OF CABBAGES AND KINGS | Like Banquo’s Ghost, Did Jeffrey Epstein Haunt The Donald At Windsor’s Banquet? | Farrukh Dhondy
There is of course no evidence to demonstrate that Macbeth sent Banquo a fiftieth birthday greeting card which he had drawn in the shape of a naked woman with sexual innuendo sentences and his signature, a scribbly scrawl, placed to look like her pubes
“Hunger is the reward of emptiness
Which could be of the stomach or the heart
Oh… grant them loaves and fishes and God bless
All those who feed the horse and fill the cart…”
From Source for the Goose is Good Propaganda, by Bachchoo
Donald Chump (the only POTUS to be nominated for the Nobel Piss-Taker Prize?) came with his wife Melania, from September 16 to 18 on a state visit to the UK, invited by King Charles III. The King was persuaded (directed?) by Keir Starmer to write a personally signed invitation to Chump in the interests of getting a trade deal for Britain free of the tariff-toter’s whims. The TV images showed Starmer waving the invite as he presented it to Chump as a surprise.
One can imagine what the climate-change conscious King Charles, a campaigner for saving the environment, its fauna and flora, thinks of fossil-fuel “dig-baby-dig” Chump. That’s royalty, one obeys the elected boss and swallows. (Ou sont les nieges before that bum Oliver Cromwell reversed it all?)
And adding to the humiliation of this forced invitation, Donald and Melania moved into Windsor Castle, the King’s official residence, on Wednesday and that night were invited, with ministers and grandees, to a royal banquet where Chump Trumpeted the special relationship.
It didn’t show on TV, but I wonder how many viewers of this grand occasion noticed, as my imaginative eyes did, an empty chair on the opposite side of the thronged banqueting table from Chumpy? Of course, Donald could see, as could I, who that chair was occupied by! Chump sometimes betrays extreme shock or consternation with his expressions but sometimes keeps a poker face. At dinner he betrayed no panic -- unlike Macbeth when he saw the ghost of Banquo occupying the empty seat and “pushing (us) from our stools”!
Yes, gentle reader, who could the mysterious guest or intruder, hidden to the innocent eye, be?
The limitation of analogy is that the events or stories being compared have a few things in common but not all. Macbeth and Banquo, for instance, are co-generals in the suppression of the rebellion by the Thane of Cawdor. They are riding away from their victory together when they encounter those female encouragers -- so we assume they are friends and notice that there are females involved in the plot. There is of course no evidence to demonstrate that Macbeth sent Banquo a fiftieth birthday greeting card which he had drawn in the shape of a naked woman with sexual innuendo sentences and his signature, a scribbly scrawl, placed to look like her pubes.
Macbeth then resorts to murder to mount the throne. Banquo senses something wrong, declaring “I fear thou play’dst most foully for it”. Macbeth subsequently wants to rid himself of Banquo and gets some assassins to kill him. There’s no record of Banquo’s death being investigated by the Scottish police, and no mention of Macbeth publicly claiming that Banquo died by suicide.
No, gentle reader, no analogy is perfect, but perhaps you have enough clues now -- comradeship, enmity, rise to power, threat to attained position, murder -- so you might have guessed who the unwanted guest at the Windsor banquet could be? Yes, he has come to haunt Trump and will continue to do so with an, as yet unpredictable, but hoped-for-by-many, including, I suppose, vice-president J.D. Vance, conclusion.
Days before the Grump visit, social media urged Britain’s population to rally and declare that the orange booby was not welcome here. The calls to protest may recognise that Keir Starmer was acting to save Britain’s faltering economy and his own government’s streaky bacon, but that a great many of the population put morals, anti-racism, adherence to the constitution and rule of law (and sanity) above both these.
Two other people were notably absent from the royal banquet. King Charles’ brother Andrew was not invited. Neither was the recently dismissed UK ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson.
Both these would have been an embarrassing presence for Rump as perhaps they had encountered him in the past through a mutual friend. It would be inappropriate to remind him and Melania of such a friendship at this suck-up-for-trade dinner.
It’s because of that friendship and the activity it enabled and endorsed that Andrew remains in suspended disgrace. And Mandy? Because his friendship with the person who received sleazy messages from Rump, persisted even after this “friend” -- yes, the mystery presence on the “unseen stool in the banquet”, was convicted in 2008 as a paedophile and, with his female encourager, a trafficker of young girls.
So finally, step forward allegorical equal of Banquo’s ghost at the banquet? Yes, none other than Jeffrey Epstein, millionaire paedophile, who died in his cell allegedly through “suicide” before he could expose powerful people who might have joined him in his paedophilic crimes.
Of course, Starmer dismissed Mandy when the truth of his friendship with this monster emerged.
Ironically, he has this week welcomed co-Epstein-pal Trump and treated him to the UK state’s greatest honours. Perhaps because the dire truth about Rump hasn’t emerged? Yet!
But wait -- maybe I didn’t see Epstein’s ghost occupying that seat opposite Chump. Maybe my overactive imagination transferred the huge coloured pictures of Trump with Epstein which protesters projected onto the 30-metre-tall walls of Windsor Castle onto a seat at the banquet?
