Quote of the week: “She’s not my type.”
That was the President of the United States defending himself against a charge of rape, the kind of statement that does not exactly convince anyone that he is not a rapist. The writer E. Jean Carroll, Trump’s fellow Manhattanite who moved in overlapping social circles with Trump 23 years ago, is the 22nd woman to accuse Trump of sexual assault, and his weird denial and bogus claims that he did not know her were contradicted by photographs from that same period of the two of them together, and the corroborating testimony of two women whom Ms. Carroll told of the attack.
Trump’s long history of alleged sexual indiscretions and assault is one more thing that has been swept aside by the juggernaut of horrific news that is the trademark of Trump’s “brand,” as he he still calls his presidency, and fumes over every perceived drop in “my ratings,” turning the running of this country into one very long and very bad reality show.
Coming off a week that saw Trump having a close shave with starting World War 3, he was hard pressed to do or say something even more outrageous, but he gave it a shot with “she’s not my type” to open week #128 on Friday, a day when he also wished us to ignore his shady associate and convicted felon, the Russian-America mobster Felix Sater being subpoenaed by the House of Representatives after skipping their initial invitation to testify about his role in helping Russia steal America’s 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump.
Making Americans forget the reality of exactly who is Donald Trump is the ongoing mission of this Administration, and when polar opposites like society writer E. Jean Carroll and convicted gangster Felix Sater pop up to remind us of his character and his associations, it’s Whack-A-Mole time for Trump and his army of spin doctors and apologists.
Nothing to see here, people, it’s all fake news, move along now…
On Saturday Trump backed off his plan for a Gestapo-style mass roundup of undesirables until “Congress can work out a solution,” hopefully a solution that will spell the end of his Kiddie Concentration Camps that have been exposed as little more than cattle pens for tiny human beings, cattle pens that any Board Of Health would shut down for their inhumane and unsanitary treatment of animals, never mind human children.
After sending his Justice Department to argue in court last week that the Trump Administration is not obligated to provide captive children with (!) soap, toothpaste, blankets, beds, diapers, adequate food, medical care or even minimal adult supervision (prison guards don’t count as childcare professionals), and telling a judge that sleeping on a bare concrete floor is (!!) “both safe and sanitary” as reports about one hellhole after another in Trump’s Refugee Gulag flooded the media when horrified Federal workers blew the whistle on the entire operation.
Trump of course responded. Not by taking immediate remedial steps of course (he is Donald Trump, after all), but by dispatching Vice President Pence to Miami on Saturday to attend something called “Latinos for Trump” (think “Cows For Burger King!” here) to compete with Miami’s Gay Pride rally (clearly the more entertaining and popular event) in order to create the illusion that Trump is gaining popularity among the people whose brothers and sisters he is aggressively tyrannizing. As if.
Trump himself sat for an interview with the Spanish language TV station Telemundo, where he lied his ass off about his racism, his refugee concentration camps and his “rising numbers” with Latino voters (not even in his dreams is that true).
He also found time to send out mixed signals about Iran, claiming he can be “Iran’s best friend” out of one side of his mouth while threatening them with nuclear annihilation out of the other, even as the news broke that three U.S. officials told the Associated Press that a cyber operation on Thursday evening disabled the computer systems that controlled Iran’s rocket and missile launchers, and that Trump authorized it, causing his new pet pit bull and National Security Advisor John Bolton to sputter and fume over this missed opportunity for a new and more devastating war he could call his own.
Speaking of Middle East fiascos, on Sunday Trump shrugged off Saudi Crown Prince Bone Saw ordering the dismemberment killing of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi because they buy a lot of American weapons to kill their neighbors in Yemen, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for building a “global coalition against Iran,” causing the rest of the globe to yawn and ignore him.
Then Trump went full gangster on said globe, demanding “protection money” for guarding shipping in the Middle East from every nation whose ships sail anywhere near the bonfires he is lighting in the entire region (“Nice boat ya got there, Captain, be a shame should something bad happen to it.”). While it may or may not be true that Iran is acting like a rogue nation, what is true is that no one on Earth not wearing a MAGA hat believes anything Trump says anymore, and that is a crisis in and of itself. Don’t forget that the young shepherd in that fable was devoured by the wolves after one false alarm too many.
