Donald Trump and the Cherry Tree

Perhaps some of you have heard the famous story of George Washington and the cherry tree, as told by Parson Weems. But Weems told another story, just as telling, involving Donald Trump in his youth.

First, we present the story of George and his little hatchet (then we will give the Trump version for comparison).

“When George was about six years old, he was made the wealthy master of a hatchet, of which, like most little boys, he was immoderately fond, and was constantly going about chopping every thing that came in his way. One day, in the garden, where he often amused himself hacking his mother’s pea-sticks, he unluckily tried the edge of his hatchet on the body of a beautiful young English cherry-tree, which he barked so terribly, that I don’t believe the tree ever got the better of it.

The next morning the old gentleman [George’s father] finding out what had befallen his tree, which, by the by, was a great favourite, came into the house, and with much warmth asked for the mischievous author, declaring at the same time, that he would not have taken five guineas for his tree. Nobody could tell him anything about it. Presently George and his hatchet made their appearance. “George,” said his father, “do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry-tree yonder in the garden?” 

This was a tough question; and George staggered under it for a moment; but quickly recovered himself: and looking at his father, with the sweet face of youth brightened with the inexpressible charm of all-conquering truth, he bravely cried out, “I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.”

“Run to my arms, you dearest boy,” cried his father in transports, “run to my arms; glad am I, George, that you killed my tree; for you have paid me for it a thousand fold. Such an act of heroism in my son, is more worth than a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver, and their fruits of purest gold.”

George first:

"I cannot tell a lie. Except, maybe, when my lips are moving."

Now, Weems on Trump:


WHEN LITTLE DONALD WAS ABOUT SIX YEARS OLD, he was made the wealthy master of a hatchet, of which, like most little boys, he was immodestly fond, and was constantly going about chopping everything that came his way. One day he wandered into the garden of his next door neighbor, Mr. Washington. (Sometimes Donald and Mr. Washington’s young son, George, played together, though George’s father feared the neighbor lad was a bad influence.) In any case, the Trump boy amused himself by hacking down several pea-sticks, then, unluckily, tried the edge of his hatchet on the body of a beautiful young English cherry-tree, which he barked so terribly, that I don’t believe the tree ever got the better of it.

The next morning, the old gentleman finding out what had befallen his tree, which, by the by, was a great favorite, marched over to the Trump home, and with much warmth asked for the mischievous author of the deed, declaring at the same time, that he would not have taken five hundred dollars for his tree. Nobody could tell him anything about it. Donald’s father pretended total ignorance.

Presently Donald and his hatchet made their appearance. 

“Donald,” said Mr. Washington, “do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry-tree yonder in the garden?”

This was a tough question; and the lad staggered under it a moment, but quickly recovered himself, glanced at his own father standing nearby, and with the sweet face of youth brightened with the inexpressible charm of all-conquering truth, he bravely cried, “I cannot tell a lie, Pa; you know I cannot tell a lie!”

A brief look of pride passed across Mr. Trump’s face. He was famed for driving sharp bargains in all his dealings, including making sure dark-skinned people never rented any of his properties. He had taught his son well. He was certain.

As we said, it had been a hard question and little Donald hesitated to respond. Mr. Washington waited for an answer.

“Donald,” he repeated finally, “did you cut down that cherry tree or didn’t you?”

With a shining look of innocence, which little Donald had been taught by Father Trump to practice before a mirror, he replied, “No, sir. I saw a Mexican chop down your cherry tree. You probably need to think about building a wall around your garden.”

“Donald, there are no Mexicans within a hundred miles. Perhaps you’d like to try again,” Mr. Washington protested.

“I don’t even own a hatchet,” Donald offered.

“Donald,” said Mr. Washington, “you are holding a hatchet in your hand. I can see it. Do you think I’m blind?”

“I did not do it. I swear it, sir. Now that I think of it, it was probably some Syrian refugee. You can’t trust those people.”

“It was not some Syrian, young man….” Mr. Washington tried again. He could hardly believe such cheek in one so young.

“I did not do it,” the lad insisted. “And I did not grab your daughter by the p----.”

