Trump

1 VII 2020: Rant vs. reason, lies vs. truths

Sen Rand Paul of Tennessee sometimes chews on his feet in public. I watched a news reel of his harangue addressed at Dr. Fauci. Sen Paul is confused about COVID19 and he’s not going to take it anymore. He wants simple answers and he wants them right away. Dr. Fauci confronted Sen Paul’s passion with his usual genial rationality, explained the realities to him, and refused to try to predict the future.

I see that Trump’s younger brother was plucked out of the psychiatric ward to obtain a temporary restraining order to block publication of Mary Trump’s memoir. Of course, Robert Trump is a cat’s-paw for the President. I suppose Donald feels he has over-burdened his personal law firm, the former Justice Department, and decided to let the private sector handle this one. This case shows dramatically how our legal system is riddled with inconsistencies: the law allows Trump to block publication of the truth but cannot keep him from publishing an inexhaustible gush of lies.

29 VI 2020: Miscellanea

I just watched newsreel footage of a couple on Portland Place, one of St. Louis’ ritziest and closely guarded residential areas, waving firearms at demonstrators passing their house. Observations: It is a waste of a beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood to have it inhabited by a couple of rednecks who would be more at home in a double-wide. She kept brandishing a pistol while he cradled an assault rifle, occasionally aiming it at the demonstrators passing by. Waving deadly firearms around in public has somehow become one of the inalienable rights of Americans, even if they are as obviously unhinged as these two. How pathetic! These people are emblematic of American gun culture.

Who knew?!!! So the Russians put a bounty on the lives of U.S. soldiers, and some Afghans have already collected it. Trump denies knowing anything about this crisis of national security. He is trying to shift blame by saying “Nobody ever tells me anything.” But if he really was not informed about this crisis, it would be more accurate to claim “Nobody ever tells me anything that I don’t want to hear.” Another excuse might be “If they told me, I don’t remember, because the deaths of G.I.s in a distant place are a lot less deserving of my attention than plans for campaign rallys.” Or, again, Trump might claim “Putin wouldn’t ever do anything like that. It must be the work of Obama people sent over there to make me look bad.” Trump is wholly egocentric and knows little and cares less about national security.

[ It occurs to me that in the Hitler Rants parodies on youtube Hitler could represent Trump and Obama could be Fegelein. ]

18 VI 2020: Gaetz’s son. If they’d just stop testing for Covid-19 there would be far fewer cases. Will attendance at Trump’s pep-rally drop because of his warning to lowlifes?

News yesterday of Rep. Matt Gaetz’s bad behavior at a House committee meeting. Gaetz, alas, is still not house-broken. He was pitching the white-supremacist slogan, “All lives matter,” and extolling the love of parents for their children. Now Gaetz’s office, the records of Congress, documentation everywhere have always stated that Gaetz is unmarried and has no children. That should not, of course, prevent his having opinions about parenting. But then he appeared on the Tucker Carlson show and as if pulling a rabbit from a hat revealed his hitherto unknown, because never-disclosed, kind-of son, the Cubano Nestor. 

Nestor is the son of Nestor’s aunt with whom Gaetz once lived. Though he never adopted Nestor, Gaetz considers him his virtual son. Nestor lived with Gaetz for four years upon entering the U.S. at age twelve. Then Nestor left to live with his biological father in Miami until he reached the age of eighteen when he moved back in with Gaetz. Gaetz had earlier described Nestor as his “helper” and as “a local student.” But now Nestor has been promoted to “son.” Any adult male who supports and guides a younger male, i.e., serves as a mentor, is doing good work, and Gaetz is to be admired for doing so. But his sudden revelation of Nestor now transformed into his son borders on exploitation.

Two Trumpists, Governors Abbot of Texas and DeSantis of Florida, repeated the party line that the spike in their states in Covid-19 cases is due to increased testing and to outbreaks among people who, in their view, do not count, sc., in prisons, assisted living facilities, and migrant worker communities. It’s a good thing for the Trumpists that they have no sense of humor, for if they did, they would be unable to say such things without laughing themselves.

Well, I’m sure we are all looking forward to the opening battle of World War Trump on Saturday. Trump has been languishing for want of a pep-rally and large crowd where he can tell his lies without fear of contradiction. His craving for this kind of attention has grown so intense that he is willing to risk a dramatic upsurge in Covid-19 cases and violent racial unrest.

Attendees will be mixing together strains of the virus from all over the country, and taking them all home with them when they return. This will be another large contribution by Trump to the on-going pandemic.

Trump has warned “protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes” to stay away from the rally or else. I guess that by protesters, anarchists, and looters he means the participants in the many demonstrations currently taking place nationwide. As to “lowlifes,” he’d better not use this term lest he alienate his base, the most enthusiastic members of which are life-long lowlifes.

