Celebrity birthday wishes poured in for President Donald Trump as he turned 80 on Sunday – but many doubled as brutal condemnations of the president’s global impact, with one columnist declaring Trump’s legacy to be one of “mass immiseration and death.”
“Dear Number 47. You’re aging fast, Mr President, plagued by bruising, memory holes, verbal incoherence and unwelcome fits of sleep,” wrote novelist Siri Hustvedt, as reported by The Guardian.
“Not such a happy birthday, then. ICE murders, immigrant concentration camps, pregnant women bleeding out in parking lots for want of an abortion, measles outbreaks, huge numbers dead after USAID vanished, broken alliances and a war no one wanted are the veritable consequences of delusion.”
She added, “But time is inexorable, the citizens are restless, and your fantasy body is beginning to crack, just as your real body is showing the infirmities that come with 80 years of age.”
Some notable figures issued Trump genuine and flattering birthday wishes, including British broadcaster Piers Morgan, who praised the president for his “extraordinary resilience.” But countless others took Trump’s birthday as an opportunity to brutally scold him.
“My initial thought was to give you a one-way ticket to The Hague as a birthday gift, but that comment would probably go above your head,” wrote Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
“I will instead give you a can of alphabet soup; the sentences you poop out will be more coherent than anything you have ever said. Now you can finally take part in meaningful public discourse.”
Unlike Thunberg, Dom Joly, a British comedian, opted to ditch his comedy stylings to instead issue Trump a brutally blunt birthday wish.
“You’re a narcissistic, lying fraud who has somehow convinced a large number of people that you give a flying f--- about them when the only thing you actually care about is yourself,” Joly wrote. “Enjoy your birthday while the world burns.”
And Mick Lynch, former general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, penned a tongue-in-cheek poem for the president on his 80th birthday.
“Dear Donald Potus on your birthday,” Lynch wrote. “Hair is wispy; Skin’s gone crispy. Now you’re 80; Don’t be so hatey.”