“Good lord,” replied a now completely exasperated Mr. Washington, who had been forced to address this very serious matter with Mr. and Mrs. Trump previously. “I know you did it, you little rogue. Admit it.” He looked to Donald’s father for help. Mr. Trump appeared oddly pleased.

The lad continued: “It wasn’t me, I swear it. Come to think, I saw a redskin in your orchard with a tomahawk. Yes. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

“You said it was a Mexican just two minutes ago,” the aggrieved owner of the cherry tree finally responded. “Thankfully, my son will never be such a pathological liar.” And with that, Mr. Washington stormed off, mulling over the possibility of putting up a fence, for sure, but in this case to keep the tiny reprobate from ever setting foot on his property again.

“Run to my arms, you dearest boy,” cried Donald’s father in transports once his neighbor was gone. “Run to my arms! Glad am I, Donald, that you killed that tree, for you have paid me for it a thousand-fold. Such an act of prevarication in my son is worth more than a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver, and their fruits of purest gold. For some day, adapting these selfsame methods to your business dealings, you will make a billion dollars Maybe more!”

“I will, Pa, I will. I promise. And you know what will make it even better? I won’t pay any taxes!”

Why March to Demand President Trump Release His Taxes?

Gun-loving, flag-waving Tea Party conservative, or “tree-hugging,” marriage-equality-supporting liberal, or anyone in between: Math is still math. You have to have tax receipts to fund local, state and federal government.

If you’re a liberal you might want to see more spent on national parks. You might think gorgeous mountain vistas and ancient sequoia trees are worth preserving. If you’re a conservative, you might want to spend more on defense. The U.S. Air Force, for example, estimates that the “Mother of all Bombs” (M.O.A.B.) dropped on ISIS this week cost $170,000. If reports are true and 96 ISIS fighters were wiped out you might think that was a fine use of tax dollars. Unfortunately, when citizens don’t pay the government can neither repair hiking trails in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park nor blow up cutthroats in Afghanistan.

Mt. LeConte in Great Smokey Mountain National Park.

Math is still math. Someone must pay.

(Or you can watch deficits grow.)

And that brings us to the matter of Donald J. Trump and his taxes. When he was running for office, he promised to release his tax records. True, in one interview he grumbled about how the country was being run and told Chuck Todd, “Unlike everybody else, I try to pay as little as possible, because I hate what they do with my money.”

There was no way of knowing from that interview exactly what he hated about how the government was using his money. Perhaps Mr. Trump hated paying for courts. After all, he was about to be nailed for $25 million in damages, essentially for running a scam: Trump University. Certainly, he had made it clear he didn’t like paying taxes for President Obama to go to Martha’s Vineyard or anywhere else on vacation—and really hated paying when Mr. Obama went golfing.

Then Trump won the election and turned into a golfing fool!

In the meantime, we know the President’s frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago are costing all of us as much as $3 million per trip (although some estimates put the figure at only $1 million per jaunt). But if he keeps up the current pace, even at a cool million—enough to buy six more M.O.A.B. bombs—he’ll end up spending more on vacation travels in one term than Mr. Obama did in eight years in office.

That’s the crux of the tax matter. Bombs aren’t cheap. Secret Service protection for Mr. Trump, including while golfing, isn’t cheap. Personally, I can’t stand the man. But I don’t mind paying to keep even a fool in the Oval Office safe from harm. Paying for Mrs. Trump to stay behind in New York City while the couple’s young son finishes the school year assuredly isn’t cheap. In fact, Fortune magazine estimates it cost New York City $24 million to secure Trump Tower just between Election Day and Inauguration. And if citizens won’t pay their share then you can’t cover the Medicaid bills piled up by all the old white folks who voted by wide margins (58% to 39%) to put Mr. Trump in the White House. Medicare isn’t cheap.

You can look it up.

In the end the overarching issue isn’t even math. It’s fairness. If you are one of the superrich and don’t pay taxes, while the local bar owner, the teacher in your child’s private school and the working wife of a soldier doing duty in Iraq to protect your sorry asses do pay taxes, you aren’t patriotic Americans.

You’re parasites.

