Stunning. Even for him.
Week #67 was as action-packed as any Trump week, with more than its share of zany antics, whacky double-talk, threats, counter threats and theatrical betrayal. You know, the usual tsunami of open corruption, eye-glazing ineptitude and casual cruelty that has become our daily reality.
But… damn! It was Trump’s Fox & Friends 30-minute telephone interview meltdown, however, that sets this week apart, stunning the senses like never before, and with Trump, that’s really saying something.
Even his fawning interviewers were speechless, with a look on their faces like the actors in a horror move when they realize the call is coming from inside the house. Unprecedented for a presidential interview, Trump was finally and mercifully rushed off the phone as all 3 Fox Friends were suddenly, “whoa, look at the time, gotta go!”
This unraveling of an already unstable powder keg of a man was more bizarre even than his embarrassing fawning over The President of France, manhandling the poor man like a pimply 10th grader in heat and throwing a State Dinner (think senior prom here) in his honor. To his credit, Emmanuel Macron was a good if slightly bewildered sport about it, drawing on Europe’s centuries of experience in dealing with the emergence of immature and unbalanced leaders of powerful kingdoms. In spite of Trump’s ardent courtship, Macron sharply disagreed with everything Trump stands for in his his address to Congress, and gave the best speech in English by a president since Obama skipped town.
Trump’s Fox & Friends unraveling was more unsettling than Trump’s personal lawyer pleading the 5th Amendment in a civil suit involving Trump’s porn star lover (a career-ending sensation for any other president) and overshadowing his son-in-law Jared Kushner getting subpoenaed in an investigation of his real estate company for fraud committed while Kushner was CEO.
Even the good news of Mike Pompeo being approved by the Senate as Secretary of State or getting a shout out from Kanye West on Twitter did not improve Trump’s foul mood, what with European Union deciding to sit out his trade war with China and remain neutral, and at the same time scooping up a sweet trade deal between the EU and Mexico as the world continues to make other plans in the absence of a reliable USA.
Mexico scoffed at Trump’s demand that America’s participation in NAFTA be tied to “immigration control on Mexico’s part,” pretty much pointing out that NAFTA is a done deal, up and running for almost 25 years now, thankyouverynuch.
In other Broken Treaty-related news, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire, donated $4.5 million to the Paris Climate Accord, America’s annual dues, and has pledged to raise that sum annually until such a time as America has a normal president again. Also, in response to Trump’s belligerence towards the Iran Nuclear treaty, Iran threatened the USA with dire consequences if the treaty is broken, the same treaty passionately defended by Trump’s new man crush Macron and the leaders of every signatory nation.
His EPA chief Scott Pruitt was grilled by 2 different Congressional committees for allowing his personal corruption to get in the way of dismantling the agency, finally putting the kibosh on Trump’s public praise of the man.
Then the leaders of North and South Korea stole Trump’s “Great Man of History” thunder by having a historic summit meeting on their own, and finally signing a peace treaty ending the Korean War. Kim Jong-un and became the first North Korean leader to set foot in South Korea since 1953, arm-in-arm with South Korean president Moon Jae-in, perhaps figuring that the ones who make history ought to be the ones who have to live with its consequences, not the leader of some superpower half a world away who will never have to live there.
There was a terror attack in Toronto by a Muslim man, killing 10 people on the sidewalk with a rented van, prompting Trump’s top express his deepest sympathies to Canada, coupled with predictably angry attacks on Muslims and immigrants in general, while somehow ignoring the mass shooting at a Waffle House in Tennessee when a man named William Shaw Jr did what Trump said he would have done himself; stopped a mass shooter armed with an AR15 with his bare hands. Unfortunately, the shooter, the hero and the 4 dead victims in Tennessee were the wrong skin color. Condemning a White American racist for slaughtering Black Americans and being thwarted by a Black hero just doesn’t resonate with Trump’s base, and perhaps it’s best Trump did not mention it and make it somehow all about himself, making matters even worse.
All this and more happened in just one week, and yet all of these crazy outrages were rendered practically irrelevant by the Fox & Friends interview, when Trump not only went so far off the rails as to shock even his sycophantic Fox News commentators to their core, but almost certainly incriminating himself.
Indeed, his own words on Thursday morning were hastily added to legal briefs that very afternoon being filed in regard to the seized evidence in the multiple raids on Trump attorney and bagman Michael Cohen. By claiming that Cohen only performs “a tiny fraction of my legal business,” Trump himself removed questions of the attorney-client privilege he himself had so vehemently defended, making the job of the Special Master appointed to sort it all out that much easier.
While earnestly throwing Michael Cohen under the bus, Trump also said Cohen represented him on the Stormy Daniels case, and denied accusations that the $130,000 hush money came from campaign funds, pretty much telegraphing that he knows a whole lot more about the case than he said he did.
Robert Mueller is not the only attorney tying Trump in emotional knots, as Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti is emerging as a legal superstar and public relations chess master. His civil suits on behalf of Ms Daniels are what led the FBI to raid Cohen and seize a potential treasure trove of damning evidence against the President dating back 20 years.
Trump also went off on the Chem Trails of political conspiracy theories, the “Deep State” that has been very unfair to him, a (?) “horrible group of deep-seated people.” He also completely trashed the FBI and Justice Department, blaming them for the “phony cloud” over his head. You know, things other people call “evidence.”
He is enraged that the Justice Department refuses to investigate and imprison his political rivals like they do in proper countries like Russia and China, and furious with the press for reporting his own words and actions exactly instead of the more reasonable things he surely intended. He ended the interview (or, rather, had it ended for him by his panicky minions) with a veiled threat to crack down on his own Justice Department. Being that the Justice Department is in charge of just about every Federal enforcement and investigative force, the question of how one cracks down on half of a nation’s legal system was left to our imaginations.
His real enemy has always been his own big mouth of course, but Trump is not used to being in an arena where lies have consequences, and a bribe can’t buy silence. This is a petty man/child unused to hearing the word “no” or being called on his incessant lies, and his response to that reality has not been pretty.
The Unravelling has begun, and once again we return to our Trump Era ßmantra: “Damn… even for him!“