This Week in Trumpistan: Fun with Racists and a Dollop of Wife Abuse

I MUST ADMIT, after making fun of President Trump every day for an entire year, I’ve lately been falling behind.

Now that I learn I am treasonous scum if I fail to clap for every word Trump utters, I am elevating him to “Emperor Trump” in all posts.

In fact, after I finish this up, I am definitely going to spend some time watching videos of audiences in North Korea applaud when Kim Jong-un speaks. 

I want to be someone who loves this country after all. That means I have to show my love for the Emperor himself.

What Trump wants to see when he speaks.

In recent news:

2/4/18: The president withdraws Kathleen Hartnett White’s name from consideration to head up the Council on Environmental Quality. Even Senate Republicans have concerns about her qualifications. In 2014, for example, White touted the virtues of fossil fuels. She argued that that they helped end slavery because they “dissolved the economic justification” for it.

“The gas of life.”

Later, White said producing more carbon dioxide and releasing it into the atmosphere was good news—because carbon dioxide was “the gas of life.”

White also claimed that climate change regulation was a conspiracy pushed by communists.

2/5/18: Trump loves to talk about all the stock market gains since he took over. But today the market bombs, dropping 1,175 points. This forces the president to fall back on his other favorite tweeting topic: Insults!

One tweet allows him to call five people liars. What are all five lying about? The Russian investigation:

Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper! Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information. Must be stopped!

*

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT allows a ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to stand.

In that decision judges ruled a gerrymandered map drawn by Republicans “clearly, plainly and palpably” violated the state constitution.

That map allowed the party to capture 13 of 18 U.S. House seats in 2012, even though Democrats polled 2.7 million votes to 2.5 million for Republicans.

In 2016, Republicans did increase their vote totals because—unlike all the whining about “rigged” elections Trump does—our elections are generally well-run. This time they polled 3.1 million votes (53% of the total). Democrats polled 2.6 million and Republicans again won 13 of 18 seats.

*

TRUMP TOPS off another busy day with a campaign-style rally in Cincinnati. In another rambling talk, he complains about the response of Democratic lawmakers during his recent State of the Union Address. He’s mad because when he said, “you have the lowest black unemployment in the history of our country,” all the Democrats didn’t rise and applaud like an audience at a Kim Jong-un speech.

Trump looked at the lawmakers’ faces. Dead silence from the Democratic side of the aisle.

“Not a smile,” he said. “Half the room is going totally crazy,” he told his audience, but the other side was giving off nothing but “bad energy.”

You’re up there, you’ve got half the room [Republican lawmakers] going totally crazy wild, they loved everything, they want to do something great for our country, and you have the other side even on positive news, really positive news like that, they were like death and un-American. Un-American.

Trump hears someone shout, hesitates and points out at the crowd.

“Somebody said treasonous,” he noted and then shrugged. “I mean, yeah, I guess, why not. Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”

2/6/18: The free press reveals the story of Tiffany Brown, hired by FEMA to send 30 million meals to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. At $5.10 per, the contract was worth $153 million. But it turns out Brown is the sole owner and employee of Tribute Contracting LLC.

Thirteen people must make 2.3 million sandwiches.

What could go wrong? Brown can start making sandwiches in her kitchen or hire a wedding caterer. She hires the caterer.

You can already guess this is not going to end well. The caterer has eleven employees. So, unless each employee, the caterer and Ms. Brown pitch in and make 2.3 million sandwiches apiece they’re going to have trouble meeting the FEMA goal.

In fact, by the time FEMA orders Brown to stop work—because the contract is canceled and people in Puerto Rico are probably dead from starvation—Tribute has managed to ship 50,000 meals.

The caterer reports having another 75,000 stored in a warehouse. But Brown has been unable to find proper shipping. In terms of screw-ups, this is a good one, with Brown also failing to include the heating portion of what FEMA has contracted for her to provide: “self-heating meals.”

You may recall when Trump gave himself the highest possible grades on his efforts to deliver hurricane relief. Trump said he got a 10 out of 10. He was doing A+ work. General Kelly gave the president two gold stars to stick on his Presidential Briefing Book.

Sadly, this fiasco was not the only blemish on the Trump report card. Consider the less-than-stellar work performed by Bronze Star L.L.C. The company, formed only in August, contracted to send 500,000 plastic tarps and 60,000 rolls of plastic sheeting to Puerto Rico and do it for $30 million. When FEMA finally realized Bronze Star wasn’t getting the job done the company had shipped a grand total of 0 tarps and 0 rolls of plastic sheeting. (See: 2/5/18.)

2/7/18: Great news! A top aide is leaving his White House job and there are no allegations he met with Russians or secretly jetted to Moscow or took any big payoffs from friends of Vladimir Putin!

The aide in question is Rob Porter, who unfortunately does have two ex-wives who went public with accusations of domestic abuse. A third woman made similar claims but asked that her identity remain secret.

Naturally, when these allegations surfaced, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was quick to…come to Porter’s defense!

“Rob Porter,” Kelly told reporters, “is a man of true integrity and honor, and I can’t say enough good things about him. He is a friend, a confidante and a trusted professional. I am proud to serve alongside him.”

