Here we are entering the “Are You Fucking Kidding Me?” phase of the Trump Era, where everything starts going haywire all at once. Congress is at war with the President, the Department of Justice is at war with Congress, the President is at war with the the Federal Judiciary and Congress, threatening to start a crippling trade war with China, and two real shooting wars with Iran and/or Venezuela, whichever seems most likely to yield petroleum plunder on a grand scale.
So instead of instead of full blown insanity being thrown at us one tawdry item after another, the Trump Era has descended into a suspension of time and linear narrative as all the horrible Trump things occur simultaneously in bright lights and screaming volume. Other than that though, it looks like morning in the shining city on a hill that is America. If you shut one eye and squint real hard with the other.
Or was that last week? Hard to tell. Our best hope would be that we are in one of those cautionary tale episodes of The Twilight Zone, and Rod Serling will show up any minute to talk us off the ledge of this frightening reality and back into the light of the bland normalcy of our everyday lives, a world where presidents are earnest leaders doing their best, and a worker’s paycheck takes care of their family’s needs. One can dream, no? At least daydreams are ways to endure nightmares that don’t involve ulcers or rehab.
Turns out everybody is still talking about Russia 3 weeks after Trump declared the “Russia Hoax” was over, with nobody mentioning Russia more than Trump, who seems incapable of not incriminating himself by simply shutting the hell up about things like beginning his 121st week in office on Friday by spending an hour on the phone with his BFF Vladimir Putin yakking it up about Robert Mueller, after refusing to speak with Mueller about Putin for almost 2 years.
Trump bragged about the two of them trading jokes about the Mueller investigation, making them sound more like 2 smirking schoolboys who got away with a stupid prank rather than the presidents of two nuclear superpowers with a dangerous and confrontational history. The fact that their “prank” resulted in getting Donald Trump elected president of the USA and touched off a Constitutional crisis not seen before in America makes their inside joke even funnier, providing you either have a very sick sense of humor, or you are the President of Russian.
Trump spent Saturday motorcading to one of his Trump golf courses in Virginia for yet another multi-million dollar golf game, and making dozens of official proclamations. Okay, they were Tweets, but that’s as close as we get to official communications from this (approximate) President. He managed to sabotage America’s trade talks with China, make the claim that 2 years of his presidency were stolen from him (or, “stollen” in Trumpspell), vowed vengeance on his investigators, dusted off Jim Comey for another toss under the bus along with the entire FBI as well as (who else?) Hillary Clinton, for somehow being behind most things Trump opposes, and everything he does not understand.
Speaking of Hilary Clinton, the big winner of the Trump Unintentionally Ironic Tweet of The Week Award had to be the President complaining bitterly about the runner-up in the Kentucky Derby being declared the winner on a technicality, angrily Tweeting “The best horse did NOT win!” Roger that, Mister President.
And speaking of the best horses not winning, President Runner Up reversed himself on Sunday regarding Robert Mueller being allowed to testify before Congress, and said his administration will block him from appearing, claiming Executive Privilege. Mueller has made it known that Barr lied about his report and is willing to testify before Congress and the nation about the report and his own concluding summaries that Barr suppressed. Trump also threatened to order former White House Counsel Don McGhan not to obey a subpoena from Congress for his testimony.
Throw in a little gunboat diplomacy to threaten Iran due to “unspecified threats” and further irritating the Chinese government with insults and threats of more tariffs, and a relaxing Presidential Sunday was complete. When the chief Beijing trade representative claimed to be “completely baffled by President Trump’s behavior,” America as one replied “tell me about it!”
