Joe Biden has been weirdly talking about beating up Donald Trump a lot. It’s…odd. Like, I understand the sentiment, and I imagine a lot of people would love to lay one on Trump, but he’s taking this weirdly high school tone about the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m awfully fond of Biden. He’s kind of like the nation’s precocious old Uncle Joe. But his rhetoric is starting to sound like he just wants us to know, without question, that he thinks the way Trump treats women is disgusting, and he would totally beat the crap out of him for it he could. I don’t know that his white knight attitude is what we need right now. I don’t think it’s making anyone feel better, but at least it’s entertaining. Especially now that Trump feels like he has to defend his masculinity about it. The funny thing about this is that before he took to Twitter to assure the nation that Trump could take down Joe Biden in a fight, I was drawing out this strip.
A Neo-Nazi, like an actual one, is the nominated GOP candidate for an Illinois senate seat. Arthur Jones is a former leader of the American Nazi Party. Now he’s an official GOP candidate. I mean, come on…The GOP is seriously in need of a rebranding. At the very least, they should publically proclaim they are not down with Nazis. Because it used to be that something like that didn’t need to be said, but clearly we have moved well past that point.
So on Tuesday morning, Trump called Putin and congratulated him on his election victory. He did this despite his national security advisors apparently putting in big bold letters in a briefing “DO NOT CONGRATULATE!” Some are arguing that Trump simply didn’t read the briefing, which kind of tracks, seeing as I’m not entirely certain Trump knows how to read, or at the very least, he clearly doesn’t enjoy it. But the more believable and more likely scenario is Trump did it because he was explicitly told not to. He’s shown on more than one occasion that he will not be dictated to or told how to handle things. I wonder why more of the people surrounding him don’t use that to manipulate his behavior?
There is something inherently humorous and infantile about how Trump’s lawyers are treating the prospect of Trump talking to Mueller. On one level, I kind of understand. No lawyer wants their client talking to law enforcement. On the other hand, the President gets a lot of legal leeway in what he’s allowed to get prosecuted for, and from a purely public point of view, you have to wonder what his legal council is trying to keep Trump from saying. Trump is even bringing on a new lawyer to help (after he condemned the New York Times for reporting that and claiming he wasn’t). And their tactics to limit Mueller’s access to Trump have been weird…This week, they’re presenting “documents” to Mueller’s team, essentially a narrative that they pinky promise is the total and complete truth and is totally, completely as useful as Trump’s own testimony.
On Sunday, Vladimir Putin won his 4th term presidency in Russia. With 74% of the votes, it’s hard to argue that it wasn’t a landslide, though watchdog groups in Russia are reporting, rather matter of factly, that it was hardly fair, with reports of ballot stuffing and voter coercion, among other things, contributing to Putin’s successful campaign. From the outside, we watch that, and think “What an alarming misuse of power! Putin is a monster!” Also from the outside, I imagine Donald Trump watches that and thinks “Oh man…one day that’ll be me.”
Trump’s big idea for curbing school shooting is arming teachers. Never mind a boatload of statistics that would suggest that it’s a bad idea, including my favorite one, that was reported by the NYPD, who reported that their own officers, when in a gun fight, only hit their intended target about 18% of the time. These are people who expected to be in situations where firing a weapon was a distinct possibility, and have trained far more than any teacher on how to react in such a high stress situation. 18% of the time. On Thursday, a High School Teacher and Reserve Police officer in Seaside, Ca had to apologize publicly for firing a gun in the classroom on accident. I don’t feel like I need to elaborate any further.
I kind of admire the balls on Paul Manafort. He is asking a judge to dismiss the 5 criminal charges against him, not because he’s innocent, but because Manafort thinks Mueller shouldn’t have been allowed to catch him if he was focusing on the Russia investigation. This despite the fact that he acknowledges that Mueller’s mandate was widespread and gave him prosecutorial power over anything he uncovered in the search of collusion. Now, admittedly, I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t know how much sway that argument is going to have in court.
Donald Trump might be a 10 year old in the body of a man in his mid 70s. He’s now discussing creating a new branch of the military he’s dubbing the “Space Force”. Because apparently if we can have an Air Force (which you would think space would also be apart of seeing as space is also technically in the air, but that’s just semantics) we can certainly also have a Space Force. Considering how much money isn’t being spent on space exploration, and how much money is not even being suggested for allocation for such a purpose, it’s interesting to think that he believes he’s going to be the President who gets a man on Mars and establishes a military presence in space. But apparently a little boy can dream.
So, some news outlets are reporting some discord between the State Department and the White House after the unceremonious firing of Rex Tillerson. And by “some discord”, they seem to mean “open revolt”. Loyalty has something to do with it I’m sure, but also the fact that the official narrative seems to clash with the “unofficial” (but mostly believed) narrative. Officially, Rex was ousted on Friday, and asked to wait until the beginning of the new week to announce it. Unofficially, Rex found out from an employee who printed out Trump’s tweet on Tuesday morning. One thing is for sure, as much as Sarah Huckabee Sanders is going to be working overtime to assure the public that everything is fine in the White House, more than ever, no one is going to believe heA
The New York Times posted an article titled “A Visit Behind Enemy Lines” about Trump visiting California this week. A headline like that, you might expect it to be about Trump’s upcoming visit to North Korea, but instead, it’s the state his administration has basically declared war on, with Sessions mounting legal attacks against their immigration laws. The rhetoric is funny, but not necessarily incorrect. One gets the feeling he won’t feel very welcome in California, especially as his visit is to see progress on his stupid wall. That said, I’m absolutely sure that we’ll be hearing tweets coming from Trump soon enough about how welcome and beloved he is California.
Mind the Exit 