Lots of competing quotes of the week for Week #136, but none of them quite rising to the stunning Five-Alarm Fire status of this Presidential Pearl:
“I am the Chosen One.”
That got people’s attention in a really disturbing way, like that moment in the horror movie when you realize the call is coming from inside the house, and even for Trump, this was the standout “uh-oh” moment of Week #136, even in a week where he repeatedly called Jews who do not support him disloyal, stupid and weak people.
Who says Trump never read a book? Okay it was Mein Kampf, but still…
It was also a week when he picked a fight with (?!?) the Prime Minister of Denmark because her country refused his off-the-wall offer to (!) buy Greenland, displaying an exalted sense of self with “You don’t talk to the United States that way, at least not under me.” He does have a point there, since under Trump, the only proper way for foreign leaders speak to the United States is like teachers speak to First Graders, slowly, in unambiguous and short words.
He also wondered out loud if he can award himself the (!!) Medal of Honor, the nations’s highest combat award. It was a week where Trump viciously attacked his predecessor, and the world witnessed the President of the United States openly praising and defending the President of The Russian Federation, then actively promoting Russia’s national interests by insisting that Russia be readmitted to the G-7 Summits, those annual meetings of the Heads of State of the world’s leading industrialized nations.
The reason it’s called The G-7 these days is because Obama kicked Russia out of The G-8 years ago for annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula at tankpoint, and put harsh economic sanctions on Russia that damaged Russia’s energy-dependent economy. Russian President Vladimir Putin deftly resolved that dilemma not by confrontation, but instead making a shrewd investment in The United States, so to speak, and is now cashing in as the sanctions melt away like Spring thaw while the New & Improved Model American President acts as a one-man Russian Chamber of Commerce. Even the warnings from every American intelligence agency and hundreds of former spy chiefs, generals and public officials about Russia’s continued interference with American elections cannot move Trump or Mitch McConnell to lift a finger to protect the 2020 elections.
The Chosen One pronouncement, however, was the lead distraction from Trump’s compromised loyalties, the continued existence of concentration camps, and another week of chaos and calamity, coupled with his enthusiastic welcome of being called (!) “King of Israel” and (!!) “the Second Coming of God to Israeli Jews” according to some rabid internet griper whose Tweet made him famous when Trump shared it to his own Twitter page so millions can cringe at the monumental ego of an ignorant madman, made even more outrageous because he was simultaneously waging a pubic hate campaign against the 80% of American Jews who vote for Democrats, calling them “stupid, weak and disloyal,” those Hitlerian adjectives that snowballed into World War and Holocaust in barely a decade.
Every movement, good or bad, begins only with words, words that eventually get translated into actions, good or bad. With almost predictable regularity in history, however, yesterday’s ignorant and deluded lunatic becomes today’s powerful head of state, and, lucky us, this is one of those times. Too bad we never wrote any of this down so we’d know the signs if it ever starts happening aga… ohwait!
And so we stop saying “that’s the worst thing any American President ever said” or “ever did” or “that’s the batshit craziest thing any American President ever said.” That’s because it’s not tomorrow yet, and we know by now it just gets worse with this frantic attention junkie, never refreshingly better, or Trump having some surprisingly lucid moments. No, that never happens. But when you simply can’t help but say these things are the worst, now it’s always “yet,” or “so far.” Or “until an hour from now.”
Then you watch what the Trump Administration is really doing while Trump goes on one childish and crazy rampage after another, things like the Department of Justice petitioning a Federal Court to allow the United States Government to (WTF?) detain children indefinitely, reminding us that one the worst things imaginable is now happening here again, as we see Brown-skinned Indigenous children taken from their parents into Federal custody, with only other captive children to comfort terrified toddlers, none of them knowing where are their parents.
Like a modern Trail of Tears, there have been inexcusably poor records kept in too many cases, of the most basic thing like “whose child belongs to who,” and we have deported many parents while keeping their children in custody, leaving it up to the ACLU, outraged elected officials, local charities and volunteers to pick up the human wreckage, locate and reunite families and get them the due legal process that the US Constitution and established American law guarantees every refugee.
