Are you furious yet?
If not, you soon will be, either because Trump remains in office in spite of his abhorrent behavior and the growing list of criminal allegations against him, or because he was removed from office because of them. That’s how divided we are right now; most of the nation is screaming bloody murder while the sizable minority who elected Trump defends his every hateful word and black deed with pride and gusto.
Week #72 began with Trump dispensing with the warmups and flying into one of his patented rages, going ballistic via Twitter over the fact that no one is buying his “Spygate” fantasy, not even his most partisan supporters within his government.
Everyone involved in the meeting he convened the day before to “expose” his imaginary spy and uncover “the biggest political scandal is history” made public statements confirming that Spygate is nothing but a poorly-constructed lie, something that would be beyond absurd to officially pursue.
“Beyond Absurd,” however, is Trump’s sweet spot, so he spent Friday morning doubling down on his outrageous lie by adding possible multiple spies (infiltration!) to the first one he invented, while claiming Democrats held “absolute power” in 2016, when in fact both Houses of Congress were controlled by Republicans that year, a lie he knew his gullible base would accept without the blink of an eye (or the click of a mouse to check).
His bellowing about the investigation into his alleged crimes distracted our attention from Trump launching a major offensive in a war. No, not that war, or that one either, but the Labor War, with Trump attacking (!) American workers (that means you.) He signed Executive Orders making it easier to fire Federal workers, and restricting their right to representation and collective bargaining by “cracking down” on government employee’s labor unions.
These unions have been a vital part of the model for labor-management relationships for the rest of the country. The Federal work force is the largest on earth, doing a vast array of necessary and important jobs, filled by skilled, well-trained and dedicated people at every level. Government workers are not broken and do not need fixing, nor do they deserve to have their job security and bargaining rights threatened.
Day 1 of Week 72 also found the leaders of the two Koreas holding a meeting without America’s Dear Leader, who is still fishing for a Nobel Peace Prize for the unthinkable nuclear provocation that got him excluded from any conversations about peace.
Also on Friday it was revealed that 2 private citizens of their respective countries, Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, and Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg met in Trump Tower to discuss “Russian relations” 2 weeks before inauguration, which cost Vekselberg a million dollar payment to Cohen, a man who thinks “Russian relations” are his Ukrainian wife’s cousins across the border.
While Robert Mueller adds one more instance of selling Presidential access to Cohen’s swiftly growing case file, Trump’s former campaign manager and international political consultant (a.k.a. murderous kleptocrat’s PR man) Paul Manafort was once again denied a request to the court to drop Mueller’s charges against him, and a judge set a date for his trial this Summer, the first time a jury hears a Russiagate case. Unless of course Manafort cuts his losses and takes a plea deal in exchange for testimony like so many others are doing.
And this was only Day 1 of Week 72, a warmup for Days 2 though 7.
He went off the rails about his policy of separating children from their families (it’s not kidnapping when the president does it!) and blamed Democrats for “a bad law” that forces him to do it, and urged his supporters to demand that “Democrats repeal it.”
All well and good, you’re thinking, nobody likes the idea of separating families at gunpoint, except for the fact that there is no such law, and there never was, and it is his administration’s policy alone. His own Chief of Staff John Kelly reminded us again how humane it all was, in spite of the fact that 25% of the 6,000 abducted children have “gone missing.”
How 1,500 children could fall through the cracks of Federal custody has yet to be explained. Unless of course The Alibi-Maker-In-Chief is working on a “Jailbreakgate” theory claiming that Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi and Check Schumer dug the toddlers an escape tunnel leading to Hillary’s child sex-trafficking pizza parlor in Washington DC.
Trump took the long holiday weekend as an opportunity to honor our slain warriors by making Memorial Day all about himself, assuring us that the valiant war veterans who gave their lives fighting Fascism would approve of his minimum wage paradise and concentration camps for children.
On Tuesday Trump tried to top himself in the Insane Lies Department, viciously attacking Democratic leadership at a GOP Senate candidate’s campaign rally in Nashville, Tennessee, calling a former Speaker of the House “the MS-13 loving Nancy Pelosi,” and his candidate’s Democratic opponent “a tool of Chuck Schumer.”
