Besieged
I could almost feel sorry for Donald Trump if he were not such a loathsome piece of shit.
Michael Wolff and Omarosa are journalistic lightweights, but when Watergate Woodward comes at you with one of his cannonball-size books, it's time to move into the bunker. Three days before it's published -- excuse me, released -- Fear is already atop the Amazon list of best-selling books, and quotations from people like John Kelly ("This is Crazy Town...this is the worst job I've ever had") have passed into popular lore. With sentiments like that from the White House Chief of Staff, albeit one who is regularly shut out of important meetings, it was only a matter of time before the anonymous "Resistance" essay found its way to the New York Times. It has become routine to refer to the as-yet-unnamed author as "Anonymous," which is particularly cruel for Trump, who cannot pronounce it. This has not stopped him from raging against it, demanding that the Times be "investigated" and the author "turned over" to his justice (the same way he was ready to turn over former Ambassador McFaul to Putin's interrogators, I imagine). One tweet said merely, "TREASON?" which is not a word you want to invoke when Robert Mueller is working his way through your associates and, to employ a Watergate-ism, following the money.
Et tu, Nike? The sporting goods giant chose this of all weeks to unveil its new ad campaign starring Trump's favorite "son of a bitch," Colin Kaepernick. And here's the difference between Wall Street and Main Street: While Nike stock closed lower yesterday, the digital commerce research company Edison Trends reports a 31% increase in Nike sales over the Labor Day weekend. They're calling it the "Trump bump." Of course, that could have been fueled by die-hard Trump supporters buying high-price shoes and tennis rackets so they can burn them. They don't quite get how this whole boycott deal works.
In a clear case of piling on (football reference, see what I did?), even Miss America contestants are getting in their licks. Miss West Virginia Madeline Collins, questioned about current events in lieu of the old swimsuit competition, said, "Donald Trump is the biggest issue our country faces. Unfortunately, he has caused a lot of division." Miss West Virginia! Doesn't she know what he has done for her state and its beautiful, clean coal? I can't wait to hear from Miss California. (Is there a Miss Puerto Rico?)
Yesterday came the biggest blow of all. Trump was in Montana to support the Republican challenger to Senator Jon Tester, allegedly, but really to salve his aching ego with one of the lock-her-up hate rallies he does best. There is some evidence that "supporters" were recruited locally by offering a cash payment -- allegedly! -- and even that failed. One young man strategically located behind the Leader made so many unimpressed faces during the "speech" that it was thought prudent to remove and replace him, while a woman nearby was caught on camera wiping her nose with an American flag. This is known in politics as "bad optics." The oration was a typical brew-up of fear-mongering (Tester wants to take your Social Security away and raise your taxes!), empty boasting (the employment numbers are rather good but no competent economist thinks lunatic tariffs and the destruction of NAFTA had anything to do with them) and a long, weird comparison of Himself with Abraham Lincoln. Not the Lincoln who wanted to re-locate former slaves to South America or the Lincoln who suspended habeas corpus, you understand, but the incomparable Lincoln of the Gettysburg Address. Somebody told Trump that everybody hated the speech but now it's admired, and so will his word-salads be in fifty or a hundred years, and besides, how can be talk without notes for over an hour if he's as mentally strip-mined as everybody says? How indeed? For about an hour, I couldn't talk at all. Trumpiosis makes me lapse into a twilight sleep during which I could probably undergo root canal.
I snapped out of it when Lincoln was mentioned again, this time as a founder of the Republican Party. I sat up and put on my glasses and sure enough, it was him -- Barack Obama, in Urbana to accept an award from the University of Illinois. He's back. God, is he back. Just in time, the DCCC came to its senses and decided he should campaign for Congressional candidates after all. (Remember how they didn't want Bill Clinton to campaign for Al Gore in 2000? That went well.) Obama sounded confident, energized, and more than a little angry, asking at one point, "How hard is it to say Nazis are bad?" And many other things that wouldn't need saying if we weren't all stuck inside Crazy Town. Today he was in California speaking on behalf of Congressional candidates by actually telling the crowd something about them, which wouldn't occur to the Narcissist-in-Chief. Complete sentences! I miss them. We live in interesting times, and the next two months should be especially interesting.
