Elephants, Donald? Seriously, Mr President, elephants?
Out of the blue, Trump kicked off Week #45 with a bizarre act of gratuitous cruelty to an endangered species, simply because Obama was the one who banned trade in African Ivory. Trump decided to allow the importation of the (!) severed heads of elephants killed for their ivory on African trophy hunts.
This caused a tremendous uproar with just about everyone but those Great White Hunters Donald Junior and Eric, so he put the decision on hold and moved on to other acts of barbarity no one knew were on his agenda.
First Trump revoked the sanctuary visas of 59,000 Haitian refugees from a devastating national disaster, and will deport them to a home country still unable to sustain them. Haiti is our close neighbor and ally, and Haitian Americans are an asset our communities and our military, but now a new president is kicking an old friend when they’re down.
Then he did it again by suddenly removing the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort away from Puerto Rico, leaving Americans still without full access to electricity and clean water with one less piece of reliable infrastructure during their 2 month-old humanitarian crisis.
And if those weren’t enough people of color to attack for one week, Trump started a Twitter war with several professional and amateur athletes alike, demanding one lose his job, and saying he should have let the others rot for 10 years in a Chinese prison for the crime of (!) Insufficient Gratitude to The President.
But he was just getting warmed up.
Trump imposed severe sanctions on North Korea Monday, and declared it a State Sponsor of Terrorism, just to let the world know he hasn’t forgotten about wanting to start a nuclear war.
He also doubled down on his claims of success on his Asia trip, in spite of the fact that he made no deals while alienating an entire Hemisphere.
Just to make Ruth Bader Ginsburg nervous, Trump listed 5 prospective nominees to the Supreme Court even though there is no current vacancy on the Court.
After avoiding the issue for weeks, Trump finally endorsed Ray Moore for the Senate in Alabama, saying “We don’t need a Democrat, a liberal in the Senate,” the implication being that a pedophile is better than a Democrat. Maybe he figures at least a pedophile will vote for giving Midas more gold.
So desperate is Trump to get the GOP’s tax plan passed so that he can finally put his name on a piece of major legislation, he dropped his support of sneaking another repeal of Obamacare into the tax bill, much as it pained him not to screw 40 million people out of their health care.
As the nation reels from one revelation of sexual harassment after another by famous men, Trump jumped into the fray in a negative and destructive way, attacking Senator Al Franken for alleged unwanted intimacies, sort of a pot/kettle thing for a man with 16 women pointing fingers his way, and that inconvenient videotape of Trump boasting about getting away with serial sexual assault because he’s “a star.”
Then Trump said he believes Ray Moore’s side of the story, in spite of 6 unrelated accusations of sexual misconduct with minors and Moore once getting banned from a shopping mall where he was trolling for children.
Whatever the outcome for either man, Trump violated presidential protocol by commenting on the guilt or innocence of anyone accused of a crime, potentially poisoning jurors’ minds should formal charges ensue.
So much for presidential restraint and impartiality.
The difference between these two cases is that Senator Franken called for an immediate ethics investigation of himself, while Moore has stayed completely out of the public eye while proxies do his campaigning for him.
The investigations into Donald Trump, on the other hand, were not his idea, nor were they a particular favorite of his former National Security Advisor, whose suspected cooperation with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian Collusion investigation now makes Michael Flynn the most feared man in Washington.
Trump spent Thanksgiving earning some serious coin and playing golf at Mar A Lago, charging Uncle Sam a fortune for lodging the presidential entourage and security personnel. The Russian billionaire and known associate of Vladimir Putin who docked his yacht in Palm Springs just before Trump’s visit was merely a coincidence, just like all those other times.
Meanwhile, Trump’s eldest son Donald Junior publicly (!) defied the authorities to pin anything on him, like the bad guy in an old movie just before he goes down. Another week in The Trump Era; folded, spindled and mutilated.