Greetings again, Earthlings. It’s I, Xylb’tok of Mars, here to bring you your weekly digest of absurdity. Once again, your species has managed to outdo itself in the grand theatre of farce. This week you gave us lawsuits pitched higher than the orbit of Phobos, soldiers on the streets, royal castles turned into protest canvases, and presidential maths that would make a Martian toddler blush. Add in your ongoing war against comedians and a new definition of ‘terrorism’ that would rewrite your entire 20th century, and it’s been another week where satire is not so much redundant as gasping for breath.
Trump sues the New York Times for $15bn
President Apricot has announced that he is suing the New York Times for a modest $15 billion. Yes, billion, with a ‘b.’ That’s not a defamation claim – that’s a ransom demand. One half expects him to demand delivery in gold bars, Diet Coke vouchers, and loyalty points from his failing resorts.
The supposed grievance? ‘Fake news.’ Always ‘fake news.’ The man treats the phrase like a universal coupon code: valid at every checkout, redeemable against any criticism, no expiry date. Never mind that the Times has been in print for over 170 years – Trump, who can barely complete a sentence without veering into advertorial for his golf courses, considers it untrustworthy.
Let’s put $15 billion in perspective. That’s more than the GDP of Barbados, about 60% of the budget of NASA, or, more appropriately, roughly 150 times the sum Trump has allegedly spent on hairspray. It’s also about the size of the entire Martian annual budget for interplanetary diplomacy – and trust me, we’d actually deliver better returns.
To anyone who has followed Trump’s career, the numbers game is familiar. Inflate, exaggerate, invent – it’s the Trump business model. Towers are taller than they are, crowds are bigger than they were, and lawsuits are worth more than entire nations. It’s Monopoly money presented as fact.
Will the case succeed? Not likely. But that isn’t the point. The lawsuit is theatre, designed to keep his followers frothing and his enemies grinding their teeth. It’s a campaign stunt masquerading as a legal filing, much like his entire presidency was a reality show masquerading as governance.
If, by some cosmic accident, he does succeed, I humbly request Martians get a cut. After all, I’ve been providing commentary far sharper than anything the Times has published, and I do it for free.
Britain’s not-so-royal welcome
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Trump embarked on his second state visit to Britain, and the locals responded with a brand of protest only they could muster. Activists projected giant images of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein onto the side of Windsor Castle. Four were arrested, but not before the entire internet enjoyed a hearty laugh. The world’s oldest monarchy reduced to a backdrop for guerrilla PowerPoint presentations – one almost admires the audacity.
Britain has a long tradition of creative protest. They’ve inflated Trump as a blimp, dressed him in nappies, and now they’ve turned royal walls into a cinema screen. This time, they even gave his loyal sidekick J.D. Vance the balloon treatment, launching the ‘Ohio Zeppelin’ into the skies. Vice President Floaty McFloatface bobbed above the London crowds like an overgrown party favour, a grinning sidekick floating eternally in Trump’s shadow. At the state banquet, things went as badly as one might expect. Trump veered wildly off script, launching into a rant about his rivals and boasting that America was the “hottest country.” One imagines the Queen’s portrait frowning from the walls while waiters tried to pretend they hadn’t heard the Leader of the Free World confuse climate crisis with a compliment.
British hosts maintained their tradition of strained politeness, but the sighs were practically audible. A royal dinner is supposed to be about formality, not about a guest speaker shouting about his enemies while slurping soup. Yet that is precisely what Britain got – another chapter in the long chronicle of Trump mistaking diplomacy for dinner theatre.
The disappearing population
President Fanta, ever the maths genius, claimed that 300 million Americans had died of drugs in 2024. A minor issue: the US population in 2024 was 340.1 million. By his logic, the country is now a nearly empty wasteland, inhabited only by a few stragglers who somehow dodged the narcotic apocalypse. This is what happens when you mix authoritarian bluster with primary school arithmetic. Yet Earthlings nodded along as though it were perfectly reasonable.
If 300 million truly perished, who exactly is Trump addressing in his rants? Are the crowds at his rallies holograms? Are his MAGA hats being distributed to ghosts? Perhaps America is now populated entirely by AI bots trained to applaud on cue. Stranger things have happened – after all, you elected him twice.
The real tragedy, of course, is that drug addiction is an urgent and deadly crisis. But when a leader inflates the numbers into apocalyptic fantasy, it trivialises the suffering of real people. Instead of addressing the problem, he turns it into a punchline. Martians may not understand your economics, but even we know that losing nearly your entire population would leave more than a dent in your GDP.
Comedians under fire
First they came for Stephen Colbert, and now they’ve cancelled Jimmy Kimmel. So goes the lament of America’s late-night comedy circuit, as yet another talk show host finds himself in the crosshairs of the great ‘free speech but only if I agree with you’ crusade.
The irony, of course, is thicker than Trump’s make-up. These same voices who cheer when a comedian is silenced had no issue when one of their own appeared on national television calling for the execution of homeless people. That, apparently, was not offensive. But a monologue poking fun at Mango Mussolini? Grounds for termination.
To Martian ears, it sounds like a society that wants satire declawed and comedy reduced to weather updates. The late-night hosts are hardly revolutionaries – most of their jokes are milder than our average schoolyard taunt. Yet even they are too much for a regime that equates laughter with treason.
The result is a cultural desert where the only approved humour comes from sycophants on state television. If that’s your idea of “free speech,” then perhaps North Korea should be your role model. On Mars, even our algae get to make jokes – and believe me, they’re funnier than Jimmy Fallon.
Antifa and the war on history
Finally, Trump has announced plans to designate Antifa as a terrorist organisation. One can only imagine the bureaucracy required to retroactively classify half of World War Two as terrorism. Presumably, the Allied soldiers storming Normandy will now be rebranded as extremists. Churchill, Roosevelt, and De Gaulle? Terror masterminds, apparently.
It is, of course, nonsense. Antifa is not an organisation at all but a loose collection of activists united by opposition to fascism. To call them terrorists is like calling clouds a criminal gang. But the label serves Trump’s narrative: anyone opposing him must be dangerous, anyone resisting must be suppressed.
Captain Bone Spurs – who famously dodged service himself – now presumes to lecture the world on terrorism. The hypocrisy is so glaring that even our Martian telescopes can see it. If opposing fascism makes one a terrorist, then Earth’s history books are due for a wholesale rewrite.
Curtain call
So there you have it, Earthlings: billion-dollar lawsuits, castles turned into protest screens, a president who can’t count past ten, comedians silenced for daring to jest, and anti-fascists rebranded as terrorists. All in the space of one Earth week.
If this is how you run a planet, no wonder your scientists get excited over funny rocks. At least the rocks make sense. Until next time – may your lawsuits fail, your banquets stay on script, and your comedians remain uncancelled..
