Donald Trump likes to control the narrative. He likes people to know that he’s not just a President. He’s a rock star! In his rallies, he’s never on stage alone. The crowd is never JUST in front on him. He always has people behind him. People to look excited, impressed an hopeful. Because that’s the narrative. He’s the great leader that inspires the people! So when someone behind him isn’t enforcing that narrative, that can be a problem. If someone were to stand RIGHT behind him, and look incredulous and mystified by something he said, something contentious…that might give the impression that maybe his leadership isn’t so great. That maybe he doesn’t have all the answers. I mean, if someone who was put on that stage as one of his supporters doesn’t read as “convinced”, his word might not be gospel. Which brings us to a rally in Billings Montana last Thursday. A young man in a plaid shirt seemed a little taken aback by remarks Trump was making. His unfortunate position right behind Trump clearly didn’t send the best optics, at which point, he was escorted off the stage by a young lady, who then replaced him. Then for good measure, two other people standing right beside the young man were also replaced by more “enthusiastic” women. According to the young man, he wasn’t simply removed, he was also held by the Secret Service and questioned. For doing nothing more than reacting to a speech. Because as Trump knows, you can’t ever lose control of that narrative.
Trump has spent 153 days on his golf properties during his presidency. For those keeping count, that’s 25% of his whole time as President. Now, I don’t know that I’m one to criticize on this issue…But Trump himself sure is. Trump spent an awful lot of time criticizing Barack Obama for not being at the White House doing his job, for going on vacations and golfing. Well Trump has spent 196 days at his resorts, which doesn’t even figure into the 25% figure mentioned above. On this count, Trump hasn’t done a great job at explaining how his criticism of Obama, who spent less time vacationing and golfing than Trump by orders of magnitude. At this point, Trump is lapping his competition in terms of vacation time over and over. It’s so prevalent that there is literally a website that tracks JUST this. It’s actually a really well kept site too. You can visit it yourself. Trumpgolfcount.com. It’s a thing. So tell us Mr. President. As you said before you were elected, a President should be too busy with work to have THIS MUCH TIME for leisure. SO where do you find the time, eh?
Donald Trump is shifting strategies for the midterm elections. He wants all the people of the country to know that he has, in fact, made America great again. Half way into his first term, it’s mission accomplished. America is great again! As proof, he points to a constantly shifting, but strong economy, a bizarre, less than transparent new relationship with North Korea, trade wars and black unemployment. Other than the trade wars and tariffs which are worrying a great many Americans and our ill defined relationship with North Korea, it’s hard to really point to any of his contentions as being Trump’s doing. And yet, it’s apparently those very things that was keeping America from being great…again…or something. Something I can point to, that Trump is DEFINITELY responsible for, is that people seem more scared and divided than ever. Bigots feel more empowered to voice their destructive opinions and behaviors, and the political divide is wider than ever. The rich are getting massively more rich, and our country’s debt and deficit are crawling toward unprecedented highs. Are all those also apart of America’s newfound greatness? Because all things considered, it doesn’t feel that great…
The confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh as the newest Justice of the Supreme Court started on Tuesday morning. And, I think as most people expected, it was a rather raucous affair. Protestors were abound, desperately trying to throw a wrench in the works of Kavanaugh getting confirmed. The Democrats were also attempting to delay the whole affair, and frankly, I don’t mind. Kavanaugh is kind of awful. But in total fairness, their reason for attempting to postpone the confirmation is pretty legit. You see, just a few hours prior, over 42,000 documents pertinent to the career and character of Kavanaugh were released to the Senate. Now, maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I feel like it’s unfair to expect people to read tens of thousands of documents in a few hours. The whole thing stinks of a runaround, so yeah, I feel like the Democrats had a legitimate cause for postponement. But of course the Republican majority wasn’t having it, Chuck Grassley especially, seeming completely baffled that there was an issue. While they weren’t successful in lobbying for a continuance, the protestors and bickering certainly slowed things down, which I suppose is something…
It’s amazing how quickly the tides can turn when you’re in the habit of making bad decisions. Trump has been riding a weird wave of…I guess better than expected poll numbers. He was certainly riding high among his voter base and Republicans. I don’t know. I guess you can get away with being a total scumbag and face down criminal charges pretty well so long as the economy isn’t in the trash. And that’s even the case if all of your global trading partners are keeping their distance. But over the course of the last week, that sort of ambivalent approval has turned into annoyance and scorn when starting when his open contempt for John McCain kept him from being able to properly memorialize the man. It seems like even Trump’s die hard supporters had trouble explaining away his petty behavior. But it only got worse when he effectively gave all the federal employees a metaphorical middle finger by instituting a line wide pay freeze on all scheduled