As almost everyone who can read knows, the Mango Mussolini has inflicted tariffs on numerous countries around the world. However, several of the tariffs have been aimed at places with no trading relationship with the United States., two of which are Heard Island and the McDonald Islands1.
Heard Island and the McDonald Islands comprise an Australian external territory and contain Australia’s only two active volcanoes. They are among the most remote places on Earth and are located about 4,100 km southwest of Perth, itself one of the most remote capital cities on the planet. They are uninhabited and can only be reached by sea, requiring a couple of weeks sailing from Perth. The islands were discovered in the 1850s, and the only visitors being sealers, who by 1877 had wiped out the local seal population, so they left. The last time the islands were visited was in 20162.
The flora is very limited on the islands with very few angiosperms, and there are no trees or ferns, and the main vertebrate animals are ocean-going seabirds, penguins and seals2.
Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell suggested that inflicting tariffs on uninhabited islands was “clearly a mistake” and added “poor old penguins, I don’t know what they did to Trump but, look, I think it’s an indication, to be honest with you, that this was a rushed process”1.
These islands were listed in the column labelled as countries, with seemingly nobody in the Trump regime knowing that the islands were Australian territories. Prime Minister Albanese said clearly, by way of sarcasm “Nowhere on Earth is safe”3.
While it is quite sensible to believe that this could easily be done by someone as mind-numbingly ignorant as Trump, I do wonder if this stupidity was fed to him on purpose, by someone waiting in the wings for Trump to make even more of a fool of himself (a big ask I know), as a pretext for removing him from office using the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution, which allows for the removal of the president in the case of incapacity4. In such a case, Eyeliner Vance would become president. Is this a ploy of his to get Republicans to give Trump the bum’s rush to attempt to save a semblance of their electoral future.
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