If you pay any kind of attention, you might have noticed that Donald Trump doesn’t have a very clear understanding of some pretty basic concepts of how the world works. It’s most obvious when he displays a basic lack of understanding of grocery shopping (No, you DON’T need a picture ID to purchase cereal). But it becomes a danger to people when that lack of understanding bleeds over into things like how the environment works. His recent comments about the wildfires in California, and his threats to cut federal funding as a result show his incompetence could really hurt people all the more. I’m sorry, Don, but no, Finland doesn’t avoid wildfires because they keep their forests well raked. Your “instincts” for science are failing you kind of hard, dude.
It feels like every couple of weeks since the start of the Trump presidency, Trump will do or say something that will collectively make the nation go “what?”, and out will come a handful of think pieces wondering whether or not Donald Trump is suffering a mental ailment or mental decline. Often times the pieces are written by people who have some kind of relevant expertise in psychology or psychiatry. Then as soon as the articles start getting any kind of circulation, there will come the rebuttals. But the rebuttals fascinate me, because they often spend little to no time arguing against the conclusion, and more against the merit of having the conversation and the ethics of the professionals who are making the arguments. To that I would argue, if mental health professionals are en masse coming out to suggest the guy who is responsible for launching nuclear missiles might be losing his grip on reality, I feel like we should all know about it. As to the ethics of it…listen, if Trump’s personal therapist was coming out and telling the world that he admitted to fanaticizing about getting peed on by Russian hookers, I might suggest his ethics are questionable. If a highly regarded psychiatrist who viewed the very public life of the President is suggesting that based on his behavior, he might destroy the world, then maybe the psychiatrist is ethically safe.
There was a point early on in Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ first days, where I thought I should feel sorry for her. I really thought she was being forced to peddle the party line. I mean, despite my distaste for her and her family’s politics, I would have hoped that she was at least honest. Or honest as far as she was able. I would have thought the sort of blatant lack of honesty would eventually rub her the wrong way, which might account for her more and more aggressive posturing. But I quickly realized that I was projecting far more decency on her than she deserved. She really is just generally dishonest and weirdly aggressive when she’s called on it. It’s been especially obvious in the last several days, where she has been defending the revocation of Jim Acosta’s Press Credentials. Beyond towing her boss’s line, she’s actively helping in expanding on the deception by using doctored footage from InfoWars (of all places) to try and further tarnish Acosta’s reputation. It’s despicable, and yet remarkably consistent with what we might expect.
I don’t have a high opinion of Lindsey Graham. Every time I’ve ever seen him talk, it’s always him trying to sanitize a horrible opinion/gross political motivation or he’s gaslighting his political opponents. In my humble opinion, he is, and always has been a man with a stunning lack of integrity or empathy. He looks, acts, and sounds like a Looney Tunes villain. The one time he appeared to sound like he had any kind of concern for anyone other than himself, was when he was defending Jeff Sessions in the early days of the Russia Investigation. He used forceful language to defend a man that he presumably considered a friend. The exact words were that Trump would have “Hell to pay” if he canned Sessions. Not that I think anyone took that bloviating very seriously. And it appears that they were right not to. Because low and behold, Trump forced Sessions out, and when confronted with a video clip of his own words, Graham literally laughed it off. Let me tell you, it says a lot about your credibility when you scoff at the validity of your own threat. Lindsey Graham is a joke.
As it turns out, most musicians who have good music to play at rallies, don’t want them played to help support wannabe fascist, bigoted, demagogues. Trump is finding that out the hard way as Rihanna has become the latest pop star to tell Trump to cease and desist using her music at his rallies. Other names on that list include the Rolling Stones, REM, Adele, Pharrell Williams, Neil Young and Aerosmith. It’s an unfortunate position for Donald Trump to be in, because keeping a crowd pumped up and in the mood to continue racist-ing with all their might during a long night of standing in large sweaty crowds requires a bumping beat. It would be a bad day when all that was left to motivate a crowd to keep on hating immigrants and democrats was the greatest hits the Public Domain has to offer.
