Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me … Yes, Declassified is six years old (the same age that centipedes and scorpions are when they die). On Sept. 6, 2019, the first edition of this column was published to widespread indifference. It would take several months before a kindly American reader would email calling me a “vile monolithic left-wing corrupt lying swamp creature,” which I’m thinking of putting on a T-shirt. Anyway, enough with the back-slapping and on with the “so-called comedy.”
Breaking News! Donald Trump is not dead (at the time of writing — ed).
More Breaking News! Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are also not dead and are going to live forever (this column is getting more fraught by the moment — ed).
For a man who spends a lot of his non-golf time on social media, Trump seemed blissfully unaware of rampant online speculation that he had died and been replaced by a body double. “Really? I didn’t see that,” he replied when asked if had seen the rumors, which sprang up after he wasn’t seen publicly for a few days, not even on the White House roof. Trump added that he had been “very active” over the Labor Day holiday weekend rather than being extremely inactive, as in not alive.
Now, there are some awful jobs in the world (Keir Starmer’s head of comms, fact-checker at X, member of the European Parliament) but imagine being Trump’s body double! I guess there’s a plentiful supply of free cheeseburgers.
Of course, claiming that a senior politician is dead and has been replaced by a body double is a classic tactic used by batshit crazy conspiracy theorists who believe there is a giant global plot against them.
While there have been leaders who have reportedly used body doubles, including Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro, these tended to be used as decoys rather than replacements.
Trump himself long promoted the nonsense that Joe Biden was dead, which he isn’t (now we’re getting really risky — ed). Trump once reposted a claim on Truth Social that Biden died in 2020 and was replaced with “clones” and “doubles” as well as “robotic engineered soulless mindless entities,” which is also how he describes European leaders.
So just to clarify, Donald Trump (aged 79) is not dead and maybe he never will be. The U.S. president will surely have been intrigued to hear that fellow dictators Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping (both 72) were captured privately talking about living to at least 150 years old.
According to audio picked up on CCTV on the sidelines of China’s Victory Day parade in Beijing, the two discussed the possibility of immortality through organ transplants and advanced medical procedures.
“Earlier, people rarely lived to 70, but these days at 70 you are still a child,” Xi told Putin, according to the translator in Russian.
“Predictions are, this century, there is also a chance of living to 150,” Xi said.
The world is in such a horrible state that you’d be forgiven for praying for an early death, rather than the opposite. But wanting to live forever isn’t new, especially for Chinese leaders.
The first emporer, Qin Shi Huang (he of Terracota Army fame), was obsessed with the elixir of life and ordered a nationwide hunt for the mythical potion. No one found it and he died at the age of 49 in 210 B.C.
But there have been one or two medical advancements since then, so maybe Putin, Xi and Trump will manage to extend their lives, perhaps forever.
Fast-forward to the year 2103, and the 150-year-old Russian and Chinese leaders and the 157-year-old American are gathered onboard a giant space station (for the sake of ease, let’s call it the Death Star), firing the occassional missile down at Earth.
At this point, Europe is a desolate wasteland (like “The Last Of Us” but with more e-scooters) still waiting to introduce the Digital Euro as a currency. The continent’s only hope is the Rebel Alliance, led by a sprightly Keith Richards and with Maroš Šefčovič remaining in his role as EU commissioner for trade. But there is some good news … work on the Schuman roundabout will be completed soon, say authorities in Brussels (which still does not have a government).
CAPTION COMPETITION
“What’s for dessert?”“We’re sitting at it.”
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Last week, we gave you this photo:
Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best one from our mailbag — there’s no prize except the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far preferable to cash or booze.
“No, I’m not taking questions; just waving adieu.”
by Gustavo Szulansky
The post Trump, Putin and Xi are not dead and are going to live forever appeared first on Politico.