Monday found Trump returning to the “my presidency is being stolen” theme, in the same breath he claimed that his two stolen years were the most successful first two presidential years in the history of Presidenting, leaving us to only imagine the magnitude of the Paradise he would have created if not for those vile Year Thieves. Trump made it clear he “is owed 2 years,” raising both hackles and eyebrows on Capitol Hill when recalling recent warnings from both Michael Cohen and Nancy Pelosi (and repeated intimations from Trump himself) that this president might not leave office peacefully if defeated for reelection or otherwise removed from office. Some have remarked that any way he leaves is good for the country; upright or sedated, drama or no drama, although some have stated a preference for “dragged kicking and screaming” or “under restraint.” To each his own.
Monday was also the day Trump had Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin risk criminal charges by refusing to provide Trump’s subpoenaed tax returns to Congress, and the day over 500 former Federal prosecutors and Senior Department of Justice personnel circulated a public letter saying said Trump would be arrested and prosecuted for the crimes detailed in the Mueller Report if he were not the president, the number of signees swelling to well over 1,400 within a day.
Tuesday saw Secretary of State Mike Pompeo canceling a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to dash off to Iraq to try to shore up support for an impending war with Iran that’s on Trump’s and John Bolton’s wish list when Iraqi forces refused to endorse an American war against the neighboring country who they fought to a standstill for 10 mutually destructive years. Being Trump’s cannon fodder in any future war with Iran doesn’t seem the attractive option one might imagine to a nation still rebuilding their destroyed national infrastructure, shattered from almost 2 decades of Spreading American Democracy.
The second deadly school shooting within a week happened on Tuesday, with only the actions of a second heroic student stopping the carnage, and the second to lose his life in the effort, but earning no mention from our President since Presidential Thoughts & Prayers are apparently reserved for mass school shootings with higher body counts (and fewer headline-stealing martyr-heroes).
Besides, there was no sense in raining on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s parade, who declared “case closed” on the Mueller Report to the assembled U.S. Senate, urging Republicans to get back to the urgent business of dismantling America for spare parts while the rich fly overhead in private jets in between their luxury homes in gated communities.
Alas, not every Republican got the memo and Donald Trump Jr.’s glaring lie to Congress that was revealed in the Mueller Report came back to haunt him when one Republican-led Senate committee subpoenaed Junior to “clear up” his alleged false testimony, a subpoena he vowed to ignore, putting a Republican in the position of being forced to charge Donald Trump Jr. with a crime, or treat the nation to the spectacle of the son of the President of the United States pleading the 5th Amendment to avoid incriminating himself.
Trump is very unhappy about the prospect of any son of his not named Eric facing possible criminal penalties, and is sure to lash out at somebody sooner rather than later, and the partisan caterwauling among Republicans over their subpoena of Donald Jr. is almost as deafening as the Trump Administrations’s litany of excuses for defying one Congressional subpoena after another for documents and/or testimony.
Even Democratic Congressional leaders who have been cautioning against rashly throwing around the “I” word are now openly talking impeachment, most of them amazed that it is Trump himself who is building their case for them daily, practically leaving them no choice. This reeks of either an obvious trap or incredibly bizarre behavior, with both options always a very real possibility.
To cement his own hold over the Internal Revenue Service even beyond Secretary Mnuchin, Trump urged Mitch McConnell to fast-track the appointments of the #1 and #2 positions at the IRS, both of them Trump cronies who openly favor shielding his potential financial crimes from both the public’s and prosecutors’ scrutiny.
Then as he was having a good time further sabotaging his Chinese Trade Deal by Tweeting that they are stalling to get a better deal from “a weak Biden,” or some other Democrat, came the hilarious (to us) but sobering (to Trump) news that one of his main ambassadors to the Evangelicals, Jerry Falwell Jr, once had Michael Cohen “fix” a sticky situation of a guy who had pictures of Falwell, his wife and the pool boy doing the wild thing in every imaginable combination at the very beginning of the Trump campaign. Cohen “obtained the pictures,” from the blackmailer, and the next thing you know Falwell endorsed Trump and his Evangelical base was secured, a move worthy of Corleone Family Consigliere Tom Hagen.