We were also treated to non-Trump quotes that merit attention, like this one from Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel: “Federal debt, which is already high by historical standards, is on an unsustainable course, projected to rise even higher after 2029,” as this year’s deficit tops the trillion dollar mark, and Wall Street is about as stable as Charlie Sheen.
The week began on Friday when Israel decided to allow Representative Tlaib to visit her 90 year-old grandmother in the West Bank for “Humanitarian Reasons” if she agreed to some decidedly inhumane free speech restrictions and losing her traveling companion, Representative Ilhan Omar, after both of them were banned from visiting Israel at the insistence of President Trump, but Ms. Tlaib told both Presidents, Netanyahu and Trump, to stick their offer where the sun don’t shine, she’s an American and will speak her mind like Americans do.
Trump got some good news Friday when accused pedophile and Trump’s former bosom buddy Jeffrey Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide by the Medical Examiner, with no hint of any foul play beyond negligence, with Epstein (fingers crossed no videotapes turn up!) taking many alleged dirty little secrets of Trump’s to his grave. The bad news came later on when we heard his chubby little Boytoy Kim Jong Un was acting up again.
North Korea put the kibosh on holding peace talks with South Korea, sort of the main point of Trump’s whole adventure over there in the first place. Instead of averting a potential nuclear crisis, Trump turned Kim from a rogue and a pariah into an international superstar and a world statesman who is just as famous and just as unfit for his job as Trump, and every bit the bully Trump is too, with no intention of surrendering his country’s only attention grabber, his nuclear arsenal. American Presidents have been dealing with one crazy and belligerent North Korean leader after another since 1953, with none of them particularly breaking a sweat keeping them in check, threatening anyone with nuclear annihilation, or allowing tinpot dictators a place of honor on the world stage because of their close association (and beautiful letters!) to the President of the United States.
On Sunday Trump announced he wants to “rescind” $4.5 billion in Foreign Aid, foreign aid that is part of the budget he just signed into law and cannot be undone on a whim on a strictly legal basis, setting aside the predictable humanitarian disasters and intelligence failures such a cut would trigger.
On Monday Trump decided that the best way to handle gun violence was to “reopen the mental institutions” and, on a related note, that the search Engine Google was “biased against me” and had “animated votes” for Hillary Clinton in 2016 with its stubborn refusal to provide links to the more exciting “alternative facts” pioneered by Trump and his minions instead of sticking to the boring old “established facts” and “exact quotes” it was designed to provide its users. Very unfair to him!
Monday also brought us the news that Trump’s 11-Day Wonder, his Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, has finally turned against Trump after over a year of defending him, and is forming a coalition find and back a candidate to challenge Trump for the GOP nomination next year, joining the several Republican challengers who have already announced their challenges to Trump.
Tuesday was when Trump postponed his Denmark trip after Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen refused to discuss his proposed purchase of Greenland, calling it “absurd,” to which Trump replied (via Twitter of course): “Denmark is a very special country with incredible people, but based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time.”
Tuesday was also Jews Are Disloyal Day, a grand distraction from the Fourth Branch of the US Government acting decisively to address the mass shooting plague in the USA. The National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre made a 30 minute phone call to Trump, putting an end to speculation that anything at all would change about America’s gun laws, or that participation in American life would cease being a form of Russian Roulette anytime soon.
After 2 conversations with the NRA’s La Pierre, suddenly Trump reversed his earlier promises to strengthen background checks before selling deadly weapons to just about anyone who wants one by claiming “We already do a lot of background checks” before he accidentally gave the real reason nothing will change, “A lot of people who put me where I am are strong believers in the Second Amendment, and I am also” (just not that pesky “Well-Regulated” part of the 2nd Amendment, clearly a mistake by the Founders).
On Wednesday Trump headlined a private fundraiser Wednesday in Kentucky on behalf of Republican Governor Matt Bevin’s reelection campaign, in Mitch McConnell’s home state that proudly announced that the same Oligarch and close Vladimir Putin ally, Oleg Deripaska, the man Obama sanctioned for fraud, extortion, racketeering and his shadowy role in American election interference, would now be investing $200 million in a Kentucky aluminum plant, a man un-sanctioned by Trump and McConnell to the tune of billions, but still banned by the US government from entering this country because of his dual alliances to the Kremlin and the Russian Mafia. And yet Moscow Mitch wonders why he got that nickname.
