I guess I just have a sick imagination.
When I saw the above photo in the Washington Post, of former president Donald Trump looking down at a pie with a somewhat pained expression on his face, I had a couple of evil thoughts.
He’s getting ready to push that pie into the face of the nice lady in the white sweater standing next to him. Ha!
Or else, it’s a pie eating contest, and the ladies expect him to eat all five cream pies. And, in my imagination, he hates cream pie.
I like the first option best, because I also hate cream pies, and I have a highly developed sense of empathy.
Plus, the old pie-in-the-face trick just seems like something a man with a great sense of humor — like Donald Trump — could get away with.
Some of the other people in the photo are laughing, so maybe they were having the same sick thoughts. But a couple of them look worried.
The photo was reportedly taken at a restaurant in Iowa, where the first Republican primary will take place next year. Not in the restaurant itself; but in Iowa.
I don’t know why Iowa should be the first state to hold a Republican primary? Because it’s special, being located in the middle of the U.S.? When I look at the map, it looks to me like Kansas is actually the geographic middle. (Ignoring Hawaii and Alaska, of course. If you included Hawaii, then California would be the geographic middle. And no one wants that.)
Earlier this year, Democrats demoted formerly-first-in-line-Iowa, moving South Carolina to the front of the 2024 Primary Election line, followed by Nevada and New Hampshire, and then Georgia and Michigan. This did not make Iowa happy.
Apparently, Iowa wasn’t ‘diverse’ enough for the Democrats.
Republicans don’t care about diversity. In fact, they consider diversity slightly annoying. The Republican who seems to find diversity especially annoying — even dangerous — is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who also visited Iowa earlier this month.
He was also photographed — not with cream pies, but signing copies of his new book, The Courage to Be Free.
Especially, Governor DeSantis wants us to be courageously ‘free’ of critical race theory, and to avoid any discussion of diversity. He’s already signed several laws to keep Florida schools free of indoctrinating concepts.
He praised the Florida Department of Education last year, after they rejected 41% of the state’s mathematics textbooks. From the Department of Education’s press release:
“It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “I’m grateful that Commissioner Corcoran and his team at the Department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.”
Imagine. Sneaking ‘race essentialism’ into a math book. Bizarre!
After the publication of the Washington Post photo showing former president Trump with cream pies, however, I worry the state of Florida is going to make cream pies illegal.
Or at the very least, that they will reject any math books that include references to cream pies.
In my opinion, Donald Trump could easily win a pie eating contest against Ron DeSantis. Maybe we’ll find out, someday.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.