January 19, 2021: Trump Still Working on Healthcare Plan as Final Hours Pass

 1/19/21: With less than 36 hours left to play at being president, we have to believe Donald is putting in some serious overtime to achieve his most cherished goals. His official White House schedule hints at his superhuman diligence. It reads, for the seventh day in a row, “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings.” 

We know that the “Art of the Deal”  genius promised in April 2019 that he and the Republicans would roll out a cool new healthcare plan following the November election. 

So, we wait with bated breath.

 

He promised he would eliminate deficit spending. That means he and his advisors no doubt have their pens and paper out, marveling at how the Trump Tax Cuts “paid for themselves.” 

The federal deficit for the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2021 was “only” $572 billion, a mere $216 billion higher than the first quarter of FY 2020. And what a job of deficit reduction it has been! In FY 2020 the deficit set an all-time record, at $3.1 trillion, more than twice as bad as any previous year.

 

No doubt, Donald has penned another love letter to Kim Jong-un, and the North Korean dictator’s response is winging its way to the White House as we speak. We can guess it will read something like this: 

Dear Lover Boy Don,

 

Okay, I surrender all my nukes, since up until now I have not surrendered a single one.

 

I have been busy lately, murdering more of my citizens, and building a submarine that can carry nuclear-tipped missiles. See you at Mar-a-Lago soon.

 

Sorry you lost.

 

XOXO and smooches,  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

 

Jong-un

 

* 

EVEN MR. TRUMP needs a break sometimes. Safe to say, he takes an occasional peak out a White House window and wonders. Has the coronavirus gone away yet, as he promised, multiple times? 

According to CDC, we passed the 400,000 dead mark on January 13. By the end of this day, we will stand at

 

420,103 lives lost. 

As of yesterday, 123,848 persons were hospitalized with the virus in the United States.

 

After that brief glimpse at the sunlit D.C. streets, we imagine Donald returns to the phones, working tirelessly for the American people, to the bitter end. He’s checking up on vaccine deliveries, which aren’t going so well. He’s hatching plans to get more Americans back to work. 

Because – major bummer – there will be more people unemployed when Joe Biden takes office, than when Trump did. 

And let’s hope he didn’t see Sen. Mitch McConnell’s on television. The “mob” that attacked the Capitol on January 6, McConnell said, was “fed lies.” The attackers were “provoked by the president and other powerful people.” 

We wouldn’t want that harsh assessment to distract Mr. Trump from all his last minute tasks or make him sad. With only hours left in the White House, he’s got serious business to attend.

 

An invitation goes out for current and former members of the Trump administration to attend a send-off ceremony for the president and First Lady, to be held on the morning of January 20. 

The White House staff, what’s left, is so disorganized, or so desperate to bump up the crowd, that invitations go to people who must have been surprised to receive them in the email. One is former National Security Advisor John Bolton, whose book about his time in the White House, Trump lawyers have tried to ban. 

Also getting an invite: Omarosa Manigault Newman, the aide Trump described as a “lowlife” and a “dog,” after she turned against him. 

She responds less than enthusiastically to the multiple invitations she receives, saying, “He’s a disgrace.” 

(They probably should have invited Vladimir Putin.) 

 

POSTSCRIPT: We do know that Trump aide and loyal crewman willing to go down with the ship, Hogan Gidley, hit back at the media Sunday. He said they had been silencing the president – for example, by taking away his Twitter toys. 

In an interview on Fox News, Gidley said he wanted everyone to know how unfair it was, that his boss could no longer communicate with the American people. Gidley said it was terrible to blame Trump for not condemning the January 6 violence with more force. His boss had wanted to condemn it. But how could he get that message out to the public if he couldn’t tweet? 

Mr. Blogger scratched his head briefly, and said to himself, Couldn’t the president hold one last press conference? 

Or go on Fox News? 

Or he could agree to an interview on ABC, CNN or Comedy Central, or show up on the set of The Price is Right, and say whatever he wanted about the violence. If he condemned the violence, we’d listen. 

Now, it’s too late.

 

POSTSCRIPT #2: We often hear that “all politicians are alike.” Or “all politicians are crooks.” Neither statement is true. Trump is a politician famous for cheating on his wives (all three). Barack Obama was a politician not famous for cheating on his wife (one). Jimmy Carter got in trouble for admitting he sometimes “lusted” after women other than Rosalyn. But no one ever said he followed through. 

Trump? Yeah, he banged a porn star. 

In the same way, my Ohio senators, Sherod Brown and Rob Portman, have not been accused of pilfering from the public purse. Whereas Katrina Robinson, a Democratic lawmaker in Tennessee has. Already facing accusations that she stole $600,000 in federal funds from a healthcare school, she seems not to have learned any lessons as a result. She and two alleged accomplices have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money-laundering. 

According to ABC, authorities say Rep. Robinson used some of that $600,000 “to pay for her wedding and honeymoon, a Jeep Renegade for her daughter, her children’s snow cone business, and other things.”

 

One of the joys of a free press – and one of the reasons why this blogger found Trump to be such a menace – is that we want the free press to help us catch crooks in government. We don’t want the crooks (Trump would certainly be one) to be able to get away with their misdeeds. 

Catch a crooked Democrat, and we should be just as thrilled as we would when a crooked Republican is caught. 

Trump couldn’t even figure that out. For evidence of his confusion on this kind of matter refer to Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins. (See: posts for 6/25/19, 12/3/19 and September 1, 2020.)