Following an interview in which Steve Bannon compared himself to Tudor-era royal adviser Thomas Cromwell, America is making hasty preparations for the execution of Donald Trump’s freshly appointed chief strategist.
Trump’s office has been inundated with applications from people anxious to be the one to cleave Bannon’s head from his neck.
In an interview in which Bannon, America’s newest creepy uncle, also declared that a Trump presidency would be ‘as exciting as the 1930s’ he compared himself to the Tudor statesman.
Trump, who has previously said he loves the uneducated, clearly found an example in Bannon, the chief executive of foremost source of conservative codswallop Breitbart News, who has clearly only read the clip notes of sixteenth century England.
Cromwell did wield great power during the early stages of the reign of Henry VIII. However, if Bannon had read all the way to the end of the book (or waited until the last part of the TV show) he would have found out that the monarch ordered Cromwell to be executed in 1540.
And before Bannon tries to extricate himself from this mess by claiming he meant he was like Oliver Cromwell, who rose to prominence after the relative common man rose up against the elite in the seventeenth century, The Rochdale Herald wishes to point that, while he died of natural causes, his body was later dug up, hung and beheaded with his head being displayed on a spike.
While there is fresh hope that Bannon’s trajectory will closely mirror either Cromwell’s rise and fall, his statement offers some insight into the comparisons to be made between the Trump camp and the Tudor monarchy.
Though Henry VIII had something of an age advantage over Trump, as he ascended to the throne at aged just 18, Trump enters the White House with the edge on the number of wives at the point of coming to power. While Henry had to wait until he became king to marry his first immigrant wife, Trump is already on his third wife and has already matched Henry’s tally of two foreign born spouses.
Fortunately for Marla Maples, however, Trump cannot match the Tudor king’s record of beheading wives.
Trump and Henry VIII also share a love of gold. Trump lavishes the precious metal on any surface he lays his hands on. His Tudor counterpart took part in a diplomatic meeting with France known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold because the central tent was woven with strands of the metal.
While Bannon touted a future where he and Trump could govern for 50 years, Henry’s reign lasted only 38 years before his death, his poor diet leaving him gout ridden and so grotesquely unfit and overweight than in his later years he had to be winched onto his horse. However, in his youth Henry VIII had been a keen fencer and horseman. At a similar age Trump was claiming he had heel spurs.
Henry VIII was in turn succeeded by his son and two daughters. In that respect, despite trailing at this point on the wife count, Trump has the advantage with three sons (though rumour has it Donald Jr. and Eric share a hive mind) and two daughters.
Henry only had one known illegitimate child, the size of Trump’s errant spawn is unknown, but could be in double figures.
