Dana Milbank attended a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC where he got to witness the Sudanese ambassador to Washington, John Ukec Lueth Ukec, make a fool of himself.
In a bizarre twist of events, the ambassador threatened to cut off shipments of the emulsifier gum arabic, thereby depriving the world of cola.
“I want you to know that the gum arabic which runs all the soft drinks all over the world, including the United States, mainly 80 percent is imported from my country,” the ambassador said after raising a bottle of Coca-Cola.
A reporter asked if Sudan was threatening to “stop the export of gum arabic and bring down the Western world.”
“I can stop that gum arabic and all of us will have lost this,” Khartoum Karl warned anew, beckoning to the Coke bottle. “But I don’t want to go that way.”
Thankfully, The Washington Post has video coverage. The ambassador’s presentation would be surreal if it wasn’t such a time-honored practice to face the cameras and lie, lie, lie.