That’s why, like 74% of Americans, including 49% of Trump supporters, I want to peruse the President’s tax returns. I want to be sure the man who promises to “Make America Great Again” is paying part of the cost to make greatness possible.

And it’s no secret that many of the superrich don’t pay at all. A Congressional investigation in 2014 into practices at Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s largest bank, uncovered 22,000 accounts belonging to U.S. citizens who decided they’d like to enjoy the benefits of living in a great country without paying a dime to repair burned bridges, insure clean air or fund fire departments—or, really, pay for anything at all. When the superrich a (worldwide) hide $21 to $32 trillion in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, as Newsweek reported last April they did, you face an obvious problem. You can’t fight ISIS—a threat to us all—without tax dollars for the military. You can’t fight the spread of Zika, either.

So we need to know.

Is President Trump paying his share to fight terrorists—to safeguard the health of elderly Americans—or even to keep his own family safe?

Or is he the greatest hypocrite in American history?

If you're a patriot don't you pay taxes to support the military?
(All photos from April 15 protest in Cincinnati.)

Protesting: A First Amendment right.
Three out of four Americans want to see Trump's taxes.

A young lady shows her sentiments.

The people who are protesting love this country, too.

If retired teachers pay taxes, shouldn't President Trump and everyone else?

Even the police keeping the peace are paid for by tax dollars.
Does Donald Trump pay his fair share or not?

President Trump is Sinking Fast in the Polls!

It would be easy to say that President Trump is sinking fast in approval polls like the Titanic. Too easy.

A better comparison—nautically speaking—would be to the Swedish warship Vasa, launched with great anticipation in 1628. She appeared formidable, armed as she was with 64 bronze cannon. Constructed over a two year period, the warship set sail on her maiden voyage on August 10.

A mile into the trip a powerful wind caught the vessel’s sails and Vasa’s top heavy design proved as fatal as a self-inflicted injury from a string of petulant tweets. The warship heeled over, water poured through open gun ports, cannon broke loose and careened across the slanting decks, crushing sailors and smashing everything in their path, and down the Vasa went.

Anticipation was high; the voyage did not well.
(The Vasa was raised from the bottom and restored in 1961,)

Today’s polls show Trump headed for the bottom of the political harbor almost as quickly. His shrinking band of supporters will surely insist polls are rigged—also insist Obama is a Muslim—also millions of illegal immigrants voted in 2016—also Russians never hacked the election.

Only the polls during aren’t rigged. They might be off a few points, as they were during the general election. But if you’re Steve Bannon or Kellyanne Conway or even Melania, today’s figures are grim. Our new president hasn’t hit Richard M. Nixon levels yet, but seems in a hurry to get there.

How explain the plunge? A Three Stooges campaign to “repeal and replace” played a role. A Dumb and Dumber rollout on the travel ban did nothing to inspire confidence in the people in charge.

Still, if Mr. Trump feels bad, he can take solace in noting that his approval numbers are better than those of the GOP Congress.

Their approval rating: 13%.

What else drives current poll numbers? A National Security Advisor asking for immunity doesn’t help—even if Sean Hannity spends half of ever show talking about imaginary wiretaps. Nepotism doesn’t sit well with Americans, either. A cabinet jam-packed with oligarchs and Wall Street predators, the same type of crew Trump promised to fight during the campaign, can’t be good. Nor do most people like a cruel budget plan featuring cuts to programs like Meals on Wheels and home heating assistance for the elderly poor. Well, screw those old goats, President Trump might say. They’re “losers.”  He loves that word! They’re “sad!” He loves that word, too. If they were “winners” they could afford heat and also the $200,000 fee to join the gang at Mar-a-Lago.

Yes, you read that right: The fee to become a member of the Trump club doubled recently; but don’t you dare think the Trump clan is cashing in on their new political connections. Oh, no.

Who would think they’d do that!

Trump’s time in office has been short. His list of blunders grows daily. You might worry about new policies that will allow for-profit colleges to get back to the lucrative business of screwing students. Scott Pruitt, a tool of Big Oil, heading up the EPA, might not strike you as healthy for the planet or promising for the future of your children or grandchildren. You might believe building a wall along the border won’t do any good and believe it was stupid to promise Mexico would pay for it in the first place.

