Sink the Boardwalk

Venetians irritated by the co-opting of their city for last year's wedding of a mogul and a newsreader are set to be further exercised by a visitation from a Trumpsterite squillionaire and his football-field-length yacht. As a campaign funder and therefore an ambassador, the great man apparently intends inflicting the United States quarter-millennium upon the entire coastline of Italy, presumably to demonstrate whose foot the boot is on. There are fears that he may feel inclined to shove his six-deck personal inadequacy compensator into the historical city centre during one of its most revered festivals, which celebrates the end of a devastating epidemic. In a sponsor of the Trumpster and his head-tribble, who employ the Kennedy brainworm and who recommended injections of detergent and ultra-violet light as Covid cures, this does arguably demonstrate a modicum of comic timing; but despite the common status of Venice and the USA as former republics, it remains as yet unclear whether the city will be mollified.