18 V 2020: We don’t need a super-duper missile

I smiled to see that our President described a weapon in development as a “super-duper missile.” I smiled because the adjective super-duper took me back to high school (c1960). A classmate’s father and uncle ran a small metal-work manufacturing business. One of their more successful products, one ahead of its time, was the Super-duper Puppy Pooper Scooper. Product names like this are delightful to high school boys, so I remember it well.

The United States really needs something super-duper, but not a missile. What we need is more like a Super-duper Trumpy Blooper Scooper. Our President’s staff, the G.O.P., and Fox News (his very own Pravda) have to follow him around, ready to get rid of his droppings. They could use a Scooper.

23 IV 2020: Trump is full of it

I had been thinking of Trump as a weathervane, turning this way and that according to the breezes blowing from Jarrod, Dr. Oz, his employees at Fox News, Lindbaugh, Mitch, and unseen investors. My Sister has suggested a better alternative: Trump is a wind-sack, turning this way and that but always full of hot air.

19 II 2020: Charity begins at home

Trump has been busy pardoning his fellow crooks. A thread of cynical corruption runs through all their cases, and Trump believes corruption makes good business sense. 

Now that he has pardoned a star cast of white-collar criminals, who will next be blessed with his mercy? My guess is that it will be sex offenders. Trump has himself been the victim of cruel misunderstandings in this sphere, so he’s bound to have sympathy for passionate rich men who have been prosecuted by the “Me-too” movement.

18 II 2020: Let’s give Bob a break

Robert Philip Hanssen spied for the Commies for five or more years and provided them with tip-top secret information. He got a pass on the death penalty in return for cooperating with authorities, but even so was sentenced to 15 life terms with no possibility of parole. Can’t the President do something for Bob?

Trump has shown repeatedly the depth of his compassion. He got the murderous Seal off the hook for murder, he stands ready to pardon any of his flunkies who is convicted, and only today we read that he will grant clemency to Eddie Debartolo, a football criminal from a prominent familly.

Look here. Bob Hanssen gave up spying in 1991, that’s almost twenty years ago. He was a devout member of Opus Dei and sent his kids to Opus dei schools. He urged his pals in the FBI to attend Mass.

Obviously his ten-year career in espionage was a case of temporary insanity, a factor that was surely not taken into account at the time of his lynch-mob sentencing. The President of the United States could easily shave off a few life terms for Bob, or, though he would face criticisms from the pinko press, he could grant Bob a pardon, and return him to his loving family and to a nation that is always prepared to forget.

12 II 2020: Birds of a feather are crooks together

So Al Capone thinks the D.A. and Judge are being too hard on Frank Nitti. So he gets word out that he wants they should ease up and like magic the proposed sentence is reduced.

I read about something like this in today’s paper. Who says there is no honor among crooks? Trump has issued a back-door pardon to his faithful fixer, Roger Stone, and the so-called Justice Department welcomed this as another instance of the Dictator’s magnanimity and compassion and has caved in altogether. The government prosecutors have left the case so as not to have to participate in a total fraud. Trump says that Stone’s “is a horrible and very unfair situation.” Well, I guess Trump knows all about horrible, but how would he ever know, or care, what is unfair.

5 II 2020: Can’t get the smell out so easily

There was no chance of ditching Trump. I knew it. Who didn’t know it? The fix was in. The majority of the “jurors” were either terrified or bought up or didn’t understand what was going on.

I was relieved that Nancy Pelosi did not have to shake Trump’s hand at the State of the Union address. Politicians often have to hold their noses momentarily, but Trump’s aura has the stink of an open grave that clings to anyone he touches for years. 

And the address showed Trump doing what he does best. It is really hard to tell the difference between the Super Bowl half-time show and one of Trump’s performances. If he’s re-elected, maybe the two events could be combined.

11 XII 2019: Trump tries to liven up the plot. Flunky, Clown, and Angry Cracker in the House GOP drama

Trump tried to add a new dimension to the Page-Strzok saga, retailing to a slavering crowd a make-believe rumor. Trump fantasizes about Page + Strzok as if they were a romantic couple on a TV reality show. The writers know that the show will lose interest if the course of true love runs smoothly, so they think up a big complication they can insert into the lives of the TV lovers to make the plot more suspenseful and interesting. Our President lives in a reality-TV world and his thinking is shaped by this. 

Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have been making a lot of speechettes that are sound bites for the folks at home and get-well cards for Trump. They are afraid of the Playground Bully, afraid he’ll go crazy if he’s not handled right, afraid he will come after them if their devotion seems anything short of abject. The behavior of some Republicans in the House makes this obvious. We’ve seen Devin Nunes as the flunky who is more than willing to be a fool for Trump. Matt Graetz is still starring as the class clown. Doug Collins can go from folksy to self-righteous on cue, so he is playing the angry cracker role. Will they receive awards commensurate with their self-abnegation? Tune in later as the unreality show stumbles onward.