Just in case the prospect of once again raining down nuclear holocaust on Asian cities had slipped our minds, Donald “Old School” Trump trotted out vintage Republican warmonger John Bolton to remind us just how crazy and scary is this administration.
That’s right, resolving this week’s “The Apprentice”- like cliffhanger, Trump ended the week by firing his National Security Advisor General H.R. McMasters (expected) and replacing him with Bolton (big surprise), a jingoist madman from the Bush Era who is now a Fox News commentator, and a man who has advocated first-strike nuclear war for years. Bolton is just about the only other person on the planet besides Trump eager to normalize the threat of nuclear attack by the USA, and now he sits at the president’s right hand. It’s been that kind of week.
On Friday, Trump came out swinging against his tormentors with an angry, error-filled Tweet Storm, for the first time mentioning Robert Mueller by name, lashing out viciously at Meueller’s investigation (“Witch hunt!”), the FBI, James Comey, “Crooked Hillary,” and other fellow Americans.
Trump had Attorney General Sessions play the part of Ebenezer Scrooge by firing Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe and stealing his pension on the eve of his retirement (“A Comey man!”), not only a despicable and petty act, but a clear a signal to every America worker than no job, no set of benefits and no pension is safe in Trump’s America.
Speaking of old school, Trump finally addressed the deadly opioid crisis claiming so many American lives by turning back the clock to the 1920s; the Electric Chair for dealers, shame and degradation for addicts. Who can forget how well that worked?
Not retro enough yet? Trump agreed to a summit with Moscow, after calling to congratulate Vladimir Putin for winning another sham election in his Lifetime Presidency, neglecting to mention the poisoning of Putin’s political enemy and his daughter on British soil, their interference in our elections, or Russian war crimes in Syria.
See, there’s the Good Russia (Putin’s Russia) and the Bad Russia (Mueller’s Russia) always dueling for Trump’s attention, and even Trump’s lawyers are stumped on how to proceed. His lead attorney John Dowd quit in the middle of negotiations with Mueller, knowing damned well his client wouldn’t live up to his end of the deal, or follow a lick of his legal advice. In response, after getting turned down by 2 top defense attorneys, Trump hired his 3rd Fox News correspondent in a week, the Alex Jones of attorneys, Joseph diGenova, noted for his theory that Russiagate is a (!) massive Frame Up of Trump by the FBI and “Obama loyalists in the Department of Justice” for a crime Hillary Clinton committed.
Presumably it is upon this unicorn diGenova will build Trump’s treason defense.
To counter the rampant rumors that Mueller will soon be fired, Republican Senators warned Trump that if he does so, “his presidency is over,” then they demanded Federal action on Russian election hacking, prompting a nation to ask – “Only now do you grow a conscience and a spine?”
And speaking of Trump’s lawyers (just how many of them are there?), the one that paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to shut up about her love affair with Trump just sued her for $20 million for not shutting up her love affair with Trump.
Ms. Daniels is countersuing, bringing this week’s tally of people suing the president to a porn star, a Playboy Bunny and Reality TV personality. A judge also said that Trump can be made to testify in these various defamation and sexual harassment cases because “the president is not above the law.”
All this is just so very presidential that White House Chief Of Staff John Kelly is contemplating handing in his resignation to go off somewhere to stare at a blank wall in a quiet room.
On Monday, Trump made wage theft by employers okay, then waxed eloquent about wanting to export lethal drone aircraft to allies. Towards that end, he met with the Saudi Crown Prince and announced a $650 million arms sale to Saudi Arabia, presumably to replace all the bombs and ammunition they have been “sharing” with Yemen.
Then suddenly Bad Russia came roaring back into focus as the data mining scandal exploded with the news that the Cambridge Analytical data company (Former CEO: Steve Bannon. Yes, that Steve Bannon), that was instrumental in Trump’s election victory, had stolen the personal information of 50 million Facebook users for the sole purpose of influencing the 2016 election in Tump’s favor.
This began flurries of denials from all quarters except for Facebook, whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized for carelessly allowing his users’ identities to be stolen and compromised, promising a corporate shakeup, sweeping changes in policy, and the deleting of the accounts of known Russian election hackers. Facebook stock plummeted and a top executive was fired, and even the U.K. demanded Mr. Zuckerbeeg appear in London to answer civil charges relating to the identity thefts of British subjects.
This called for a major deflection on the part of President Teflon Don, something huge and traumatic, and on Thursday he provided it in spades by announcing an aggressive trade war with China, charging them $60 billion in tariffs and “payments for theft of intellectual property.” In response, Chinese President Xi promised retaliation in the form of targeting the agricultural products of States that voted for Trump.
This was also the day he sprang John Bolton on the world to universal global condemnation, setting up the most dramatic Reality Show cliffhanger of Trump’s presidency yet: Will Trump fire Sessions next? Will Congress grow a spine ? Will the world turn against the USA? Will Bolton convince Trump to press the button? Will Trump’s other children announce their intentions to get a divorce like Donald Junior? Tune in next week and see.
Oh, and the government might shut down again since Trump is threatening not to sign the latest spending plan from Congress. Other than all that, though, things were just peachy keen.