In other words, these attacks were just more faaaaaaaaaake……

Uh…Porter’s second ex-wife reveals an emergency restraining order issued in 2010 against him. After the couple separated, she says Porter returned to her apartment, smashed a glass door to gain entry and left only when he heard her call 911 and provide her name and address.

And…umm…Porter’s first ex-wife describes him as “verbally, emotionally and physically abusive,” pretty much the Terrible Husband Trifecta. To support her claims, she provides reporters with a picture of herself, sporting a black eye and swollen cheek, taken during her marriage.

After hearing Kelly defend Porter, his second ex has this to add: “Rob is in fact charming and intelligent and diligent and extremely good at his job.”

Okay…that line is definitely going to show up on Fox Newwwwwwwww….

“And, in capital letters, abusive and manipulative and toxic in his personal relationships,” she adds.

*

STILL, YOU MIGHT ARGUE that Donald J. Trump is getting the hang of picking the right people for the right jobs. After all, Porter is better than Carl Higbie, who had to leave his post in January.

We all know how much the president wants to clamp down on illegal immigrants pouring into this country, each and every one, intent on doing us harm. Also: taking jobs in hotels and making beds

And picking strawberries.

Bring a gun. Let’s shoot illegal immigrants.

Higbie had some great ideas about how to curb the tide and you can see why his ideas might have appealed to Trump, who just happens to be a big fan of Norwegian immigrants, who just happen to be white. In an episode on a radio show, ironically called Sound of Freedom, Higbie had this to say:

What’s so wrong with wanting to put up a fence and saying, “hey, everybody with a gun, if you want to go shoot people coming across our border illegally, you can do it for free.” And you can do it on your own, and you’ll be under the command of the, you know, National Guard unit or a Border Patrol, I think stick a fence six feet high with signs on it in both English and Spanish and it says “if you cross this border, this is the American border, you cross it, we’re going to shoot you.”

For added fun click this link to CNN, which is running sound clips from various Higbie hate-filled rants.

2/8/18: Despite the racism at the heart of the current administration, I think all Americans can celebrate the stock market boom.

Am I right!

Alas, for the second time in a week, the market bombs, dropping 1,033 points for the day.

Of course, we are not saying all Trump supporters are racists and Nazis, but those who are racists or love racists and Nazis have an odd affinity for Trump. Exhibit S (we have had a lot of exhibits) involves Arthur Jones.

Mr. Jones is probably going be the 2018 Republican nominee to run for office in the Third Congressional District in Illinois. On his campaign website, Jones, 70, has a section dedicated to Holocaust conspiracy theories. The Holocaust, he claims, is “nothing more than an international extortion racket.”

Jones is your guy if you like:

A)    Former members of the American Nazi Party.

B)     A guy who ran for mayor of Milwaukee as candidate for the National Socialist White People Party.

C)    President Trump.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with Trump.

According to Jones, regular Republicans are a “bunch of wimps.” Unlike those wimps, Jones says he stands “shoulder to shoulder philosophically” with Trump. What is this “philosophy” Jones feels that he and the president share?

What we call civilization today is a product of white genius. I don’t believe in this doctrine of racial equality. Go out in nature and you don’t find equality anywhere. You found the leaders and the led. You find the predator and the prey. There is no such thing as equality.

If you’d like to compare Higbie’s (see: 2/7/18) and Jones’s ideas with Hitler’s check out this link.

2/9/18: Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, tries out a fresh new argument in regard to climate change. He’s probably tired of denying climate change is real and having the rest of the world mock his position.

Hey, Pruitt says, maybe climate change will be good! “We know that humans have most flourished during time of warming trends,” he says in an interview.

I think there are assumptions made that because the climate is warming, that that necessarily is a bad thing. 

Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100, in the year 2018? That’s fairly arrogant for us to think that we know exactly what it should be in 2100.

(Sound of thousands of scientists smacking thousands of foreheads.)

*

SPEAKING OF DUMB, the president decides to weigh in on the story of Rob Porter, who has just been booted from the White House in the wake of domestic violence accusations.

“I found out about it recently and I was surprised by it,” Trump tells reporters. “We certainly wish him well. It’s obviously a very tough time for him. He did a very good job while he was in the White House. We hope that he will have a wonderful career.”

Still, there’s hope, the president adds: “He says he’s innocent, and I think you have to remember that. He said very strongly yesterday that he’s innocent, but you’ll have to talk to him about that.” (See: 2/7/18.)

2/10/18: R.I.P. Tea Party movement. Hang up your tri-corner hats. When Obama was in office, you thought deficit spending was a total disgrace.

Now you have your own boy in office—or seated on the throne, if you prefer. The GOP controls both houses of Congress and the “power of the purse” is firmly in Speaker Paul Ryan’s hands.

Four years: four trillion in new debt.

The projected budget deficit for 2018 now stands higher than for any year since 2012, when the U.S. economy was recovering from the Great Recession. If we also look at projected deficits for 2019-2021, the four-year total of $4 trillion would be significantly larger than the deficits ($2.852 trillion) rolled up during President Obama’s last five years. Of course, to be fair, the deficits in Obama’s first term were worse—and, again, to be fair, Obama inherited a mess.