CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN: ‘AI brings Whitney Houston and Marilyn Monroe again from the useless’
In this week’s round-up of bonkers news from across the Pond, Donald Trump turns Christmas into an attack on immigration, AI brings Marilyn Monroe back from the dead and a man dies in a freak accident at McDonalds
The phone rings, and some unsuspecting ten-year-old is told the President of the United States wants a quick chat. Unluckily for him, it’s Donald Trump.
Instead of festive cheer, reindeer talk or even a polite “ho ho ho,” the orange man baby turns Father Christmas into a national security briefing.
Dialling in to the Santa tracker from Mar-a-Lago, he solemnly reassures young Jasper that the big man has been “vetted,” is “not a bad Santa,” and, crucially, isn’t sneaking into the country illegally under cover of night.
Naturally, for Trump, it then veers into immigration, election boasting, and a stern warning never to leave Oklahoma. Presents can wait.
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So this is Christmas now: children ringing NORAD to track Santa, only to be patched through to a man who can’t let Father Christmas cross an imaginary border without a background check.
***A Virginia Beach nurse says her jaw hit the floor after finding her 11-year-old son allegedly being lured into virtual sex chats by AI bots posing as Whitney Houston and Marilyn Monroe.
According to her federal lawsuit, the exchanges were so graphic that the system itself reportedly had to censor “Whitney” mid-sentence.
Proof, perhaps, that artificial intelligence still needs a very real adult in the room.
***An 84-year-old Florida man has discovered the one thing worse than forgetting Mother’s Day: allegedly shooting your son for missing a weekend visit.
William Nowak, furious his boy and daughter-in-law hadn’t popped by while his mother was in hospice care, is accused of turning a family row into a full-blown crime scene.
After telling his son, “Get out of my house, or I’ll shoot you”, he then, disastrously, followed through on it. Nowak has now been charged with attempted murder. Some family grievances are best aired over tea, not firearms.
***Michael Thomson went into Sin City’s Aria Resort & Casino for a quiet flutter and woke up handcuffed to a wall, £75,000 down and starring in his own episode of CSI: Blackjack.
The lawyer says his last clear memory was leaving the tables with a few grand in chips – the next, he was allegedly drugged, spectacularly skint and facing a fraud charge that was later dropped. Now he’s suing, claiming the casino should practise a duty of care. Vegas, it seems, still remembers you, even when you don’t remember Vegas.
***A Nebraska man has died in what police stressed was a “100 per cent freak accident” after a routine stop at a McDonald’s drive-thru went catastrophically wrong.
Michael Dickinson, 69, is believed to have opened his car door to reach the payment window when the vehicle suddenly lurched, trapping him between the door and the counter. He was rushed to hospital but later pronounced dead.
A Florida woman on trial for allegedly swindling £23 million in Covid relief turned up to court in exactly the wrong vehicle – a stolen one.
Latoya Clark was stopped just a few streets from the courthouse after police flagged the van, which had been rented (and never returned) from U-Haul.
Asked why she was headed there, she reportedly replied: “I know, I’m on trial for a federal crime.” Which she then missed, having been arrested en route.
Proof, if needed, that crime doesn’t pay.