Then he accused Special Counsel Robert Mueller of (!!) election-rigging for the upcoming Midterms. You know, the guy who’s investigating Trump for election-rigging, that Robert Mueller. Then out of force of habit he lied about the size of the crowd in Tennessee, viciously attacking the news media for being able to count.
What frightens Trump most about Mueller is his stone cold silence, a concept completely alien to a man with no filter between brain and mouth. He has given Mueller the full Trump treatment; the vicious slander, making up an ever-expanding repertoire of crazy lies about him and his staff (“Crooked Hillary partisans!”), even using the weight of his office to attempt to compromise Mueller’s investigation by ordering the Justice Department to share the evidence being collected against him, and to investigate the people investigating him, 2 things a president does not have the power to do.
Still not a peep out of Mueller, but that suits him fine since Trump does enough taking for the both of them, as often as not incriminating himself in the process. That is, when Rudy Giuliani’s not doing it for him. Special Counsel Mueller acts like the man sitting at a poker table holding a Royal Flush while the other players feverishly bluff and raise the stakes.
And speaking of feverish, the president not only defended comedian and Trump supporter Rosanne Barr’s racist statements that cost her a hit TV show on ABC, but made it all about himself in a New York Minute. He launched into a tirade about the “terrible things” the ABC network has said about him (Indeed, they have stooped so low as to use his exact quotes and videotapes rather than report the more reasonable things he surely intended.), demanding apologies and wholesale firings, once again issuing threats to our free press and independent media.
Trump’s nebulous plans to take America back are coming into clearer focus as he revives the presidential tradition (Okay it was only Nixon, but he was a president!) of maintaining an Enemies List that includes (!) entertainers guilty of nothing more than pointing out the obvious about all things Trumpian.
One list member, Samantha Bee, played right into Trump’s little hands this week by calling his daughter Ivanka “a feckless cunt,” for which she apologized. Not good enough for Trump, who insisted on comparing Bee’s insult to his feckless cunt of a daughter to Roseanne Barr’s racist venom, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and Benedict Arnold all rolled into one for treachery, and calling for her immediate firing by TBS.
Once again, this is the President of The United States making a huge headline-grabbing, resource-wasting issue of the remarks of two comedians, hot on the heels of trying to get the Department of Justice to investigate things he made up out of thin air, attempting to roll back hard-won workers’ rights and the news that 1,500 children are missing from Federal custody.
And speaking of comedians, Trump pranked the nation when he suddenly held his summit meeting with Kim just as he had promised. Okay it was Kim Kardashian, but still…
Then he pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, convicted election rigger, and announced he is considering pardoning (!) Martha Stewart, renegade housewares entrepreneur who lied to the FBI, and Rod Blagoyovich, uber-corrupt Illinois governor and attempted seller of Obama’s former Senate seat, a clear signal to his indicted coconspirators that a Presidential Pardon is theirs if they don’t squeal on the boss.
If these developments did not infuriate enough people, Trump expanded his scope to alienating all our closest allies and most of mankind by announcing plans to impose 25% tariffs on European, Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum imports. He also targeted German cars in general, and Mercedes Benz in particular (a car not one in a thousand of his supporters can afford) as being a “threat to national security.”
The complex and nuanced structure of international trade can hardly be considered a threat to the United States of America, which became the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth for almost a century, and the world’s only remaining Apex Superpower.
But not to worry, Trump is hell bent on changing all that, and determined to recreate America to suit his Winner-Takes-All philosophy while presiding over a drastically lopsided distribution of wealth and power not seen since the Dark Ages. Perhaps it’s best if we all learn to touch our forelocks and respectfully doff our caps to our betters and learning phrases like “I expect you know as what’s best for us, Guv’ner” and “We are blest indeed to have you watching over us.”
Or, we could register every single eligible voter in every State and vote all his Republican enablers out of office in November, which would prevent Trump from doing any more damage. There’s always that option.