In the end, the real story behind the sinking numbers may come down to something more fundamental. Most of us don’t like it when we see people acting like dicks in meetings or bars or on the sidelines of kid’s soccer games.

That’s the real problem. So far, President Trump has been acting like a giant dick in the Oval Office.

THE GRIM, GRIMMER, GRIMMEST NUMBERS: 

Trump: In like a Lion, Out like Lamb Stew

It must feel to sensible Americans like ten years. Alas, President Trump has been tweeting and “stepping on his own d---” (an expression I learned in boot camp at Parris Island in 1968) for only ten weeks.

If the man wasn’t such a buffoon, you might feel sorry for him. But he is a buffoon, a sad fact, increasingly clear. Even many supporters think a grown-up should be put in charge to keep the President from tweeting stupid s---. He said he was going to repeal and replace Obamacare and he and the Republicans managed to actually craft a plan only 1/3 as popular as the plan they spent seven years reviling. Not only was their plan less popular than herpes, they couldn’t pass it anyway.

They controlled the House. They controlled the Senate. They had a President ready and able to sign.

They couldn’t even get a vote. And who was to blame for putting a match to their flaming pile of manure?

Trump blamed Democrats.

What else has gone wrong in just ten weeks? Trump agreed to settle fraud charges involving Trump University—which he insisted he would fight to the death while he was running for office—and hoped no one noticed. His travel ban was rolled out with all the skill you might expect if planning was done by the main characters in Dumb and Dumber. Then it got shot down by the courts.

Twice!

His National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn, warned that Iran “was on notice” after the Iranians fired off missiles in the Persian Gulf. This warning was meant to scare Iran; but the President decided not to tear up the nuclear deal with that country, which he promised would be his first priority in office. Apparently, like health care, it dawned on him that dealing with Iran (and North Korea—which has also tested several long-range missiles) was harder than it looked.

Meanwhile, Flynn turned out to be a liar, and very possibly a tool of the Russians during the campaign. Now the man who chanted, “Lock her up,” in reference to Hillary Clinton is trying to cop a plea.

We can’t know yet what Flynn knows, but indications are that if the FBI or Congress or Judge Jeanine will only grant immunity, he’s willing to spill some beans. As his lawyer put it, “General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it.”

This leaves it to President Trump to keep tweeting in hopes stupid people will believe a sewer is a pristine mountain stream.

Something smells fishy.

If you’re old enough to remember the Watergate Affair, however, you are excused if you are already thinking: “John Dean.”

When a mysterious story about a burglary at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Building broke in June 1972, President Richard M. Nixon’s press secretary scoffed at the idea of any link to the White House. “A third-rate burglary,” was all it was. Yet, in weeks to follow the press kept digging, leaks kept coming, including from inside the FBI (where top agents like Mark Felt, of “Deep Throat” fame, had ample cause to suspect a White House cover up).

By spring 1973 the spreading investigation was making headlines daily. Various participants in what would prove to be a giant cover up were sweating ways to save themselves—if nothing else to cut time they’d likely spend in jail. John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel, was among the first to break. Once he began testifying in front of Congress, the story blew up completely. Dean had participated in, and had direct knowledge of the participation of others, in a wide-ranging effort to hide damning White House ties to the burglars. It was part of a campaign of deceit involving massive destruction of evidence, witness tampering, bribery and perjury on an epic scale.

So, no: There’s no realistic reason to think General Flynn’s willingness to cut a deal is good news for Mr. Trump.

The Tweeter-in-Chief came into March looking like a lion. He’s going out more like lamb stew.

These poll numbers suck! At least people think Congress sucks more than President Trump.

Donald Trump, Golfing Fool!

There are many questions to be answered at the start of President Donald J. Trump’s first term (and hopefully last) in office. Did members of his campaign team “co-ordinate” with the Russians to win the election? Will his climate policies make the whole world worse for generations to come? And does Melania really gaze upon him across a dinner table and think, “This man, that hair! So sexy!”

But the subject today is golf.

