10/26/19: Saturday, former White House
Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly, explained in an interview that he had warned
President Trump not to hire a “yes man” to replace him when he left his job.
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You do NOT want to argue with Umpire Rob Drake! |
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“The genius of our great President.”
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham
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“I said, whatever you do – and we were still in the process of trying to find someone to take my place – I said whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man,’” Kelly told the Washington Examiner, “someone who won’t tell you the truth – don’t do that. Because if you do, I believe you will be impeached.”
Kelly said he felt bad now about his decision to quit. “That was almost 11 months ago, and I have an awful lot of, to say the least, second thoughts about leaving. It pains me to see what’s going on because I believe if I was still there or someone like me was there, [Trump] would not be kind of, all over the place.”
What Kelly was hinting at was that you wouldn’t have Mick Mulvaney saying the decision to hold the next G-7 summit at Trump National Doral was a great idea.
Or Mick admitting that Trump withheld U.S. military aid to Ukraine, until the Ukrainians agreed to investigate the Biden family.
Or Mick saying, to reporters and the American people: “Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”
Now, as the leaves continued to fall in the
nation’s capital, Kelly’s prediction appeared prescient.
Democrats in the House of Representatives continued to bring in witnesses, including one more, Philip Reeker, on Saturday. Step by step, they moved closer to the denouement: bringing a formal bill of impeachment against the President of the United States, Donald John Trump.
If ever anyone needed confirmation, regarding the words of Gen. Kelly, that it would have been wise, in December 2018, for the president to avoid surrounding himself with “yes men” (and “yes women”) there was fresh evidence later that same day. First, the president added another liar to his long list of liars, who he insisted were lying when they said anything negative about him. “He never said anything like that,” Trump told CNN, referring to Kelly.
“If he would have said that I would have thrown him out of
the office. He just wants to come back into the action like everybody else
does.”
But it was a “yes woman,” White House Press Lacky Stephanie Grisham, who most clearly illustrated the truth of General Kelly’s words, albeit inadvertently. “I worked with John Kelly,” she responded, “and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great President.”
If you thought Press Secretary Pinocchio Sarah Sanders was bad, and White House Spokes Babe Hope Hicks was a tool, Grisham had now entered North Korean TV-propaganda-territory.
What next, crowds cheering in frantic unison?
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“We have a rogue presidency.”
ON NICOLE WALLACE’S afternoon show on MSNBC earlier the same week, another retired general spoke his mind. Gen. Barry McCaffrey told Ms. Wallace that, “we have a rogue presidency.”
It would be up to Congress and the American people, he said, to keep the rogue under control. Fortunately, polls seemed to indicate that the American people were warming to the task. Trump’s average approval rating at the moment:
41.6%.
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“Absolute immunity from criminal process.”
IF MORE EVIDENCE was needed to indicate that President Trump had gone rogue, we had it in court.
His lawyer, William Consovoy, tried to make the case that Trump’s taxes and financial records should remain hidden in perpetuity. Democratic lawmakers had no right, he told a three-judge panel on the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, to see documents they were demanding as part of the House impeachment inquiry. Consovoy was appearing in response to the Manhattan district attorney’s subpoena for records as part of a probe of the Trump Organization. According to Consovoy, that subpoena should be quashed – and also sautéed and fricasseed.
The president, he claimed, “enjoys absolute immunity from criminal process of any kind” while in office.
The judges proved dubious. “What is your view of the Fifth Avenue example?” Judge Denny Chin inquired. Could Trump shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and get away with it, as he suggested during his run for office?
I only wish the judge might have expanded that question.
“Could Trump depopulate the street by machine gunning a crowd of anti-Trump
protesters, gathered in front of Trump Tower?”
At any rate, Judge Chin, was curious. Was Consovoy laying out a legal position, that would hold that local authorities could not investigate, if a president committed murder? “They couldn’t do anything about it?” he wondered.
“Once a president is removed from office, any local authority – this isn’t a permanent immunity,” Consovoy suggested…
“I’m talking about while in office,” Chin cut him off.
No, Consovoy responded. The president, as president, had absolute immunity from prosecution.
He could rape, rob, and cheat on his taxes. Or ask Ukraine to help him win the next election.
He’d be safe, so long as the Senate didn’t vote to impeach.
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PRESIDENT TRUMP wasn’t the only resident of Trumpistan who had a bad week, legally speaking. On Tuesday, David Dempsey, 32, of Sherman Oaks, California, a big fan of the guy in the Oval Office, was charged in court with spray-painting anti-Trump protesters at a rally with bear-repellent.
Even Fox News couldn’t spin the story to make Dempsey the hero, standing up for the Second Amendment (bear-repellent variation), while living in fear of leprous immigrants bringing crime over the border. Dempsey had “previous convictions for second-degree burglary, conspiracy to commit commercial burglary and fleeing a pursuing peace officer’s motor vehicle while driving recklessly, the district attorney said. He is being held on a $50,000 bond.”
Another Trump fan having a bad week and perhaps headed for legal difficulties, was Major League umpire Rob Drake. Angered by the realization that his favorite president might be impeached, Drake tweeted a plan. He was going to go out and buy an AR-15 “because if you impeach MY PRESIDENT this way, YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER CIVAL WAR!!! #MAGA2020.”
I think we can agree that Umpire Drake is not the man you want to argue with about balls and strikes.
Also, he can’t spell.
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FINALLY, WE SHOULD take a moment to revisit the plight of the Kurds. Wednesday, President Trump appeared on TV to update the American people on their situation. What he wanted everyone to know was that his decision to ditch our allies was proving to be brilliant!
Trump said he had promised to bring our troops home, and he would. And he said the United States had halted the bloodshed in Syria, and done it without any other nation’s aid or assistance.
“We’ve secured the oil,” Trump explained for the second time in recent days. We were going to guard the Syrian oilfields, “and therefore a small number of U.S. troops will remain in the area.”
“We’re going to be protecting it,” he continued, speaking of the oil, “and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.”
Anyway, Trump insisted it was time to, “Let someone else
fight over this long-bloodstained sand.”
Trump didn’t have just one great idea. He had another. We would bring our troops home by moving them out of Syria, to positions in Iraq (kind of like announcing you had passed “Go” after landing on Marvin Gardens). This plan fizzled quickly when Iraqi officials announced that they had not been consulted, and our troops would not be welcome after four weeks.
Okay then!
Trump had another great plan. He would let someone else fight over the “long-bloodstained sand” by ordering 900 U.S. soldiers, plus battle tanks, to head back to the region from whence our troops – headed for home – had just days before been withdrawn. Screw the Kurds, of course.
By Saturday, we had the oil fields under guard.
The troops just weren’t coming home.
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Guarding the oil! |
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