Week # 77 found America celebrating its 242nd Birthday, our second Independence Day with Trump in office, with many of the major televised celebrations not-so-subtly defying Trumpism with Latin immigrant-themed musical programs served up to accompany the fireworks, including the (!) West Point Orchestra and Glee Club at the Macy’s Fireworks Show on the East River in New York City.
Similar events in Boston and other major cities in every region echoed the Latin-American themes, and so did the nationally televised star-studded extravaganza in Washington DC with pro-immigrant programs. Who knew it would be classical musicians doing the work of The Clash in 2018?
There’s a lot to resist. This was, after all, a week where unaccompanied toddlers as young as 3 years old were expected to act as their own attorneys at deportations hearings.
Let the phrase “unaccompanied toddlers” sink in and it’s small wonder there were 800 mass rallies involving millions nationwide against Trump’s internment camps
A week where it was revealed that Kim Jong-Un began upgrading his nuclear weapons capability before Air Force One landed in Washington, the ink still wet on a meaningless piece of paper that Trump had boasted was the end to the threat he created. National Security Chief John Bolton stuck his 2¢ in when he claimed the US has a plan in place to denuclearize North Korea “within a year,” but even Trump put the kibosh on that whopper when he had to admit that his Singapore Summit with Kim “might not work.”
This was a week where the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly agreed that Russia interfered in our election in order to elect Donald Trump president, and when 13 Republican Senators traveled to Moscow to make sure they get their piece of the pie, with exactly zero mentions of Russian election interference or their invasion of Crimea.
This week is when Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and self-proclaimed “fixer” Michael Cohen broke his silence, giving interviews and floating the possibility that he will testify against Trump. Some said he was testing the president’s loyalty to him and perhaps seeking help with his mounting legal expenses. After several days of of nothing but silence from the White House, Cohen ended the week on Thursday by climbing out from under the bus and hiring yet another lawyer, this one a renowned dealmaker, signaling Cohen’s surrender to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
It was this week that our longtime Ambassador to Estonia quit over Trump’s outrageous lies and accusations leveled at the European Union, and Canadian and European retaliatory tariffs in Trump’s trade war began hitting American farm and factory workers hard.
A week where the Red Cross and other relief missions were turned away from Immigrant Internment Camps, like it was Idi Amin in the Oval Office instead of an American.
It was a banner week, however, for Trump’s favorite whipping boy Jeff Sessions, who got to visit even more misery on his fellow human beings, his most consistent source of joy. He cancelled Justice Department guidelines mandating the humane treatment of immigrants and, in an unprecedented move, decided to form a task force aimed at stripping the citizenship of Naturalized American Citizens, citing “possible abnormalities” in their Naturalization process. Apparently, only Brown-skinned immigrants are eligible for this personalized service.
Perhaps Sessions was still miffed over Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Scott Pruitt lobbying Trump to fire Sessions and let him take the Attorney General’s job, maybe figuring Trump wanted the Justice Department dismantled too. Sessions had the last laugh, though, when the ethically challenged scandal hog Pruitt finally resigned at the end of the week.
In a cruel move perfect for this administration, Trump was able to strike at his two favorite targets, Obama and minorities, rescinding the Obama policy giving minority students equal access to higher education.
Trump also issued a veiled threat to his critics when he told an interviewer “The other side better take it easy,” implying that “his base” might get violent. He said this only days after the mass shooting of journalists in Maryland (and for whom it took 3 days for Trump to agree to fly the Flag at half-mast).
In a speech on Tuesday that sounded like he was reading from Ecoterrorism For Dummies, Trump declared (in West Virginia, of course) that “coal is bombproof” while pointing out that oil and gas pipelines are (!) easy targets for terrorist bombers.
This was a week where China reiterated it won’t give in to Trump’s “trade blackmail” as it slapped billions in retaliatory tariffs on US goods.
Trump saved his weekly meltdown for the end of the week, turning a political fundraiser in Montana on Thursday into his latest Therapy Rally, soaking up the cheers he never hears in the Oval Office and rewarding his dwindling faithful with a mouthful of the breathtakingly off-the-rails insanity they have come to expect from the fear-ridden leader.
Added to the usual litany of bogeymen (Hillary, Liz “Pocahontas” Warren, Obama, MS13, Pelosi, and Schumer) was one Senator John Tester, for whom Trump blamed for sabotaging “a great man,” in Dr Ronny Jackson, the pill-dispensing liar who told us Trump weighs only 329 pounds and would live forever.
His base of course lapped it up, and rewarded Trump with the obligatory chorus of “Lock Her Up!” to cheer up the boss before he had to return to a Washington where people won’t stop asking about 3,000 missing children and where Robert Mueller refuses to stop breathing down his neck.
So much for a slow Holiday Week in Trumpistan.