So, a young woman, Lauren Hogg, called out Melania Trump, suggesting that if she aims to combat cyber bullying, a good place to start would be at home, where Donald Trump, Jr. called her and her family “Crisis Actors”, effectively putting a target on her and her brother’s back. It’s a tragic outcome, and Don Jr. should be ashamed of himself, even though he obviously isn’t. And it really, again, brings into stark relief the irony of Melania Trump’s campaign.
So, the Dems released a memo of their own. And despite having some redactions, it’s a pretty comprehensive rebuttal to the one Nunes released a few weeks back. It has several more detailed pages regarding the FISA requests and the evidence regarding it, and just all the things that took place behind the scenes of the surveillance of Carter Page and the early investigation into Russia’s interference. Trump of course is leading the charge of the pushback, saying that the whole thing nothing, fraudulent, and suggesting that Adam Schiff broke the law. Basically all the same things the Dems said when Nune’s memo came out. It’s the political Circle of Life.
So, the Obama Presidential portrait has been, weirdly, alarmingly controversial. But it’s also become the subject of arguably the weirdest, most disgusting conspiracy theory. It’s so weird and gross that Sean Hannity realized it was probably too much and deleted his posts about it. But Alex Jones and Info Wars wasn’t deterred. No, they are convinced that Obama was painted with sperm on his face, and it’s part of some grand, degenerate conspiracy. Alex Jones can say this, and people still take him seriously. The world is a surprising place.
Trump’s Attorney, Michael Cohen is alleging that he paid Pornstar Stormy Daniels, $130,000, out of his own pocket, and that Donald Trump had nothing to do with it, and that he was not repaid or reimbursed in anyway for it. And you know what? I can totally believe that. Trump not paying people he employs sounds very much like a tact right out of the Donald Trump playbook.
So, Trump wants to give people food boxes instead of food stamps. Beyond the logistical nightmare of implementing this idea, it is shortsighted in a number of ways, presupposing that everyone who receives these benefits have the luxury of working kitchens and taking away the element of choice. Though the argument against choice is the healthier options the program would be handing out, as opposed to the more economically minded people who forgo healthier items for stretching their dollars out and getting the most use out of the money they have. But at the end of the day, isn’t it a little absurd that Donald Trump is attempting to regulate the healthiness of anyone’s meals?
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 much like his inauguration numbers, Trump’s first State of the Union numbers couldn’t match his predecessor’s. More than that, people’s general reaction to Trump’s State of the Union fell very flat compared to Obama. I think we’re all just waiting for Trump and his people to brag about how successful his SOTU was, how well watched and received it was. I wonder if we’ll even see the revival of “Alternative Facts”? One can only hope.
Update: I came up with the idea of this panel before Trump actually came out and said his ratings were the highest recorded for the State of the Union. I would take credit as some kind of prophet, but let’s face it, anyone could have made that prediction if they were following Trump’s behavior even sort of.
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?
Mind the Exit 