To be clear, I have nothing against golfers. If a president wants to play golf, he or (theoretically) she has every right. I do, personally, hate golf. I despise plaid pants and once shot a 17 on one hole.

Still, the golfing exploits of Mr. Trump may say something profound about the kind of man we elected and how he plans to rule—and I’m not just bothered because he resembles a tubby penguin waddling across a green.

I simply cannot tolerate hypocrisy.

You may remember, back before Candidate Trump began insulting Mexicans, Muslims and Little Marco—and Hillary, sure—when he aimed his heaviest Twitter guns at President Barack Obama. For five long, discreditable years he insisted the sitting President wasn’t even American. On one occasion, he went for a rare double play, informing right-wing radio banshee Laura Ingraham: 

[Obama] doesn’t have a birth certificate, or if he does, there’s something on that certificate that is very bad for him. Now, somebody told me—and I have no idea if this is bad for him or not, but perhaps it would be—that where it says “religion,” it might have “Muslim.” And if you’re a Muslim, you don’t change your religion, by the way.

It was classic Trump. Someone told him. He was only repeating (and you even had an ugly whiff of Muslim-hating). If he was wrong, how could anyone say he was responsible for spreading lies if all he was doing was moving his lips?

Then one day, during the campaign, Trump finally admitted. “The President was born in this country.”

Sadly, Trumpophiles barely noticed. But here’s a fun fact: Nothing in the U.S. Constitution bars a Muslim from holding the highest office. Who says? The Founding Fathers do! And even the most dimwitted right-winger should be able to grasp this fact because Article VI, Section 3, is abundantly clear. If you can give oath or affirmation to uphold the Constitution, you’re in. No “religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

It wasn’t just the “missing” birth certificate that gave Citizen Trump ulcers, however. It really fried his fat buns to see President Obama take to the links. t made Trump so mad he repeatedly had to grab his phone and Tweet.

Was Candidate Trump correct? According to The Golf Channel, which I would never voluntarily watch, unless I was laid up in isolation with Ebola, Mr. Obama did indeed like golf. During two terms he teed it up for 333 rounds, or 41 per year. This was nowhere close to a record. Woodrow Wilson played 1,200 rounds and still had time to win World War I. Dwight D. Eisenhower completed 800 rounds during his two terms in office.

Meanwhile, Trump promised fans he would do better. “I love golf, I think it’s one of the greats, but I don’t have time,” he assured a roaring crowd as recently as December. Obama, he sneered during the campaign, “played more golf last year than Tiger Woods. We don’t have time for this. We don’t have time for this. We have to work.”

He repeatedly assured supporters he’d be too busy working for them, working for the American people, to play golf. If he did play, though (but he wasn’t going to), he would use golf to make connections with lawmakers and cut deals and get legislation passed.

Then came Inauguration Day and he discovered health care was complicated (who knew!) and being President was hard.

Once upon a time, Trump wailed long and loud about all the days Obama had spent on vacation and the high costs of his travel at taxpayer expense. Now, on almost a weekly basis, President Trump packed his golf shoes and clubs and headed for his estate at Mar-a-Lago, Florida. He was there in February three weekends in a row and when he was it seemed he might have played golf.

How much? Neither Trump nor his aides dared say.

On one occasion, a spokeswoman admitted President Trump might have stepped out on his course to hit a few balls. “The next day,” the Denver Post reported, “a photo emerged on social media that showed Trump with professional golfer Rory McIlroy. McIlroy told golf website nolayingup.com that he played 18 holes with Trump.”

Okay, the spokesman soon admitted, there had been a change of plans. The President did play a round.

In weeks to come, the golf-course sightings continued. White House aides lamely insisted, “If the golf glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” Trump admitted to a round with Japanese Prime Minister Abe on February 11. No problem there. But the “fake news” kept piling up. Golf.com noted that Trump spent one weekend at Mar-a-Lago and managed to skip “over to nearby Trump International Golf Club for several hours on Saturday and Sunday.” Did he play golf? No one would say. The New York Times noted that the Trump Administration was going to great lengths to keep the President’s golfing activities from view. Doors and windows of the press room where reporters were holed up at Trump National Golf Club were covered in sheets of plastic so no pictures of Trump flailing away could “leak.”

