March 23, 2018: Trump Will Sign the Budget Bill...No, Veto It...No...Sign It...Trump Has No Idea What He's Doing

 

3/23/18: The president wakes early. He clicks on Fox News. All the Fox babes and Fox pundits are calling the new $1.3 trillion spending bill to fund the government for Fiscal Year 2019 terrible. Trump considers taking decisive action, which he never thought of the night before. White House officials had announced the president was going to sign. 

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“A mercurial and unstable president.” 

Retired Adm. James Stavridis

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Time to tweet! 

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.

 

GOP leaders in Congress are left scrambling to deal with an impending government shutdown. At 11:38 the president announces, again via tweet: “News conference at the White House concerning the Omnibus Spending Bill. 1:00 P.M.”  

Get that veto pen ready! 

No one inside the White House has any idea what the Orange Buffoon is going to do, including the Buffoon. 

Just after 1:00 p.m., the president appears at the podium for a rambling discourse on why he is going to sign the bill after all, even though the bill is “ridiculous” and “terrible” and, well, what can he do? He needs the money to fund the military – which you figure he should have known all along. Well, don’t blame him for what will soon turn into a huge deficit for the coming fiscal year. 

What Congress should do, he explains to a listening nation, is give up the “power of the purse,” and allow him to line-item veto any elements of funding legislation he doesn’t like. Alas, someone needs to explain to him that this matter has already been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

In Clinton v. City of New York (1998), the court considered a law passed with GOP backing in Congress and approval from President Bill Clinton, to allow presidents to do just that. In a 6-3 ruling, the high court declared the law unconstitutional.

 

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ON FRIDAY Trump also selects John Bolton to be his third National Security Advisor. Bolton is the latest individual, almost tromping on the heels of Joseph diGenova, to be plucked from the ranks of televised bombast to join this dysfunctional administration. You have, for example, Larry Kudlow, new chief White House economic advisor, and former Fox Business host. Kudlow was famously incorrect in insisting the housing bubble in 2007 was not about to burst. He said people who said it was hadn’t “done their homework.” Whereas he had! 

How much does Trump love Fox News? He considered Judge Jeanine Pirro, a Fox host, for Attorney General. Three Fox hosts were approached about becoming the next White House Communications Director, including Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Kimberly Guilfoyle. He plucked diGenova off a Fox show, and made him his lawyer, but diGenova lasted two days.

Need another suck up in the Trump administration?

Why not this guy?

 

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RETIRED ADMIRAL and former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe James Stavridis, writing in Time, explains his sorrow at seeing H. R. McMaster step down as Trump’s second National Security Advisor. 

McMaster, he notes, never wanted the job to begin. 

As Stavridis puts it, McMaster is “a good judge of character” and had doubts about working with a man so lacking in principles as Donald J. Trump. 

Like a good soldier, when the job-offer came, McMaster saw it as if he had received orders. He would do his best. He would try to ensure the nation remained safe. “He shouldered the pack and stepped into the White House to do what he could to create at least part of a guardrail system around this mercurial and unstable President.” 

Stavridis goes on to lambast Trump’s national security approach: 

This is a President who loves and revels in chaos. For a national security team, that gives birth to the worst quality of all from an international and especially an allied perspective: inconsistency. Trump has famously said he doesn’t want our enemies to know what we are thinking [emphasis added]; the problem is, neither do our friends nor even, it seems at times, do we ourselves.