Wednesday was the day when Trump’s Pit Bull William Barr sent Justice Department lawyers to court to ask a judge if they can keep children locked up “indefinitely” instead of only for the current legal limit of 20 days. There’s a huge difference between 20 days and “indefinitely.” You can’t even break in a kid in 20 lousy days! That takes indefinite isolation and prolonged agony. After only 20 days a kid might just recover and heal someday.
And speaking of prolonged agony, Trump was given the chance on Wednesday to soften his attack on Jews, maybe say he spoke too hastily with the “stupid and disloyal” allegations against his countrymen. You know, smooth things out a little, try to make his words sound less Hitlerian than they were universally construed.
Well, that’s not how Trump rolls, and he’d sooner gouge an eye out than apologize or even admit a mistake, so he doubled down on the Jew bashing, adding “weak people” to “uniformed and disloyal,” while going out of his way to portray America Jews as owing their primary loyalty to Israel and their fellow Jews, not the USA, a distinction not lost on those ever at the ready to attack Jews and blame them for all the things wrong with their miserable lives.
Couple this theme with the complete refusal to change our current system that puts machine guns in the hands of racist lunatics, and we can almost predict more Anti-Semitic violence, followed by manic hand-washing by those in a position to change things, tsunamis of Thoughts & Prayers, then another After-Massacre Clearance Sale on the guns they tell you the government is surely coming for this time if you don’t buy a couple more.
Just in case you were wondering where America’s Mayhem and Trump’s former “Lead Defense Lawyer” went, Rudy Giuliani emerged from under his rock again on Wednesday, this time acting as a (wink-winkety-wink!) “Private Citizen” to push Ukraine to prosecute Joe Biden’s son for crimes the Ukraine already said he did not commit. In his defense, who among us private citizens hasn’t obsessed over imaginary crimes in foreign countries?
It was a good smokescreen, however, for obscuring the news of a trillion dollar deficit this year, a looming recession, Trump conference-calling the CEOs of the major banks to browbeat them into not failing, announcing and then cancelling hasty quick-fixes like payroll tax cuts, demanding the Federal reserve shore up his economic house of cards by printing money, then accusing Democrats of “trying to will a recession,” and even crazier, accusing the news media of “trying to crash the economy,” as impossible as it is absurd-sounding.
This from a man who has spend lifetime dodging the Repo Man, and not very successfully either, having lost yachts, buildings, land, gambling casinos, Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks and a billion dollars, and whose companies have declared bankruptcy six times ahead of miles of unpaid bills to working stiffs and ruined contractors. This self-declared stable genius is now in charge of the largest national economy in history, yet another reason to be grateful that Congress holds the pursestrings.
Wednesday was also the “I’m the Chosen One” day, and a day where he really said exactly this about our nation’s highest military battle decoration: “Nothing like the Medal of Honor. I wanted one, but they told me I don’t qualify. I said, ‘Can I give it to myself anyway?’ They said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’”
Thursday was when he retweeted the “Trump as King of Israel” nonsense, and dropped his demand to cut billions in foreign aid from the budget, (you’re not allowed do-overs in law enactment) and then revisited his praise of Putin at the expense of President Obama, claiming “Putin outsmarted Obama,” when in fact it was Obama’s economic sanctions and his ouster of the Russian Federation from the G-8 that put a serious hurting on Putin’s economy and severely undercut his global influence. Reality, like Google, never was loyal to Trump.
Yes, there are still children in American Concentration Camps and our President is calling Jews disloyal (Step 1: words), a President who still openly takes the side of Russia against his own country and promotes their national interests shamelessly. The two politicians Trump is closest to are murderous foreign dictators, the American economy has become a rickety old roller coaster with one set of wheels not even touching the tracks and the nominal Leader of the Free World is babbling about being the Chosen One, forcing the rest of us to wonder what we ever did that was so bad we were “chosen” to endure this preening lunatic.
And so we close Week (pleasejustmakeitstop!) #136 with teeth clenched, knowing it will only get worse the next time he opens his mouth or picks up his phone.