Pommes de guerre

There’s an old army censorship joke that probably first featured a Roman legionary as one of the correspondents.

The soldier’s wife (or, sometimes, his father) writes: “Now that you’re way the hell off in gods-forsaken Phrygia/Vicksburg/Gallipoli/Okinawa, what am I supposed to do about the potato patch? We can’t plant without you here to dig the ground. We’re going to starve here.”

The soldier writes back: “Whatever you do, don’t dig between the road and the back fence. That’s where the spears/guns/secret weapon plans are buried!”

The next letter from home reads: “What the hell? Some government guys showed up and just ripped up the whole place, from the road to the back fence. What the hell have you done?”

And the soldier replies: “Now plant the potatoes.”

Well, yesterday’s instance of White House Follies reminded me of that. Cadet Bonespurs was bloviating at representatives of farmers, ranchers and the food supply chain. Of course he could not let an opportunity to mouth off pass him by; the cameras were on, yo.

Among the horny-handed sons of the soil was apparently someone from the Old Dominion, where the Democratic governor and finally Democratic-majority legislature passed some mild gun control laws last month. The thought “Virginia” triggered some spark in the Kleptocrat’s reptilian brain, and he blurted out, apropos of nothing (as is his custom):

“We're going after Virginia, with your crazy governor, we're going after Virginia. They want to take your Second Amendment away. You'll have nobody guarding your potatoes."

#PresidentPlump clearly felt he was on a roll, and found that at the end of his sentence he needed to come up with some agricultural-related product, and was probably thinking about extra fries with his lunch that was overdue, so out came potatoes. Which is not a crop that Virginia produces in any particular quantity, and which—as far as I know—is not something that’s subject to a lot of thievery in any event.

I swear to you I am not making this up; there’s video. It's obvious that not having played golf since 8 March is really weighing on him.