April 5-16, 2017: President Trump Defends Sex Abusers - and Other Low Moments in Trumpistan

 

4/5/17: Trump defends Fox News host Bill O’Reilly after The New York Times reports that O’Reilly paid $13 million to settle five lawsuits involving sexual harassment. “I think he’s a person I know well – he is a good person,” says Trump. “I think he shouldn’t have settled; personally I think he shouldn’t have settled. Because you should have taken it all the way. I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.” 

__________ 

“I think he’s a person I know well – he is a good person. I think he shouldn’t have settled.” 

President Trump, defending Bill O’Reilly

__________ 

 

Two weeks later Fox News decides Mr. O’Reilly did plenty wrong and cans his right-wing ass. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: In 2014 Citizen Trump boasted about helping Roger Ailes when a former employee claimed to have damaging information, related to sexual abuse, regarding the Fox News CEO. “When Roger was having problems he didn’t call 97 people,” Trump told a reporter, “he called me.”  

Accusations against Ailes kept coming. Sexual predators stick together! (See also: Judge Roy Moore, 11/13/17.)

Trump and O'Reilly at a ball game - discussing who has been accused more often?

___ 

 

4/6/17: Representative Devin Nunes, Republican chairman on the House Intelligence Committee, is forced to recuse himself after questions swirl over his decision to visit the White House secretly and talk over the Russia investigation with Trump officials. Not a good way to run an investigation.

___ 

 

4/7/17: Trump changes his mind after saying the USA should never get involved in Syria. He orders 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles to be fired at the airfield from which the chemical attack on April 4 was launched. He and his rich friends are hanging at Mar-a-Lago. So, the president focuses next on the “most beautiful piece of chocolate cake” he’s ever seen. 

Launching a military strike on Syria, and maybe getting American servicemen and women killed. No big deal. 

We’ve got dessert!

___ 

 

4/8/17: Bureau of Labor statistics show the U.S. economy added 98,000 jobs in March. February figures are revised downward. It may be time for Trump to start talking about “phony” numbers again. (See: 3/10/17.)

___ 

 

4/9/17: USA Today and other media sources report that administration officials have told them a strike force including the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is heading for North Korea. 

With Trump at the helm, America is bad ass again! (See: 4/12/17.)

Oops! Where is that carrier?

___ 

 

4/10/17: Neil Gorsuch is sworn in as justice on the U.S. Supreme Court after Senate Majority Leader McConnell invokes the “nuclear option” and eliminates the filibuster. This means the Supreme Court is now whatever McConnell says it is and that means no Merrick Garland. 

This is a major threat to an independent federal judiciary and this threat will not abate if Democrats regain control of the Senate. If you love the U.S. Constitution you have new cause for worry.

___ 

 

4/11/17: Press Secretary Spicer, defending the decision to strike Syria, says even Hitler never used chemical weapons on his own people. 

No further comment required.

___ 

 

4/12/17: Trump warns that the U.S. Navy is sending a carrier strike force to North Korea. “We are sending an armada, very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier. We have the best military people on Earth. And I will say this: he [Kim Jong-un] is doing the wrong thing.” (See: 4/18/17.) 

 

NATO is no longer obsolete. 

Trump also explains during a press conference that NATO, which he said was obsolete in January, is “no longer obsolete.” Apparently, he realizes he might need help from our closest allies. 

As a bonus, President Trump calls Candidate Trump a liar. China, he insists, is “not a currency manipulator.”

___ 

 

4/13/17: The U.S. drops “the mother of all bombs” on an ISIS hideout in Afghanistan, killing an estimated 96 enemy fighters. Not bad. Not bad! 

Did you know, under Mr. Obama, the Pentagon estimated 50,000 ISIS fighters were wiped out? 

Look it up; but don’t forget the “body count” fiasco of the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. 

(Every good liberal knows you can’t always trust government. Conservatives don’t grasp that fact about our side.)

___ 

 

4/14/17: White House officials tell reporters they will no longer release records of who  visits the White House – because what reason could the American people have for wanting to know who the president likes to hang with? Pictures later show Trump’s draft-dodging friend Ted Nugent posing in front of a painting of First Lady Hillary Clinton in a White House hallway.