Since Michael Cohen’s part of this story did not have an especially happy ending, we learned that he left both parties a little surprise the week he reported to Federal Prison to begin serving his 3-year sentence, hinting that he had “much more to reveal” about Trump upon his release. For one thing, it seems that Cohen kept “at least one” of those Freaky Falwell photographs, sending Damage Control teams from both the government and Falwell’s church into overdrive without even any confirmation that this story is true, which pretty much confirmed it beyond any doubt.
His strategy of tying up Congress in court forever was ruined by a Federal Judge who wasn’t having any of that and instead fast-tracked all attorneys’ motions and promised an immediate bench ruling on Congressional subpoenas of the president and his staff this coming Tuesday, the sort of thing Trump sought to prevent when he tried this week to limit the decisions of Federal judges from being implemented nationwide. That would be defeating the purpose of having a Federal Court System; to outrank every State Court and set national precedent to which all other courts defer, and is where enforceable case law and legal precedent is made. Fortunately for America, the President does not have the power to override court decisions or change the structure of our 3-tiered government, but give Trump an A for effort.
Loss of control is an anathema to Trump, who absolutely refuses to admit that his power as President does not outrank Congress or the Courts, so on Wednesday he attempted to shove worms back into a can when he exerted Executive Privilege over the entire Mueller Report, which presumably includes the already widely-distributed redacted account released 3 weeks ago.
You know, the Mueller Report that even William Barr could not redact enough to be anything but a glaring accusation of criminal complicity and Obstruction of Justice by Trump and almost all his associates. The man who cannot control his own mouth wants control of anything that contradicts what comes out of that mouth. As if, says Congress. No way, says the courts.
Barr was indicted for Contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over the full report and the evidence supporting its conclusions, and a real live rootin’ tootin’ Constitutional Crisis was is full swing, the subpoenas and countersuits flying thick and fast, with Congress squaring off against President Trump, his Attorney General Barr, Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin and the rapidly unraveling Senator Lindsey Graham.
On Wednesday New York State sent Trump a message when a law was passed in Albany allowing the State to share Trump’s New York State tax returns with Congress upon request, giving his army of defense attorneys another job in Manhattan, where they are already busy as one-armed piano players trying to prevent Trump’s tax accountants and his creditors at Deutsche Bank from obeying court-issued subpoenas for their records of all financial dealings with Trump, the Trump Organization and the Trump Foundation.
With the walls closing in and Kim Jong Un conducting his second ballistic missile test of the week, the United States seized a North Korean coal transport ship, a petty gesture and worse, an inadequate distraction from Trump’s domestic troubles, so he lashed out at former Secretary of State John Kerry, calling for his arrest and prosecution as (!) a traitor, then left the onus (and any potential legal liability) on AG Barr on whether to permit Robert Mueller to testify before Congress (after making it abundantly clear that he wants Barr to prevent Mueller from doing so by hook or by crook).
And just to completely dispel the notion that Russian collusion ever occurred, we end Week #121 with Trump’s lead defense attorney Rudy Giuliani cementing his hold on a first ballot election to the This Is Not Helping Hall of Fame when he announced he was flying off to Ukraine (where current Federal inmate and ex-Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort made his political bones running a series of corrupt political campaigns for tyrants and thieves) to seek help from (!) Ukrainian intelligence agencies in uncovering evidence that would help Rudy find evidence against (!!) Democrats for (!!!) “framing Trump,” in spite of the fact that the Steele Dossier was commissioned by Republican opposition researchers seeking damaging information on Trump during the primaries, and exactly no Democrats were involved in forging the extensive Russian connections to the Trump campaign.
So here we are with the power of Congress and the power of the Judiciary being attacked by the Trump regime, seeking to defy both branches and usurp their power, and us wondering if this all really happened in the space of one week, or did it happen all at once, or is Rod Serling going to suddenly pop up out of an alley smoking a cigarette and narrating the end of this very harrowing tale.