The mystery thickened with each passing week. Was the Tweeter-in-Chief playing golf or was he hard at work for the American people, as promised? The Times reported again on March 19, a Sunday. The President spent seven hours at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach over the weekend. Had he played golf? “Very little,” aides claimed. On Twitter, however, a friend, Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media “shared a photograph of Mr. Trump wearing a golfing glove, white polo shirt and red ‘Make America Great Again’ cap and giving a thumbs-up as he posed with two golfers at Trump International.”

In other words, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and wears golf shoes, it’s President Trump on a golf course.

Reporters, The Times explained, were spending hours in a conference room at a public library “across the road from the ornate gates and view-obstructing hedges of Trump International, harboring suspicions” that the President was out there teeing it up. Once again, a spokeswoman admitted Trump might have stepped out at times to hit a few balls, “but I cannot confirm that at the time.”

There was talk about how the President was holding meetings at these clubs and busting his butt in the interest of the American people. Yet photos and comments from people who had just played with him kept leaking out. On March 20, CNN reported that he had been seen “multiple times” driving “up the 12th hole on his championship course at Trump International.” Five days later, Golf News Net reported that Trump had visited his courses twelve times during his first two months in office.

On March 26, The New York Times weighed in once more. Reporters noted that the President was staying close to home for the weekend. Saturday he headed for Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. He was back in D. C. in time for dinner at Trump International Hotel that night. Then it was back to the club the next day. This marked the eighth weekend in a  row for the President to visit at least one of the properties he owned.

Was this all good for the American people? It was certainly good for the Trump Family bottom line. No less an authority than Eric Trump told reporters, “The stars have all aligned. I think our brand is the hottest it’s ever been.” In fact, the fee to join the club at Mar-a-Lago was doubled to $200,000.

You could buy a lot of Make America Great caps with that.

Still, the Administration refused to admit Mr. Trump was playing golf or even dreaming about playing golf. Then photos emerged again on social media, appearing to show him in golf shoes and out on the course on Saturday—and couch potatoing  on Sunday, not working hard for the people, but watching golf on TV.

So the questions grew. How many rounds of golf had our President played since taking office? How much did it cost taxpayers to pay for him and his entourage to head south almost every weekend?

Not even loyal lapdog Sean Spicer knew how often President Trump had played. Rather, as one TV reporter noted, citing “the President’s privacy, Trump’s aides are left trying to conceal the President’s frequent golfing.

So that’s where the matter stands. A serial-hypocrite bashes his predecessor for playing golf. Caught putter-handed, the hypocrite denies playing golf. “Mr. Trump, you’re standing on the seventh green, holding a putter. You’re playing golf, sir,” a reporter might theoretically say.

“No I’m not,” you can imagine Trump’s reply.

That’s what most worries me here. If you can’t tell the truth about playing golf, can you be trusted to tell the truth about anything else?

And do Russians play golf? 

 

Donald Trump Blames Healthcare Failure on the Whigs

This weekend, our star reporter caught up with President Trump on the sixth tee of his golf course, not far from Mar-a-Lago. Feeling glum in the wake of his health care defeat, the man who once assured voters they’d get tired of winning once he took office was willing to talk about losing.

His reasoning was soon apparent.

“I blame Democrats for my failure,” he began, “Also, three million illegal immigrants voted in Congress.”

“Sir,” our reporter wondered, “didn’t you say repealing and replacing health care would be “so easy” during the campaign?”

“I didn’t say that,” the President countered. “Hillary Clinton said that. How can I be blamed if my lips are moving, but I’m quoting?”

“As Time noted this week,” our reporter tried a fresh tack, “a GOP-controlled U. S. House of Representatives voted fifty times to repeal the Affordable Care Act when President Obama was in office.” If your party controls the House and Senate and you are securely seated in the Oval Office, how can Democrats be to blame? Can’t the House simply vote for repeal again—a fifty-first try? Don’t you have enough votes to pass Trumpcare without them?

 “Well, I guess I’m right, because I’m president and you’re not.”

