Freak Out Friday – September 8, 2017

Y’know what? Just to shake things up, let’s start with something that Trump did right this week.

The enemy of my enemy. Trump has regularly gone after Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and pretty much all the GOP as they have failed to build his wall or repeal Obamacare or…well, pretty much anything, really. Naturally the Party of No’s impulse is to blame everything on the Democrats, even though they’re in the majority.

So now with a desperate need for Harvey aid calling for the attention of the same people who couldn’t be bothered to help victims of Hurricane Sandy, not to mention a deal on the debt ceiling required lest the government shut down, the Democrats came up with a plan that would solve it for at least three months. Ryan naturally turned it down. To the utter shock of the GOP, the Democrats met with Trump and Trump took the deal. Why? Because the GOP forgot that for the majority of his life, Trump was a Democrat. His turn to the GOP was just a matter of convenience so that he could get some publicity in running for President, never dreaming that he would actually get the job. Now that he’s there, though, he’s starting to remember that the GOP is largely composed of dìçkš who are interested in two things and two things only: holding on to power and stopping the Democrats at every turn. And there is an outside possibility that Trump has begun to realize that that attitude isn’t going to serve him in the slightest. So suddenly Charles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are referred to as “Chuck and Nancy” and Trump is extolling the virtues of reaching across the aisle and working with the people that Ryan, McConnell and the others cannot stand.

Now of course the problem is that, this being Trump, his syphilitic brain could turn him against the Democrats tomorrow or even later today. But at the moment I have to admit that I am loving watching the GOP trying to downplay their obvious panic over this turn of events.

Meanwhile, even his stupidity this week has a positive turn to it.

Dream a little dream. . During the Obama era or, as we like to recall it, last year, Obama swore that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was solid. There are seven hundred thousand people in this country who have never had the opportunity to go anywhere else. They were brought here as kids or even infants, and now while their American-born siblings are allowed to stay, immigration wanted to throw them out of the only country they’ve ever lived in, even though they committed no crimes and have been loyal, upstanding citizens. Obama said don’t sweat it. But this infuriated Trump’s hardline conservative nutbag supporters who wanted every immigrant thrown out of a country that was largely founded by immigrants. They apparently came up with an alternate plan: Kick All Foreign Kids Away, or KAFKA. And Trump originally swore that he was going to adhere to KAFKA, even going so far this week as to explicitly say he was going to do away with DACA. This naturally caused panic. Chelsea Handler summarized the situation perfectly: “We’re sorry for making it clear that white supremacists and Nazis are welcome in this country, while young hardworking immigrants brought here as children are not.”

And yet astoundingly Trump wound up calling Nancy Pelosi and she suggested that, at the very least, he let everyone who is currently applying to DACA know that they shouldn’t get worked up about KAFKA. Which prompted Trump to perform a metamorphosis and tweet “For all of those (DACA) that are concerned about your status during the 6 month period, you have nothing to worry about – No action!” So he is definitely waffling now, and while it’s still a shame that hundreds of thousands of kids are living in fear in an uncertain world, it’s evident that–at least for the moment–Trump’s priorities are swinging back to the side of people who are interested in reason and compassion instead of the GOP áššhølëš.

So it’s been a good week.

PAD