With the numbers finally out for Trump’s proposed budget, a lot of news agencies and senators on Twitter are again taking a look back at Trump’s campaign promises. He claimed that under him, the country would never run a $400 billion deficit. He claimed that he was the only GOP candidate who was saying absolutely no cuts to Medicaid. And yet we’re on course to over double the deficit number he complained about, and of course his proposed budget seeks to slash the numbers on Medicaid by a cool $250 billion. What I’m curious about was how much of those claims were lies that he knew he was telling at the time, or just claims made of sheer ignorance of how governments work. Because that’s the thing at this point; maliciousness and stupidity are both valid accusations to make. And if it is just sheer ignorance, one might wonder how that plays into things going forward…
Trump’s strategy of backing up the wrong side of history, which has been surprisingly successful, thus far, will eventually fail him if he finds himself offending a position even his base holds. I don’t know if that’s going to be the #MeToo movement or it’s like, but his aides are certainly working extra hard to clean up after him following his infamous “due process” tweet. It’s at times like these that I imagine the stress and heartburn that job must entail. The job of wrangling Trump would age a person more than being President would any other person other than Trump.
According to President Donald Trump, the Stock Market is basically the entire indicator for the health of our economy. At least, that’s what he was saying when the Stock Market was posting record numbers, numbers he was proud to take the credit for, an indisputable indicator of success under his regime. He wouldn’t hear of it when it was suggested that this wasn’t a result of his time in office, that we might at least in part be feeling the after effects of Obama’s time in office. Fine. That’s fair. So when the stock market starts losing money in record numbers, by President Trump’s logic, then he must also be prepared to take the credit, right?
So a fun political buzzword we keep hearing lately is “Nothing Burger.” I mean, It’s a term that’s been around for like 70 years, but in the age of “fake news” and non-stop information flooding every aspect of our existence, parsing the things that have real significance from the things that don’t is tangible problem. Take the infamous memo released this weekend. While Trump claims it completely vindicates him, eagle eyed viewers would recognize that it’s mostly just an accusatory document attacking the quality of evidence used to secure a surveillance warrant. In political terms, it can, and probably should be argued that it is the dictionary definition of a Nothing Burger. While I don’t think the Republicans are the only people in government utilizing the concept, they are certainly turning it into an art.
So the State of the Union was a dark time for people paying any kind of attention to the rhetoric. I’ve been combing over transcripts and word choices, because it seems to me that people tend to pay more attention to how things are said, and how the person looked while saying them, then the words actually spoken. For example, we have this little gem:
“Tonight I call on the congress to empower every Cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers—and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people.”
In other words, he wants Congress to empower his people to fire whoever they want for whatever reasons they can claim are “unAmerican”. For instance, investigators running witch hunts?
Trump has successfully bullied another person out their position. Andrew McCabe can’t handle the craziness anymore, and I don’t know that anyone can blame him. But it’s really becoming scarier to realize that people who are brave enough to not have any honest allegiances to Trump are becoming de-legitimized, disenfranchised or forced out. Trump supporters keep saying how over the top liberals concerned with Trump’s draconian dictatorial methods are being, but is it only going to be ok to say I told you so when he’s finally named himself emperor of the US? Will it be ok even then?
So, the more I parse through his interview with man/gerbil hybrid Piers Morgan, the funnier things get. Amongst many things, he claims to be very popular in the UK. He says he just gets so much fan mail from the UK! He doesn’t seem to remember that politicians have officially tried to ban his entry from London and England in general, and that the protests that have been threatened have made some of our look quaint by comparison. Not to mention that as someone who personally enjoys a fair amount of British media, I don’t think I’ve ever read or seen anyone from that side of the pond make a positive case for Donald Trump, which is me being kind. But, maybe Trump knows something I don’t.
So Trump casually walked into an interview John Kelly was having with some reporters and decided to have an impromptu press conference, which is just a delight for everyone, I’m sure. You know that Trump just loves thinking that he is a conversational wizard, and can get the best out of any tete-a-tete with any reporters, even though he comes off sounding like a lunatic, and just makes more cleanup work for those around him. Welcome to the new normal.
Multiple outlets are reporting that Tourism is hitting a slump in the wake of Trump and his rhetoric. In the last year, we’ve lost about $4.6 billion in tourism revenue and lost about 40,000 jobs in that sector as a result of the slump, and experts aren’t calling it a coincidence. Trump’s erratic and destructive behavior is turning a lot of people off. He spent the last 2 years talking about making America great again, and now after a year in office, he doesn’t understand why people from Norway aren’t rushing here in droves.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders claims that if the Senators don’t know what the President wants in terms of a deal, then it’s on them for not paying close enough attention. By all indications, the President of the United States has the temperament of a two year old, but with less ability to reason. We know that Schumer offered Trump basically everything he could have hoped for in a deal, and it still wasn’t enough, so honestly, the idea that people just couldn’t pick up what Trump was putting down seems at least a little far fetched.
Mind the Exit 