___ 

 

4/15/17: Still no sign of the president’s tax returns as all good citizens file their own 1040s. Trump promised in 2014, without equivocation, that he would release his taxes if he ran for president.

He lied.

___ 

 

4/16/17: Mr. Trump insists people who marched by the tens of thousands in protest on Tax Day, demanding to see his returns were paid to do so. 

No pay stubs or evidence to support his claim are ever produced.

The blogger: protesting for free.

April 8, 2018: EPA Protects the Koch Brothers, Trump Wants to Pull Out of Syria

 

4/8/18: On CNN (Donald J. Trump’s least favorite cable news channel), Republican Senator Susan Collins offers a vote of “no confidence” for embattled Swamp Creature Scott Pruitt. 

“On policy grounds alone, I think Scott Pruitt is the wrong person to head the EPA,” Collins tells Jake Tapper (Trump’s least favorite cable news host). 

Of course, you know who loves what Pruitt is doing? Charles and David Koch! And, what do the Koch brothers like to do – besides donate hundreds of millions to Republican politicians? 

They like to run a company that refines petroleum and manufactures all kinds of wonderful chemicals. 

As Pruitt and the Trump administration see it, you could give a bucket of any chemical the Koch brothers manufacture to children to drink. And it wouldn’t harm them a bit, other than the fact they might start to glow in the dark. And that’s why we now have an E.P.A. To help the Koch brothers.

 

* 

Fourteen months later: Still Obama’s fault. 

THE CRY-BABY-IN-CHIEF takes a second hit from a Republican senator Sunday morning, this time from John McCain. 

According to the senator, the president’s recent talk of withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria has “emboldened” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and led him to order a chemical weapons attack Saturday. 

Here’s how McCain put it: 

President Trump last week signaled to the world that the United States would prematurely withdraw from Syria. Bashar Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers have heard him, and emboldened by American inaction, Assad has reportedly launched another chemical attack against innocent men, women and children, this time in Douma.

 

Trump wasn’t about to stand for such criticism and promptly turned to Twitter. Whose fault was this attack? 

Once again, the buck stopped not on his desk but conveniently, more than fourteen months in the past. “If President Obama had crossed his stated Red Line In The Sand,” Trump whined, “the Syrian disaster would have ended long ago! Animal Assad would have been history!”  

Trump has now had fourteen months to get rid of Animal Assad. 

He can’t do it either.

In Trumpistan, if it goes bad, Obama did it.

April 18, 2018: The Trump Administration Doesn't Know what the Trump Administration is Doing

  

4/18/18: We learn again today. The Trump administration has no idea what the Trump administration is doing. Sometimes we’re getting out of Syria quick. Sometimes we’re hitting Syria with missiles and talking tough. Most of the time, the president is focused on insulting James Comey and couldn’t care less how many of his own people Bashar al-Assad slaughters. 

Sometimes, U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley says we’re going to increase sanctions on Russia. Sometimes the White House says, yeah, we are. Then the White House says, no, we’re not, and the reason Haley said we were was that Ms. Haley got “confused.” Clearly, this is better than admitting Trump has no idea what he wants. 

Cue the idiocy! 

Out steps National Economic Council Director and Head Presidential Cheerleader Larry Kudlow to explain to reporters. Kudlow chooses to ignore reports that it was the president himself who stomped the brakes and suddenly canceled plans, already announced by the White House, to sanction the Russians. It was easy to sort out, said Larry. Haley “got ahead of the curve. She’s done a great job, she’s a very effective ambassador. There might have been some momentary confusion about that,” he explains. 

Ah, poor Nikki Haley, the little lady – she was the problem – it wasn’t President Bloato’s fault!

 

Clearly, getting blamed for the idiocy of others did not sit well with U. N. Ambassador Haley. “With all due respect,” she replied in a statement obtained by Jake Tapper on CNN, “I don’t get confused.” 

In fact, I think we can already see that any promises that might be made to foreign countries by this president are to be trusted to about the same degree as a Donald J. Trump wedding vow. (See: 4/19/18.)