I’ll give Trump this: he’s certainly good at keeping people guessing what he’s really thinking. One second, you are just certain he’s sitting in Putin’s pocket, the next he’s throwing around tough boy talk and shooting missiles and imposing more strenuous sanctions, then the next day he’s saying “naw, just kidding, no sanctions.” If I was more conspiracy theory minded, I feel like I could connect some dots here, but I’m not, and I won’t. But I’m certainly feeling the whiplash from his flip flops.
Mike Pence called out Russia for being on the wrong side of history on Sunday, in regards to Syria. And you know, that’s probably true. History will not look favorably on Russia for supporting Assad’s regime. But let’s be fair, Pence is on the wrong side of history about basically everything in his own right. He supports insane legislation against the LGBTQ community, and is personally offended by gay marriage, and he supports the more insane of Trump’s policies, including a big, useless wall across the Mexican border. He fully supports the tax bill that railroads the vast majority of Americans, and in general, holds mean spirited views on anyone who doesn’t view the world through his very narrow lens. Calling someone out on being on the wrong side of history feels, if not ironic, then entirely hypocritical.
So Paul Ryan is retiring. Well, more specifically, he’s not seeking re-election, which is basically the same thing. He talks a big game about wanting to settle down, raise his kids, and just move forward knowing he’s accomplished the things he’s want to accomplish, which was apparently to screw over just as many old and poor people as he possibly could. But it’s hard to not to see it as a well time escape. A jumping ship move, or to quote Douglas Adams, “So long and thanks for all the fish!”. It’s hard to argue that the Republicans aren’t in something of a politically turbulent time right now, and how that’s going to shake out in the coming weeks and months must be on the forefront of Ryan’s mind. I wonder if he’ll be getting out soon enough?
Watching Mark Zuckerberg testify to Congress was a bit like watching someone explain the internet to their grandmother. At first, you see the Senators had some questions loaded to really kind of grill Zuckerberg on Facebook and privacy, but as soon as he starts explaining any facet of software, you can see the senators eyes just glaze over. I don’t want to blame it on the ages of the respective senators. I know plenty of older people who are more tech savvy than me. But you can tell that the current generation of senators are a few steps behind in understanding the basic business model of social media.
So, the raid on Michael Cohen’s place has really amped up Trump and his rhetoric about getting rid of Mueller and killing this Russia investigation. He’s acting like a wannabe mob boss, except, unfortunately, he can actually really cause some bad things to happen. But there is a funny thing buried in articles that no one seems to be mentioning, or at least not yet. Trump is so busy fuming at Mueller, but it turns out Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, personally signed off on the raid. This wasn’t Mueller making a unilateral decision against Trump. He got the a-ok from the guy who would ACTUALLY be able to fire him. I’m sure Trump is probably aware of this factoid, but the way he’s talking about it, you’d think Rod was working his ass off to keep Trump from hearing about it.
Even Trump has had to acknowledge that his ill advised Trade War with China is already worrying his base, namely the farmers, who supported him in wide numbers, and are being directly affected by this poor decision. The things he’s said are shifty at best and Tone Deaf at worst. He’s choosing to blame China for Tariffs even though China has more or less begged Trump not to move forward with actions that would force them to also take actions. Then he suggested that while it’s unfortunate for farmers, taking this hit, it will be ok, and that he’ll make sure that he “makes it up to them.” How? Because we can clearly see that he isn’t thinking steps ahead. He isn’t thinking about steps of now. He’s just…reacting…which is a scary place to be.
In another example of ThaTrump either not realizing how long of memory Twitter has, or just not remembering he had a previous heated opinion on a matter, Trump, among his series of weekend, Fire Side Twitter Rants, blamed Obama for not attacking Syria and taking Assad out. Of course, he completely forgot the Tweet he sent out in 2013, in all caps, in which he begged Obama not to attack Syria, saying it would be the worst thing he could possibly do. At the same time, I know that Trump will never, ever address this apparent disparity in opinions. We won’t get to see an entertaining dance explaining away why his opinions don’t clash. He’ll just pretend the disparity doesn’t exist.
When it comes to news, on any given story, I have this habit of trying to read multiple sources to try and get a clearer picture of how things may have happened. Because it’s easy enough to make small gaffes or misspoken moments into bigger issues than they actually are. And as someone whose job it is to exaggerate things for comedic effect, I’d start from as neutral a place as I can. I say all that to talk about Ted Nugent. I saw several headlines over the weekend talking about Ted, known Gun advocate, and board member of the NRA. Now, he can be a bit…out there, but when it was suggested by headlines that he openly advocated for out and out shooting people, I thought to myself “well, obviously there is some context missing here. Then I listened to the clip and read the quote word for word and…yeah, no, he just told people to shoot liberals, democrats and half of the government. Seriously. “Don’t ask why. Just know that evil, dishonesty, and scam artists have always been around and that right now they’re liberal, they’re Democrat, they’re RINOs, they’re Hollywood, they’re fake news, they’re media, they’re academia, and they’re half of our government, at least, so come to that realization. There are rabid coyotes running around. You don’t wait till you see one to go get your gun. Keep your gun handy, and every time you see one, you shoot one.” Those are his words. One could reasonable call that an incitement to violence.
I don’t know how true this claim is, but that new book by Ronald Kessler is allegedly claiming that Trump is once again posing as an anonymous source within the White House to leak favorable information. It’s one of those insane things where I can totally imagine it being true, but it would still be totally flabbergasting. He’s the President of the United States. He can organize legit, clandestine information campaigns without having to call Maggie Haberman of the New York Times by himself. It’s just bizarre.
Mind the Exit 