Brendan O'Connor: With the camels and sheikhs and ‘YMCA', Baby Trump's Big Day Out was a blessed relief

Irish Independent

18-05-2025

Brendan O'Connor
It was like high-end childcare. For the rest of the world, it was like if you were really struggling and someone surprised you by offering to take your toddler off your hands for a few days, to give you a break.
And the toddler was clearly having a ball. His fun uncles in the Gulf had pulled out all the stops. They played YMCA at every available opportunity, possibly unaware it was a gay anthem.
They even added a petting-zoo by bringing out the camels, prompting the toddler to say, and I quote: 'I appreciate these camels. I haven't seen camels like that in a long time.'
Seriously? Does he remember the last time he saw camels? And he remembers the relative qualities of each camel he sees? And he can evaluate when the last time was that he saw camels like that? As against what? Camels that weren't like that? Did he mean dromedaries versus Bactrian? One hump or two?
Of course 'I haven't seen camels like that in a long time' is a veiled insult. Because we know if Donald Trump was really impressed by the camels, he would have said: 'No one has ever seen camels like this before.'
Like all the best fun uncles, they not only brought the toddler to McDonald's, they built a McDonald's for him.
To make him feel at home, they even redecorated every building he went into to look like Trump Towers and the Oval Office.
(Fact check: The Saudis and Qataris and Emiratis may have been into the whole gold/gilt aesthetic before Donald Trump.)
They're tall, handsome guys that happen to be very smart
Perhaps spurred on by the constant playing of YMCA, Trump flirted outrageously with his hosts. He said of Mohammed bin Salman: 'I like him a lot… I like him too much!'
Did he mean he liked him 'too much' for Saudi Arabia's repressive anti-gay laws?
He liked Sheikh Tamim in Qatar as well: Tamim and MBS were both 'tall, handsome guys that happen to be very smart.' Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa is, he said, 'young, attractive, a fighter.'
Between the bling and the music and the flirting, it was like Eurovision in the desert.
And even though the rest of us were acutely aware that the very real problems of the world hadn't gone away, it felt like we were able to relax a bit and enjoy watching Baby's Big Day Out.
At least while he was being distracted by his rich uncles in the Gulf, being convinced he was doing amazing deals wherever he went, he wasn't, for a few days anyway, wreaking economic havoc for the rest of us.
And also, he looked so happy. And maybe it's good for us all when baby is happy. Because we've seen baby when he's angry and it's not good for anyone.
If you want baby to do something, you pretend to like him for doing it
We have given up at this stage trying to predict or understand baby's behaviour. But maybe his Gulf uncles have figured something out.
If you want baby to do something, you pretend to like him for doing it. Baby likes to be liked.
And in the broader picture, maybe, just maybe, baby is figuring out that people seem to like him more when he's not wreaking economic havoc, when he's not supporting Russia and Israel too much.
Maybe the lesson from last week is this: mol an óige agus tiocfaidh siad.
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