raises slated to take effect at the beginning of next year. This pay raise was expected to take into account the cost of inflation, essentially keeping the pay for government jobs fair and competitive. As it turns out, when you tell people you’re going scrap plans to maintain a fair wage, those people aren’t going to be happy. And with upwards of 3 million employees being affected…well that’s a lot of ill will. On the same day, he outlined another complicated tax cut that seemed entirely aimed saving rich people about $100 billion. This announcement felt especially frustrating considering the stated reason for the pay freeze was because of it being so cost prohibitive. Which makes such a singularly targeted tax cut feel all the more scummy. If he keeps on this path, even his voter base might start taking a closer look at some of these angry democratic words being thrown around. Words like “unindicted co-conspirator”…
Donald Trump has some pro level cognitive dissonance. He’s able to grasp on to two conflicting ideas with a vice like grip. I suspect part of that comes from a profound ignorance, and an unwillingness to get the facts before forming any kind of opinion, but really, having the willpower to push through hard rationality and logic to believe two diametrically opposing ideas takes a special kind of person. And Trump is definitely special. Take his stance on anonymous sources. He praised the unverified, unproven stories about China being responsible for the 2016 hacks on the Democrats, a story that relies exclusively on nameless sources, then within hours, he goes on an internet rant about how anonymous sources are always made up, and are the tools that “fake news” uses to sell the public the big lies. A rational person would either come to the conclusion that either the China story can’t be true, or that anonymous sources have their place in legitimate journalism. And a rational person with even a modicum of internet research ability would probably come to both of those conclusions.
Donald Trump is now going to war against search results. Apparently he was told that when you search for Donald Trump stories on Google, the results tend to be unfavorable towards him (because duh). I say he was told, because it’s well known that Trump himself isn’t exactly computer literate. The idea of him doing a Google search is frankly unfathomable. Anyway, Trump seems to think that lack of positivity is more a statement on the unfairness of a search algorithm as opposed to an indication of his poor politics and lack of self awareness. He doesn’t seem to realize that his supporters account for a small, SMALL segment of the population, both of the internet and frankly the planet. To his credit, they are a loud bunch, bunch their numbers aren’t as great. So no, the news about him isn’t going to be predominantly favorable. So now Trump wants to go in and regulate search engines. He says he wants fairness, but the reality is that he just wants to keep people from voicing mean opinions of him. But as long as the internet is a thing, the odds will forever not be in his favor. Sorry/Not Sorry, Don.
I really love how Trump spent Monday desperately trying to be relevant. It’s like he saw John McCain passing away as some act that was showing him up, and he just couldn’t decide how to deal. First he basically ignored the whole thing, hoping McCain’s death would just stop being the subject of conversation. He tried to hasten that process by putting the flag up to full mast at the White House, only to get shamed into putting it back down to half mast. Trying to steer into that skid he finally said something nice about McCain, even though by this point it seemed half hearted and bored. Finally he decided to try and bring the news back to him by touting trade discussions between Trump and Mexican President Pena Nieto as some major victory in Trade Agreements. The hilarious part was that it almost seemed like Nieto didn’t know he was going to be on speaker phone, addressing the press. The whole slap dash press conference didn’t cement any new agreement, just that the US and Mexico might have come to some consensus. Weirdly, I feel like Trump would have had a better day if someone else offered to testify against him. At least then he could should wildly into Twitter about a witch hunt, instead of trying to pump everyone up over a non-existent Trade deal. Certainly Pena Nieto had better things to do on Monday.
The list of concerning things that Trump continues to say keeps growing every single day. The Fox and Friends interview that came out on Thursday added a bunch of winners to that list. Beyond, weirdly, accidentally admitting Campaign Finance Violations, because he clearly doesn’t understand which law he broke, he also went on a diatribe about snitches. Basically he suggested that “flipping” on your friends should be illegal…which is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. He’s basically saying people shouldn’t be able to testify period. It’s like he has aims on being the Godfather. The worrying thing to me is that given enough time, he might actually try to create a legal avenue to prosecute people for acts that he considers disloyal. But you know what? There are worse things to get arrested for. So in the first panel, Trump is meeting with a few aides, and Trump, holding a couple sheets of paper, says “I want you to pass this around Congress. I want this to be the next new Federal Law!” Cut to the next panel, we see a closeup of the 3 aides looking at the papers, and one of them says “This just says ‘Snitches get stitches’ over and over…” Cut to the next panel, Donald Trump is now wearing a fedora, a tux, smoking a cigar, and has a rose on his lapel. One of the aids says “I don’t…is this like a mafia thing?” and Trump says “I coulda been a contenda!” and the last aide says “That’s not even the right movie!”
Mind the Exit 