Do you suppose Trump even knows what state Gettysburg is in?
Michael Wolff and Omarosa are journalistic lightweights, but when Watergate Woodward comes at you with one of his cannonball-size books, it's time to move into the bunker. Three days before it's published -- excuse me, released -- Fear is already atop the Amazon list of best-selling books, and quotations from people like John Kelly ("This is Crazy Town...this is the worst job I've ever had") have passed into popular lore. With sentiments like that from the White House Chief of Staff, albeit one who is regularly shut out of important meetings, it was only a matter of time before the anonymous "Resistance" essay found its way to the New York Times. It has become routine to refer to the as-yet-unnamed author as "Anonymous," which is particularly cruel for Trump, who cannot pronounce it. This has not stopped him from raging against it, demanding that the Times be "investigated" and the author "turned over" to his justice (the same way he was ready to turn over former Ambassador McFaul to Putin's interrogators, I imagine). One tweet said merely, "TREASON?" which is not a word you want to invoke when Robert Mueller is working his way through your associates and, to employ a Watergate-ism, following the money.
Et tu, Nike? The sporting goods giant chose this of all weeks to unveil its new ad campaign starring Trump's favorite "son of a bitch," Colin Kaepernick. And here's the difference between Wall Street and Main Street: While Nike stock closed lower yesterday, the digital commerce research company Edison Trends reports a 31% increase in Nike sales over the Labor Day weekend. They're calling it the "Trump bump." Of course, that could have been fueled by die-hard Trump supporters buying high-price shoes and tennis rackets so they can burn them. They don't quite get how this whole boycott deal works.
In a clear case of piling on (football reference, see what I did?), even Miss America contestants are getting in their licks. Miss West Virginia Madeline Collins, questioned about current events in lieu of the old swimsuit competition, said, "Donald Trump is the biggest issue our country faces. Unfortunately, he has caused a lot of division." Miss West Virginia! Doesn't she know what he has done for her state and its beautiful, clean coal? I can't wait to hear from Miss California. (Is there a Miss Puerto Rico?)
Yesterday came the biggest blow of all. Trump was in Montana to support the Republican challenger to Senator Jon Tester, allegedly, but really to salve his aching ego with one of the lock-her-up hate rallies he does best. There is some evidence that "supporters" were recruited locally by offering a cash payment -- allegedly! -- and even that failed. One young man strategically located behind the Leader made so many unimpressed faces during the "speech" that it was thought prudent to remove and replace him, while a woman nearby was caught on camera wiping her nose with an American flag. This is known in politics as "bad optics." The oration was a typical brew-up of fear-mongering (Tester wants to take your Social Security away and raise your taxes!), empty boasting (the employment numbers are rather good but no competent economist thinks lunatic tariffs and the destruction of NAFTA had anything to do with them) and a long, weird comparison of Himself with Abraham Lincoln. Not the Lincoln who wanted to re-locate former slaves to South America or the Lincoln who suspended habeas corpus, you understand, but the incomparable Lincoln of the Gettysburg Address. Somebody told Trump that everybody hated the speech but now it's admired, and so will his word-salads be in fifty or a hundred years, and besides, how can be talk without notes for over an hour if he's as mentally strip-mined as everybody says? How indeed? For about an hour, I couldn't talk at all. Trumpiosis makes me lapse into a twilight sleep during which I could probably undergo root canal.
I snapped out of it when Lincoln was mentioned again, this time as a founder of the Republican Party. I sat up and put on my glasses and sure enough, it was him -- Barack Obama, in Urbana to accept an award from the University of Illinois. He's back. God, is he back. Just in time, the DCCC came to its senses and decided he should campaign for Congressional candidates after all. (Remember how they didn't want Bill Clinton to campaign for Al Gore in 2000? That went well.) Obama sounded confident, energized, and more than a little angry, asking at one point, "How hard is it to say Nazis are bad?" And many other things that wouldn't need saying if we weren't all stuck inside Crazy Town. Today he was in California speaking on behalf of Congressional candidates by actually telling the crowd something about them, which wouldn't occur to the Narcissist-in-Chief. Complete sentences! I miss them. We live in interesting times, and the next two months should be especially interesting.
Do you suppose Trump even knows what state Gettysburg is in?
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 4:50 PM
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