Donald Trump's Fake News Awards neatly encapsulate every reason why he's not fit to be leader of the free world

Let’s be clear: America isn’t some “s**thole” country. We’re the ones who invented Shark Week. We brought the world Pop-Tarts, Instagram, the happy hour – even the gif. We’ve done our bit for mankind. America is definitely one of the greatest countries in the whole, wide world.

But you know what? You don’t have to dig too far below the surface to figure out that greatness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be – because Americans are being weighed down by a laundry list of problems.

After all, we’re not even three weeks into the new year, and 639 Americans have already been shot dead by some idiots with guns. Fourteen of those victims were under the age of 12. Almost 45,000 Americans are overdosing on opioids each year, 553,000 people are homeless and more than one in 10 adults now lack basic healthcare coverage.

No, the United States might not be a “s**thole” in the conventional sense – but the place is absolutely riddled with complicated problems that nobody seems to want to try and solve. That’s why so many of us are desperately craving direction. Americans need a leader who’s willing to take a fundamental stance, put in the hours and keep us focused on what really matters.

Instead, we’ve been saddled with a sad, orange clown who likes to invent imaginary awards shows in a pathetically half-arsed bid to try and topple the fourth estate.

That’s right: last night, Donald Trump wasted some of his precious time on earth by taking to the Twittersphere to list all the news reporters he doesn’t like and allocate a list of made-up awards designed to try and belittle the media outlets that challenge his bigoted and failed agenda. This wasn’t some impulsive, late-night string of attacks, either. Trump had been tweeting to his followers about the inaugural “Fake News Awards” for weeks.

Hell, the President had even rescheduled his fake event about so-called fake news so that it wouldn’t clash with the Golden Globes (because he was obviously worried about a ratings clash) – and you could tell the guy had spent way too much time prepping for his big show. It got pretty personal pretty fast, and it was a little bit disconcerting how much thought had gone into each award.

So, who went home with their first ever “Fakey”?

CNN bagged an award for editing a video “to make it appear President Trump defiantly overfed fish” on his visit to Japan. Newsweek earned itself an award for reporting that “Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda did not shake President Trump’s hand.” The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel even earned himself a mention for tweeting a picture of a Trump rally and commenting on the fact that not a lot of people had showed up yet.

The list went on and on, and got pettier and pettier.

But it got even more embarrassing – because after dishing out a final award to everyone who’s ever suggested Donald Trump or anybody he knows may have colluded with anyone from Russia in any way, the Fakeys closed with a list of 10 reasons why we should all like Donald Trump. It's worth pointing out a few of Trump's apparent accomplishments in office were actually Obama's accomplishments, but whatever.

The entire thing was infantile and pathetic on so many levels.

Normally, if the world’s biggest man-baby wanted to waste God knows how long dreaming up and promoting a made-up list of awards to try and castigate the media for doing its job, that would be just fine. But you know what? This man-baby happens to be the President of the United States – and a lot of us could be forgiven for wrongfully assuming the leader of the free world might have some more important things to be doing with his time.

America has got a whole lot of real problems that need real, legislative solutions. Our friends and neighbours are suffering and dying every single day. That's why we need leadership, we need proactivity and we need somebody who cares. We need somebody in office with thick skin and half a brain cell, and we need somebody who will use their time in power to at least try to make life better for everyone around them.

If Donald Trump is just going sit around and stress about whether CNN thinks he overfed a fish three months ago, maybe he should step aside and let somebody else give this whole “leader of the free world” thing a try.