Trump’s tweets do destabilise. They destabilise my faith in humanity, my belief that we elected the right person in 2016, and my stomach lining. But call it a threat to national security?
Please. If that were true, we’d have to bring charges against every drunk uncle on Facebook. Still, kudos to GCHQ or MI5 or whoever actually commissioned this.
It’s good to know your taxes are funding detailed semantic analysis of phrases like ‘Sad!’ and ‘Sleepy Joe.’ Perhaps next they can crack the mystery of why Boris Johnson’s haircut looks like a startled badger.
So what is to be done? The report recommends ‘monitoring’ and ‘resilience building.’ In other words, shrug and carry on.
As a nation, we are resilient. We survived Brexit. We survived Dominic Cummings’s eye test.
We can survive Trump’s tweeting. Though I’d recommend gin in industrial quantities.