I learned something. Indeed, I think my whole evaluation of a situation has been fairly well upended. Melania Trump has power. Actual power. Donald listens to her and she has the ability in that relationship to put her foot down. And that is probably my own fault. It might have been foolish of me to think she was just a prop in that relationship, but I feel like the information we’d had up until now had really led us all to believe that Melania was a toothless figurehead. Everything, from her cyberbullying initiative, to her all of her “duties” as first lady, have all felt very out of the way. Things to give her to keep her occupied but otherwise out of the process, unlike first ladies of the past who had more active roles in the administration. Then Mira Ricardel was ousted. Mira Ricardel is a diehard Trump loyalist who has been actively helping John Bolton initiate foreign policy to Trump’s satisfaction. Ricardel is exactly the kind of person Trump wants in his camp, and I can imagine he’s not happy about losing her. But Melania didn’t want her around, and went public with that knowledge. For Melania to be able to make that call, and then publicly announce that it WAS her call…Well that is one hell of a power play. I won’t be underestimating her again.
Donald Trump loves and respects our troops. Indeed, come football season, he can’t seem to shut up about them. He’s dripping with respect and admiration, but this weekend, when celebrating the end of World War I, it was somewhat of a confusing bit of news when it was reported that Trump refused to visit a scheduled trip to visit the cemetery of American Troops in Paris. Apparently the light drizzle presented just too much of an obstacle for the President of the United States to be expected to overcome. Speak not of the other world leaders who braved the slightly inclement weather to do the very same thing for their respective countries. Because again, it’s not as if the weather was monsoon like conditions, or even a heavy rain. The weather reporting consistently referred to the weather as “a light drizzle.” It’s good to know that our President will stop at nothing to salute and respect our troops, so long as he suffers not even a slight discomfort!
So, on November 5, Monday night, right before the most contentious midterms in modern history, Sean Hannity was brought up by Donald Trump to speak and endorse his political allies. Is that surprising? No. Not even kind of. Sean Hannity is a scumbag who doesn’t care one whit about professionalism in his career, unless he thinks someone else is being unprofessional. But still, people rightly had complaints about the optics of a journalist, who even as an editorialist, was stumping for Republicans. Using his platform as a person who is supposed to be outside that bubble, to endorse politicians is the worst kind of behavior. So again, not surprising, still gross and unprofessional on a profound level. Even Fox News found his political endorsements and verbal backstabbing of fellow reporters to be distasteful, and put out a statement suggesting that they were going to take some kind of action to which I say “HA!” Sean Hannity isn’t going to get so much as a wrist slap. He is the highest rated cable news show in the country. As gross as that sounds, the fact is that he’s the draw for many people to that network. Which is discouraging to think about, but true none the less. Sean Hannity is immune from basically any kind of action. He could drop kick a baby on the air, and Fox News would suggest that it isn’t up to the standards of their Network, and then wipe their hands of it.
There was a lot of speculation, even before the Midterms, about the fate of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Russia Investigation. Rumors were abound that one way or the other, with or without a “blue wave” at the ballots, Trump would likely feel the pressure to deal with Mueller’s investigation, and likely with Sessions, as it was no secret that Trump for all intents and purposes saw the guy as a traitor. I mean, how dare he do the only responsible thing and recuse himself from an investigation in which he had a conflict of interest?! To be fair, that moment of responsibility was quite a surprise to most people. But with the House now making it clear that their priorities are to take Trump to task for his malfeasance, Trump moved quickly to start trying to put what ducks in a row he could afford. People were awfully surprised that it only took him a day to can Sessions. Frankly, I’m surprised he waited til the next morning. That’s a level of restraint I didn’t know Trump was capable of.
Donald Trump’s phone habits…well it isn’t new news. His penchant for using non-secure cellphones is well documented. The only weird thing is that halfway through his term, this is still a problem. Despite his claims that this story is a total fabrication, we know it isn’t, because his Twitter rants claiming fake news come from HIS IPHONE. But his flippancy over using unsecure lines is ludicrously irresponsible. Seriously. He doesn’t seem to realize that the conversations he has are of national importance, which is weird considering there has never been a person alive with a more inflated sense of self importance. And considering the scares over hacking that have become all too prevalent in today’s political climate, the idea of vulnerable phones in the Oval Office is just unbelievable. And yet here we are.
Mind the Exit 