The UK is looking at the US as if it had three heads.  And no wonder: a know-nothing** blowhard named Donald Trump, a sometimes successful, sometimes bankrupt, always obnoxious businessman is running for the most powerful position in the world.

And he just might win the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

Those of us who are Democrats, and a much smaller number of Republicans, are cringing in horror.

He has called Mexicans “rapists.”

He wants to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S.

He mocked a physically disabled reporter.

He said that he watched “thousands of Muslims in New Jersey” celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

And as for him treating women decently, as they say in New York, fuhgeddaboudit!

He is a racist, homophobic, misogynistic specimen.  And he’s only just getting started. Imagine him as U.S. President negotiating with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. They’d both be hurling atomic bombs at each other’s country before you could say “comb-over” (look right).  And as for relations with Putin? The testosterone would be flying, and we’d be fighting ground wars against the Russians all over the world.

Unfortunately, America is stuck with him.  But other countries are not.  In fact, just today the British Parliament debated as to whether he should be banned from the UK on the basis of his “hate speech” toward Muslims.

In the UK, there’s a new system in which citizens can sign petitions for Parliamentary debate, and if more than 100,000 people sign, Parliament must do just that.

So far, 573,996 people have signed their names to a petition stating that Donald J. Trump, presumptive president of the U.S., is, in effect, a “wazzock” and should be banned from the UK.

He was also called a “fool,” a “buffoon,” and a “demagogue”–all by Members of Parliament.

There’s another reason for Brits to dislike Trump.  In the UK, the word “trump” means “fart.”  President Fart.  There’s a certain ring to it, for this particular man, don’t you think?

—

* “Wazzock.”  (British, chiefly Northern England, mildly pejorative, slang.)  “A stupid or annoying person.”  Possibly from wiseacre, influenced by pillock.  First used in the 1984 novel, When the Martians Land in Huddersfield, by Mike Harding. According to the Guardian, Harding told them, “It takes its name from the habit of medieval kings to ‘take a crap on a shovel.’ The royal turd would be ‘wazzed’ out of the window and the wazzock was the tool for performing this operation.”

** The Know–Nothing Party, also known as the American Party, was a prominent United States political party during the late 1840s and the early 1850s. The American Party originated in 1849. Its members strongly opposed immigrants and followers of the Catholic Church.