Toady in the hole

Mick Mulvaney is one of the best people.  We know this because Trump keeps hiring him.  But the lying enemy of the people media have video of Mick Mulvaney calling Trump "a terrible human being" and his precious Wall "stupid," and they shared it with the rest of us.  Apparently it wasn't on Fox News because Trump was surprised when he heard about it, as surprised as when someone read him James Mattis's letter and explained the complicated parts and he realized Mattis was not thanking god for allowing him to serve Trump.  So Mick Mulvaney had to go on Fox News and explain the "thinking" behind Trump's "strategy" of bugging out of Syria.  Loudly, so Trump could hear him.

Basically, it's this:  All the people who can find Syria on a map and have some knowledge of its political and military situation were appalled when Sir Tweetsalot shared what his gut told him on the golden throne last week.  A short list would include Mike Pompeo, Mattis, Chairman Joe Dunford of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brett McGurk, who Trump had never heard of but was envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition before he quit, and even John Bolton, who is a bloodthirsty loon.  But the hell with them (said Mulvaney) because they aren't the People who elected Trump and who count on him to make the big decisions since, in his words, "Ordinary Americans have no idea about those things."  It was the most devastating critique of democracy since Plato's Republic.  Although the Mulvaney Thesis makes no reference to Putin, Erdogan or the Kurds, it's probably true.  Trump only cares about the paste-eaters who attend his hatenannies.  He needs them more than ever, and they'll bellow even louder when he gives NATO and South Korea the Judas kiss, too.

If Mulvaney doesn't get promoted after this, it won't be for lack of effort.  What's better than White House Chief of Staff, you ask?   Well, a slot may be opening up at the Federal Reserve if Trump fires Jerome Powell, the guy he just hired.  Steve Mnuchin sent an encyclical to the biggest banks telling them to calm down, everything's cool, and then Trump sent the Dow into a Christmas Eve death spiral by blaming the slowing economy on the Fed, so Mnuchin may join the exodus.  How many jobs can Ivanka hold down and still get to her yoga class and her nail appointment?  Governing is hard!

But unlike thousands of furloughed government workers, Daddy is hard at it, tweeting "Still in the White House (poor me) waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security" (if Ryan and McConnell couldn't jam Wall into their continuing resolution, why should...oh, never mind) and making lists of Words to randomly Capitalize in Future.  And so, as the White House kitchen scrambles to put together a Christmas dinner they didn't plan on, I leave you with this from the much-missed Anthony Bourdain:

"People who order their meat well-done perform a valuable service for those of us in the business who are cost-conscious:  they pay for the privilege of eating our garbage...the philistine who orders his food well-done is not likely to notice the difference between food and flotsam."

Eat your steak, Donnie.  KFC's closed today.