Last week ended with the president and his lawyers discussing pardons for the entire administration, and this week began with another rat debarking this sinking ship when America’s comic muse resigned, White House Press secretary Sean Spicer.
Taking Spicer’s place is yet another Goldman Sachs suit nicknamed “The Mooch,” Anthony Scaramucci, who used to hate Trump but now loves him many times. The new White House Communications Director started off with a thud by spilling the beans that Trump brought up the topic of Presidential Pardons to him a week earlier than had been widely reported the previous day, sort of the opposite of protecting your boss.
Later in the week he cemented his status as Trump’s Mini-Me when he treated a reporter to a profanity-laced attack on fellow White House staffers. No word yet on whether or not Scaramucci can do the fandango.
On Saturday, Republicans in both Houses of Congress finally found the nerve to defy Trump by announcing they were going to work together with (gasp!) Democrats to impose strict new sanctions on Russia as punishment for stealing our last presidential election on Trump’s behalf, while severely limiting the president’s power to reverse them.
This puts Trump in the position of either vetoing the bill and confirming he is Putin’s bitch, or signing it into law and risking the release of whatever blackmail material Putin is holding over him.
True to form he vented his impotent rage on Twitter, lashing out at unnamed Republicans (who he said owe him their jobs) for “not protecting me. Sad.”
Sadder still is that none of this is fiction.
Trump himself doubled down on his claim he had the absolute right to pardon his friends, his family, employees and himself even though “none of them have done anything wrong (winkfucketywinkwink!).” The White House staff did nothing but debate the Who-Gets-A-Pardon lottery, leaving us wondering if anyone was driving this runaway train. Draw straws, form a line already!
On Monday, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met in private and not under oath to cooperate with the Senate iIntelligence Committee’s Russiagate investigation rather than being sworn in and testifying on live TV, which would have been a relief to Trump if not for the fact that Kushner has promised to turn State’s Evidence on Donald Jr, and Manafort is rumored to have been flipped by the FBI to trade damning testimony for immunity.
The day after ordering United States military personnel to support his policies, Trump mistook a Boy Scout Jamboree for a Trump Youth Rally and proceeded to politicize the event before regaling the boys with stories about (!) sex parties on yachts.
Trump also blew the cover of a secret CIA operation in Syria, putting many American lives and allies at grave risk, threw his Attorney General under the bus again out of habit, then attacked the CIA and the Washington Post, all this while rumors of vicious infighting and betrayal in the White House flew all around him.
In order to distract us from all the gross incompetence, criminal acts and the systematic dismantling of America, Trump ignited a huge bonfire in the media on Tuesday by banning transgender people from military service. No words of thanks or recognition for the 7,000 transgender military personnel currently serving honorably in every branch of the military, or any particulars on what will be their future in the service.
So much for being “the best friend the LGBTQ community ever had.”
For good measure he attacked Attorney General Sessions yet once more, this time for not firing the Interim (Apprentice) FBI Director over his wife’s “political ties to Hillary Clinton.”
Trump did have a minor victory when Congress passed a resolution to allow debate on amending the ACA, followed by by swift multiple defeats when the Senate failed to repeal Obamacare several different ways, all voted down by a large margin.
Most of the nation is infuriated at the Republican attempts to strip away health care from millions, a high percentage of whom voted Republican. They voted for Trump specifically because he promised to hurt a lot of people severely. Well, guess what? He did just that, and it was them.
Funny how that works out. Luckily the Senate failed to strip them of their health care as they voted deep into the night on Thursday.
And so Week # 27 ends with the usual Reality TV cliffhangers; Will Sessions be fired? How soon before The Mooch orchestrates the ouster of Rance Preibus? Will Mueller start cuffing Cabinet Secretaries? If Manafort sings to the Feds, will Jared turn stool pigeon too? No choice now but to stay tuned.