Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.
Terrible news from deep space, where NASA fired a small craft into the path of an asteroid, thereby throwing it off course and showing that in the future, humanity could be saved from being wiped out should another massive space rock be headed this way.
At this point, the planet being destroyed by an asteroid seems like one of the better options, such is the appalling state of affairs.
Also, the spacecraft that NASA used was the size of a vending machine so why not use an actual vending machine and that way, should aliens find it, they would at least have some crisps (or chips, if you will) to munch on.
Back on as-yet-not-smashed-to-smithereens Earth, and Viktor Orbán has been embarrassing himself by making eyes at Donald Trump. First, the Hungarian prime minister took to Twitter (using only his fourth post since joining the social media hellhole) to ask “Where is my good friend, Donald Trump?” The answer is that he’s banned from the site “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” in the wake of the U.S. Capitol riot. That is until Elon Musk takes over as boss of Twitter and lets Trump back in, at which point the world probably ends.
Scrolling through the list of people Orbán follows on Twitter is like looking in Satan’s own address book: Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, Matteo Salvini, Marine Le Pen, Boris Johnson. There is Silvio Berlusconi, too, who also joined a new social media platform of late, signing up to TikTok last month in an effort to reach out to — call the police! — young people.
In his first TikTok video, the former Italian prime minister explained that “on this platform, there are over 5 million of you guys and 60 percent of you are under 30 years old.” Shudder.
Clearly older European leaders are deciding to embrace that new-fangled social media thing that young people have now. Rumors that Charles Michel is strongly considering signing up for MySpace were, sadly, unconfirmed at the time of going to press.
Back to Orbán, who wasn’t finished being a Trump fanboy, saying during an event in Berlin that current U.S. President Joe Biden should not lead any U.S.-Russia peace negotiations and that only Trump could possibly end the war in Ukraine. In a sentence that literally no one saw coming, the Hungarian leader said: “Hope for peace goes by the name of Donald Trump.”
Sorry, what time was that asteroid hitting the planet?
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Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our postbag — there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze.
“Is this still the funeral?” by Peter Panteli.
Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.
