Treachery Tuesday

 If Trump had ever heard of Jimmy Durante (remotely possible) or had a sense of humor (no way), he might be tempted to flap his arms like the Great Schnozz and exclaim, "I'm surrounded by assassins!"  The walls are closing in.  He lost two Grahams in one day!

Loyal lapdog Lindsey Graham said yesterday, "I accept the results of the election...2020 is over to me."   We're at the point where an acknowledgment of objective reality by a Republican has to be reported as news.  Around the same time, Franklin Graham was telling Axios that Trump "does not eat well" and may be too unhealthy to run in 2024.  It's hard to judge the condition of someone who lies about everything including his height and has his people defend him by questioning Joe Biden's cognitive abilities.  

Arizona Republicans are embarrassed by the election fraud farce they authorized to appease the one-term loser.  The Republican-ruled Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has voted to shut it down. In a letter to the Senate president they said, "It's time to end this.  For the good of the Senate, for the good of the country, and for the good of the democratic institutions that define us as Americans."  But what matters is the good of Trump.  Can't they see that?  

When you're no longer president, it's hard to coax people who want favors into staying in your bedbug-infested hotels and playing golf at your clubs.  The bills pile up -- only unhinged lawyers will represent you pro bono and the big-check donors hesitate to throw bad money after worse.  That's probably why Trump, who made a big deal of giving his salary to charity, has gratefully accepted a presidential pension of more than $65,000 since January along with free protection from the Secret Service he used to disparage.  So it must have stung today when the White House noted, "Today the President released his 2020 federal income tax return, continuing an almost uninterrupted tradition."  No doubt we'll see the "billionaire's" returns in due course, as soon as the New York attorney general is through with them.

Trump's not the only pensioner undermining America while accepting its charity.  A load of his former little helpers are still getting paid for "transition," including Dan Scavino and former Senior White House xenophobe Stephen Miller.  Miller plows your tax dollars into something called America First Legal, which files nuisance lawsuits against Biden policies like covid relief for non-white farmers.  Hey, it beats looking for work.

But really, Trump knew last November that he'd been shitcanned, because he Hereby Ordered all American troops to leave Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Africa and Germany.  Yes, Germany.  It sounds like someone got a midnight call from Putin.  The grownups at the Pentagon smiled and went "sure, sure" and then sat back and waited for help to arrive on January 20.  Jonathan Swan has called that weird period "de facto Twenty-fifth Amendment."  Some Cabinet members wanted the real thing but Mike Pence, the most pathetically loyal creature since Greyfriars Bobby, wouldn't hear of it, even after the Trumpanzees erected a gallows for him.  

Speaking of pathetic loyalty, Kevin McCarthy does not support a bipartisan commission to investigate the gallows or any of the other seditious activities of January 6, because it won't be looking into the Black Lives Matter protests last summer or any other totally unrelated activities.  Damn, I was hoping we could finally get to the bottom of the Astor Place riot and figure out whether William Charles Macready or Edwin Forrest was a better Macbeth.  I'm also confused about why Republicans need to be on the commission -- I don't remember al Qaeda sending even one delegate to the 9/11 Commission.  Those who weren't giving reconnaissance tours to the insurrectionists, updating them on the Speaker's location or upfisting the mob are making up for it now.  They call the murderous thugs "peaceful patriots" and assert that it was "Trump supporters who lost their lives."  Andrew Clyde -- yet another worthless Georgia Republican -- said, "You would think it was a normal tourist visit."  Then video surfaced of Clyde helping to barricade a House chamber door against the friendly folks who just wanted to take selfies and hit the gift shop:

How can a commission do any useful work alongside primates like these?  More crucially, how does a country survive half reality-based and half-demented?