Strap in folks. It’s getting out of control.
Trump can see what is going on. The news isn’t in his favor in the current cycle, the only measurement of time that retains relevance. Ever since he limped off stage after Lysolgate, things have changed. His humiliation was total. Even normally dependable allies at best are silent about this. Silence is very high praise, the ultimate test of loyalty.
How did he react to this public pratfall? It’s inexplicable to me.
He presented as having been installed as emperor. The transfer of power was complete now, his control limitless. If you dared to imagine he was nothing if not brilliant, then you would pay. Stop me if you can, he seemed to dare us with each days added abuses of the office he disgraces. It was all in the open now, and he was betting we are too weak to do anything about it. The jury is out, but he’s got reason to believe that he beats the rap. He’s dodged responsibility his entire life. He’s good at it.
The Best.
But there was no denying he quit the briefings. Beaten. Epic. Custer-level disaster. The need for a new narrative was obvious, and suddenly we were out of the “best resource of public information” phase of the show and into the “fuck it, we’re opening” phase. All pretense to reporting actual information regarding the pandemic was gone. That was now irrelevant and the key was how can we open faster, wider, deeper, harder? The rape had begun in earnest. When asked by a reporter today what his plan was to save the 30+ million jobs that had been lost, his answer was short and comprehensive. Open up. That’s the plan. He called it a rude question, and not atypically the reporter had been a respected female journalist, a subset of journalists that are a favorite target of the President of the United States. He did not allow the beggar a follow-up question. She was audibly dismissed.
For about a week now the House has been putting together another multi-trillion dollar relief bill that the President had quickly announced would be vetoed by him. They passed it. On to the Senate. I have zero doubt that it will be vetoed, if it gets past the Senate. But he declared it dead before arrival. He was daring us all. Pass it. Go ahead, pass it. Dare ya.
Then came Obamagate. No one seems to know what Obamagate is. The President is no help to decipher what the crimes of the previous administration were. When asked by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Phil Rucker what the crime was, exactly, the President replied “You know”. The appropriate follow-up to such an answer would clearly be “I know you are but what am I”, but Rucker let the opportunity pass. If you don’t traffic in right wing media, suffice it to say that “Obamagate” is now a thing there. It has no rationale, but it is premised on the idea that many within the Obama administration “unmasked” NSA Michael Flynn in intelligence reports that were tracking conversations of a Russian ambassador, but this is quickly blowing up as Flynn’s name had never been hidden to begin with so no unmasking was ever necessary. The rules are arcane, but suffice it to say that there is no “there” there.
This is what the President is now characterizing as the greatest crime in the history of the United States (his words) committed by the traitorous previous administration. It is comedic hyperbole, has absolutely no merit and the President is committed to it as a strategy. Try to bring down Obama and Biden will be the collateral damage.
The former President had started to come out of hiding and was beginning to respond to some of the insanity coming out of the White House, and made a typically well crafted address to the graduating seniors at high schools across the country on a special TV event. Without naming anyone he took some obvious shots at POTUS, essentially calling him a child. That ratcheted up the war between the two, and an immediate casualty of this mutual vendetta was the possibility of the two appearing with each other and pretending civility, so the unveiling of the official portrait of Obama to hang in the White House was cancelled. There would be no honoring of Obama as long as Trump was in office. That would never happen.
When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came to the President and asked for the Inspector General for the State Department to be fired, Trump had one question. Who appointed him? Finding that it had been Obama, he said sure, I’ll fire him. This is the President’s own characterization of the event. That was the only crime he needed to hear. He had voiced the same thing at some of the briefings. He had berated a reporter for not revealing that the source for a question was an Obama appointee, and went on and on that nothing more need be said, being appointed by Obama was in itself a convictable offense. He never answered the reporters question.
The firing of Inspectors General had become a side hustle for the President, dumping four of them inside of 45 days. Oversight was being dismantled at breakneck speed. What the administration wanted and needed to do was best done in near total darkness, and Trump was turning out the lights. But the firing at the State Dept. seemed to break through the impregnable wall that had protected the Republicans from confronting facts and truth.
Well, not really. What got the GOP up in arms was the President had a legal responsibility to alert the Senate of any changes to an Inspector General position 30 days before replacing the IG and to enlist Senate approval for the replacement. Trump had ignored these inconvenient details, snubbed the Senate and swiftly made the ouster. This wasn’t really about protocols and procedures. Trump made the mistake of making it a battle for territory, who’s longer, who’s wider. Senatorial pride was pricked and that brought some of the legislators out of the torpor that has been emblamatic of their relationship with the President.