And speaking of Trump apologists and spin doctors, Kellyanne Conway was forbidden on Monday to testify before the House Oversight and Reform Committee after being accused by a the Federal oversight body of breaking the law by violating the Hatch Act, a law forbidding White House employees from engaging in political attacks or any partisan activities (pretty much her only job description). She was then subpoenaed to appear, setting up yet another court fight with Congress that could potentially end with Conway’s arrest.
That was also the day that the worst of Trump’s child prisons was emptied of over 900 children in a space designed to accommodate 150 adult detainees, the filthy and overcrowded Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas, as both House of Congress scrambled to pass legislation providing $5 billion for the immediate relief of the children in captivity. Later in the week some 200 hundred of these children were quietly returned to Clint. A day later, the Customs and Border Protection Agency’s acting commissioner John Sanders announced he will step down immediately, sort of like firing the manager of a losing ball club while refusing to spend the necessary money to improve the team.
On Tuesday the Iranian government responded to Trump, saying (what else is new?) that Trump lied about their unwillingness to negotiate, affirming they are indeed willing to hold talks with the United States to end this manufactured crisis, but will not bend to the will of America or fail to respond to military provocations.
This was also the day that the validity of the emoluments lawsuit against Trump for profiteering on the presidency was upheld in a court of law, and it was announced that Robert Mueller will testify at two back-to-back hearings on July 17 before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, prompting Trump to (falsely, naturally) accuse Mueller of crimes, and for no apparent reason to revisit his bogus claim of having really won the popular vote in 2016 with this recycled nonsense: “There were a lot of votes cast that I don’t believe.” This from a man who does not believe in science as he Tweets out his rage in nanoseconds on a worldwide communications web provided to us by… wait for it… science!
On Wednesday America got a glimpse what leadership looked like before the Trump Era when the first of 2 consecutive nights of Democratic debates were held, with every candidate arriving prepared, articulate and very knowledgeable about the issues confronting America, all of them interacting with their rivals with civility and intelligence. Trump’s reaction was best reflected in his one-word Tweet – “BORING!” He thinks he changed American politics into a frenzied reality show forever, and some may agree with that assessment, but not any of the 20 Democrats who debated on Wednesday and Thursday nights, every one of them demonstrating that they are head and shoulders above this president in ability and temperament.
Trump was Tweeting a series of schoolgirl insults to the Democratic debaters from Air Force One as he flew to the G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, making sure to insult and alienate our allies before keeping his breakfast date with the murderous Prince Bone Saw of Saudi Arabia. Once again he complained about our closest allies “ripping us off” in our longstanding and mutually beneficial trade deals, and bitterly complained about Japan and Germany not having large armies and navies. Too bad he didn’t take along his schoolboy son Barron, who would could have explained to him from his grammar school history book why Germany and Japan do not possess world-threatening military might.
As Trump was doing his bull in a China shop act at this gathering of world leaders, his former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson revealed how Saudi and Emirati leaders bypassed the State Deparment in 2017 when they told the inept and malleable Jared Kushner, and Trump’s original in-house ogre Steve Bannon, about secret plans to impose a naval blockade of the port of Hudaydah in Yemen, an unacceptable breach of diplomatic policy, to say nothing of the horrific genocide the Saudis visited upon Yemen with the quiet acquiescence and material aid from the United States. You know the old saying, “money talks, a funeral procession walks.” There have been 2 million funerals is Yemen recently thanks the Saudi’s religious war on their neighboring country, their blood also being on Trump’s tiny mitts.
The week ended with former Trump associate and his campaign manager Paul Manafort pleading Not Guilty to criminal charges brought by the State of New York, the same plea that landed him in Federal prison for 7 years, but there were victories for Trump as the Supreme Court declined to interfere in blatant Republican gerrymandering of Congressional Districts, and both Houses of Congress passed a very compromised Border Relief Bill that leaves Trump wiggle room to take the funds meant for alleviating the suffering of little children and use them for something else after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to allow the bill to to be rewritten in such a way as to limit this president’s ability to further abuse and torture the inmates of his Refugee Gulag. It’s pretty disturbing what amuses a Republican these days.
As the Democratic nominees, with their annoying intelligence and irritating politeness, remind us about Trump, he’s not our type.