“You realize that isn’t even logical…”

“Obama did it. He tapped my phones—and my microwave,” Mr. Trump insisted. “Steve Bannon says Obama used mind control to stop lawmakers from voting for the bill. It was going to be the greatest health care plan ever. Americans would have received better health care for a small fraction of the cost…”

 “You don’t seriously believe Mr. Obama has power to control minds,” our incredulous reporter asked.

“You shouldn’t be asking me. I didn’t come up with the plan that failed. Paul Ryan did it. Blame him. Sad!”

“Mr. President, didn’t you call Obamacare a ‘complete disaster?’”

“Yes, I did. Terrible. And did I mention Obama tapped my microwave and my coffee maker?”

“Mr. President, didn’t you promise during your campaign you would come up with a health plan to cover everyone?”

“I ran a great campaign, if you didn’t notice. I won the greatest Electoral College victory in the last 10,000 years.”

“Sir, the Congressional Budget Office scored the Ryan bill and said by 2026, an additional 24 million Americans would end up without insurance. How does that square with your promise to cover everyone?”

“That is everyone,” the President replied.

“Perhaps I should repeat: The CBO said 24,000,000 would be …”

“All illegal immigrants! Also, member of ISIS. Did you know I have a secret plan to defeat ISIS as soon as I take office.”

“You are in office, sir. Moving on. Considering your stunning health care defeat how do you plan…”

“It wasn’t my defeat,” the President interjected. “In fact, I blame the Whig Party. We don’t win in America anymore. We need Patton and MacArthur to pass a terrific health care act. Frederick Douglass will help. I know it. He’s an example of somebody who has done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.”

“Mr. President, Frederick Douglass died in 1895…”

“How should I know that? Sean Spicer said he was fine. I can’t be blamed if I repeat everything I hear.”

“Considering the fact only 17% of Americans approved of the Ryan plan, Mr. Trump, do you feel you need to study this subject in greater depth?”

“Everyone loves our plan. Omarosa loves it. The Russians love it. So do all Bannon’s friends in the white nationalist movement. Also, I had the biggest inaugural crowd ever. I had more people than Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Millard Fillmore combined. Twenty billion people watched me live on television. Every one of them loved my speech...”

“Mr. Trump, President Truman had a famous sign on his desk that read: ‘The buck stops here.’ He felt the final responsibility for what happened was his and he must take blame if anything went wrong. What kind of sign would you like to see for your desk?”

“I’m considering: ’What buck?’ That would be great. And I deserve a great sign because I’ve done more to start off my term than any president in history. No, more than all of them combined! Why should I get blamed for anything? When I said for five years Obama wasn’t born in this country, my lips were moving because Hillary Clinton made me say so. I might have been moving my lips when I said I grabbed women by the p----; but Billy Bush egged me on. Plus, I had the word ‘p----,’ in air quotations. That makes all the difference.”

Our reporter was fast approaching intellectual exhaustion. “Mr. President, I know this week has been a tough one for your administration. Do you feel you bear any responsibility for the fact the FBI is investigating members of your campaign to see if there was cooperation with the Russians to interfere in the recent election?”

“No.”

“You had to fire General Michael Flynn—after you made him your chief National Security Advisor. We now known he took at least $65,000 from Russian entities, that he was paid $503,000 by the Turkish government…”

“I fired him. That makes me best president ever.”

“If you appointed him…and he turned out to be linked to Russians…um…doesn’t that mean your judgement was flawed?”

“Nope. I blame Millard Fillmore.”

“Paul Manafort, your campaign manager, reportedly took $12.7 million from pro-Russian parties in the Ukraine…”

“Again! I fired him. That’s how smart I am.”

“Let me try one final tack, sir, because I’d like to get a sense of your devotion to the truth. You’ve heard the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. Had you been in his place how would you have responded when your father asked if it was you who had chopped down the beautiful cherry tree?”

“I would have said, ‘My hatchet might have been moving, but I blame the hatchet.’”

With that, our poor reporter tossed his notes high in the air and made a beeline for the nearest bar to pour out a few stiff shots of bourbon.

Did the Democrats sink Trumpcare? Or was it the Whigs?