Ape attacks lions.
18 November 2017, 20:54 | Updated: 18 November 2017, 21:00
Just when you though he couldn't get any lower – Donald Trump found a way.
The world's most powerful man has declared war on animals.
This is a stop-gap measure to blow off steam by killing things vicariously through big game hunters.
Lions and tigers are his amuse-bouche before the main course which will be World War III.
That will start when he hears a translation of Kim Jong-un calling his hair fat.
Trump has reversed a ban on importing trophies from big game hunted for sport that was brought in after Cecil the lion was killed.
Cecil was killed in a dentist related incident, in that he was shot by one.
That happened in 2015 and when we heard the news, the whole world to reach for its hankies and the previous president, Obak Arama, instigated a ban on importing the parts of recently shot rare animals into America where they would be hung on the wall in some rich man's snug.
Coincidentally, two of those rich men just happen to be the sons of one D. Trump.
There are pictures all over the internet of Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber posing with the animals they bravely killed from an off road vehicle, surrounded by armed wardens and security guards.
They courageously used high powered rifles, fired from so far away that the animals did not even know they were there before the shots rang out.
It is as though they were getting back at nature for everything it has done to them.
They shot all fauna that moved, quite a lot that was stationary and probably didn't spare the flora either.
They have sprayed more ammunition around Africa than Robert Mugabe, but for a few frustrating years they have been unable to bring back the prize parts of the beautiful beasts they so heroically dispatched.
And if you happened to be on a killing holiday while the import ban was in place and you were unable to return with your quarry, Trump has made his new directive to be applied retroactively.
This will please that most cruelly overlooked and downtrodden of demographics: rich white men with guns.
It is not only big cats trophies that Trump announced he will allow.
Elephants are also back in the cross-hairs. Their tusks are highly prized because they are phallic-shaped and there is nothing that manly men like to collect more than things that are longer than they are wide.
Orange apes are not on the kill list, in case his sons start preparing for a hostile takeover of their father's business.
Trumpists say that hunting wildlife brings in big money in tourism for countries that need it but most tourists want to see the animals while they are still alive and not being kneeled on in a pool of blood by a millionaire for a Facebook snap.
A hundred years ago there were estimated to be four to five million African elephants and 100,000 Asian elephants in the wild.
There are now one tenth of that remaining on the African savanna, and in Asia there are only about 35,000 left.
They are being killed by poachers at a rate of 100 a day.
This seems a shame as, unlike the billion animals we chew through a year for our dinner in Britain, these trophy animals are rare. David Attenborough is not likely to want to point his camera at a herd of cows or a farm yard full of chickens and we wouldn't watch it if he did.
There is also the issue of intelligence.
We would frown on someone who hired a boat to go shooting dolphins, yet elephants are among the smartest animals on earth.
They haven't fallen for the £1000 iPhone for a start. They're brighter than a lot of humans.
The locals think that each live elephant is worth over £1 million in terms of tourism revenues it brings in for hard-up countries.
For the US president, that appears to be nothing compared to the momentary thrill and lifetime of bragging rights for millionaires who are bored of holidaying on the yacht.
*Update:
After a day in which the whole world expressed its anger at this lifting of the ban on the import of big game trophies into America, Trump reacted to that outrage and tweeted, in the manner of Tarzan communicating to Jane: "Put big game trophy decision on hold until such time as I review all conservation facts".
Facts? Reacting to outrage? Maybe he is not as slow witted as he sounds. He might even be as bright as that squirrel he keeps on his head.