The pushback began with the usual suspects weighing in. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) expressed her “concern”. Susan Collins (R-Maine) also found the firings questionable. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a reliable voice in the protection of whistleblowers, was hopping mad, enough to go to the typewriter and shoot off a letter to the President demanding an explanation and provided a due date of June 1st for him to provide it.
Then Rob Portman (R-Ohio) chimed in, expressing his insistence that the law be followed. The Republican Whip John Thune of South Dakota agreed and felt that the Senate “… deserved an explanation”. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) was a little more cautious as he was the Senate Chair on the Foreign Relations Committee, the most intimately connected committee to the Secretary of State, so he simply expected to “…continue to learn more”. This Saturday Night Massacre Lite had crossed party lines. The President had committed the cardinal sin. No, no, not the placing of his own interests above the law. They understood that, though they thought little of his lack of artfulness in the pursuit. There are ways to flaunt the law and POTUS was an amateur. No, it wasn’t that. They had been snubbed. That was the cardinal sin, and they weren’t having it.
Yesterday represented another uptick in the new Emperor’s flaunting of the law. In two seperate tweets he threatened Nevada and Wisconsin for their support of Voting From Home via mail-in voting. If they insisted on this illegal (it wasn’t) pathway to widespread voter fraud (it’s not), he would withhold Federal pandemic support. Hilariously in both tweets he added this was predicated on the premise that he could do this. He thought he could. He was gonna find out. But if he can he will. Wanna find out? I dare ya!
He doesn’t really care if this actually happens. The threat is the point. The perception of his power to do whatever enters his tiny brain is the point. He had announced that he was taking the contentious drug hydrochloroquine and had been for a week and a half or so. When he announced this a few days ago, he was like a toddler bouncing in his chair and clapping his hands at the reaction by the press when it was revealed. Their reaction was the whole reason he made the announcement. What a kick!
There is no way to know if he has ever taken the drug or not. Many have serious doubts. When asked about how he got it, he explained that the White House physician, though not recommending it, wrote him a prescription anyway. Most doctors would lose their license if they made a habit of writing scripts they did not find helpful, but rather followed the whims of their patients. That is frowned upon in medical circles. It seems doubtful, though possible, that a physician with enough credibility to wind up in the White House would be willing to throw that career away on a political three-card monte. But that’s the story.
The pushback on the President taking what is considered at this time to be a potentially dangerous prophylactic when used to address Covid-19 was so quick and widespread that a new narrative needed to be concocted and fast. So yesterday Trump announced that his medicinal “regimine” was due to be completed in two days. What had once been an ongoing attempt to fight off the virus that had now shown up inside the White House itself, it was now being characterized as temporary and his protocol was almost complete. Humiliation had put the brakes to the lie, just as it had done to the briefings.
Another cruelty of massive proportion to thousands of National Guardsmen blew up on the President yesterday. When they had been activated for this pandemic, they were considered to be active in a combat situation, making them elligible for very significant benefits on the G.I. Bill after 90 days of engagement. The Administration instructed them to stand down on day 89. Sorry, Charlie Company. Darn, so close.
When this hit the media everyone was appalled, no matter what side of the aisle. One political edict that you don’t cross without a price is pooping on our servicepeople, and this was an enormous Trump dump on their heads. The stupidity of this decision could not be denied and the walk-back started almost instantly, though it has not been officially rescinded yet. Stay tuned.
We are now watching a pendulum swooping back and forth between narcissistic proclomations and crushing humiliation. When you watch the President cross the lawn en route to his helicopter, you can tell which end of the spectrum he is on that day. His bad days see him schlepping across the grass, shoulders rounded and drooping, a jowly scowl frozen on his face, eyes searching the grass for answers. It’s a pitiful picture of a man at a complete loss of what to do. The only thing that energizes the President is a new attack, a new angle to discredit his enemies. That gets a bit of a kick to his giddy-up. So desperate to enjoy his manic phases, he is stretching his cruel attacks on his fellow persons so far that the depressive state of humiliation is following more quickly, more inevitably.
This is unravelling right in front of us and it is gaining momentum.
We need Joe Pesci to sit him down for a heart to heart.
“You’re cracking up, you fat bastard!”