“She likes me, she really likes me”
Trump in Davos is trying to convince us all that he and Theresa May are best friends, best best best best dear close intimate best friends. May is simply saying the UK and the US remain allies.
His elegance and cogency were as usual striking.
“We’re on the same wavelength, I think, in every respect,” Mr. Trump said. “And the prime minister and myself have had a really great relationship, although some people don’t necessary believe that, but I can tell you it’s true.” He expressed respect for Mrs. May, and said he thought “the feeling is mutual from the standpoint of liking each other a lot,” adding that the two were “very much joined at the hip” on military matters.
Remember his visit to the White House during the transition, when he said afterwards that he liked Obama and Obama really really liked him?
Don’t bother watching after 53 seconds in. Anyway: that’s how detached from reality he is. He spent years giving oxygen to the lie that Obama wasn’t born in the US and isn’t a citizen and was therefore a fraudulent president…and then he says “he likes me” like a huge baby. And he says the same thing about May.
Maybe that’s because he doesn’t have the discipline or theory of mind to be polite to people he doesn’t like, so he can’t grasp that other people do.
Anyway. The chances that May actually “likes” him are nil.
Mrs. May was polite but less effusive and offered no personal testimonial to Mr. Trump, keeping her comments focused on their mutual national interests. “We, too, have that really special relationship between the U.K. and the United States,” she said. “It’s at each other’s shoulders. We face the same challenges across the world, and as you say we’re willing to go and to defeat those challenges and meet them.”
That’s how the adults do it; they don’t go prancing around the room exclaiming that Terry or Angie LIKES them.
“he doesn’t have the… theory of mind to be polite to people he doesn’t like, so he can’t grasp that other people do.”
I think this is 100% right.
I’m picking that May dies a little inside every time she has to be nice and polite to or about Trump.
Rob @#2: No sympathy. She’s the one who was so desperate to be the first to have a chinwag with him. She took the unprecendented step of inviting him for a state visit so soon into his term. And don’t forget you’re talking about the woman who managed to take David Cameron’s title of “worst PM ever” off of him within about a month of taking over. It took Cameron about six years to get that honour away from Thatcher.
Graham, don’t get me wrong, that’s just an observation ;-)
Ya hoping she doesn’t enjoy his badinage is hardly sympathy. I hope he’s a thwart disnatured torment to her.
Unrelated in specific, but perhaps relevant in general: I want to know why the NYT refers to Prime Minister May as Mrs? I thought Ms was their standard.
Point taken. Not convinced that she’s even capable of dying a little inside. There’s a reason she’s known as “The Maybot”…
@Theo The NYT uses Ms unless a woman expresses her preference for a different courtesy title. Theresa May prefers Mrs.
Me, I wish the Miss/Mrs thing would just bloody go away. I never changed my name when I married, but I have the option of Dr, which does away with the whole problem altogether. Still, I feel like a bit of an arse sometimes insisting on it, not least of which because I actually don’t demand it from people who work for me or with me (where you could argue it’s the most relevant).
I’m in the same situation, but students still insist on Mrs, because they know I am married. I started requiring them not to call me by my first name when I discovered that all the male instructors were reverently being addressed as “Mr” even when they preferred their first names. One student told me about one of her male instructors who wanted to be called by his first name, but she said “I just can’t bring myself to” – this from a student who called me by my first name every day, even after I had informed the class that I was not to be addressed by my first name, and even left my first name off all my syllabi and other paperwork – they had to go work at it to figure out my first name!
Jeez! If we’d have addressed a teacher by their first name we’d have had the sharp edge of a rule across the knuckles. In fact, so engrained is the rule that when I saw one of my old (now very old) teachers a couple of weeks ago, I still addressed her formally. She told me that most of her ex-pupils do.