I apologize to anyone in the other three time zones for the lateness of this posting. I am currently out at the Phoenix Comic Fest and it’s still Friday here. I hope no one will be too cranky, especially considering the new amount of idiocy currently happening as a result of the #FAKEPOTUS.
1) Half an hour later it’s like you’ll want to be spied on again. Back in 2016 the Chinese telecom company ZTE was forbidden to do business in the US for a period of seven years. It seemed that its equipment was not exactly according to Hoyle, allowing them to spy on the phones’ users and therefore have espionage roots in the US. To the shock of no one since it’s impossible for Trump to shock anyone anymore, he is working with ZTE to enable them to come back to America and, presumably, start spying again. This knowledge prompted the Senate to actually agree on something for once: This is bad and Trump should not be allowed to do it. Trump will naturally ignore the Senate and try to steamroll it through. Chuck Schumer declared, “We all know that China is involved in stealing our intellectual property. There is no better way to do it than through ZTE, and we’re going to let them be here, and slap them on the wrist with a fine? That’s a dereliction of our duty here in the Congress, and it’s the president’s duty to protect us.” It’s almost kind of sweet to think that after over a year of Trump’s endless bûllšhìŧ that Schumer still believes Trump is interested in protecting anyone except himself.
2) It’s on/It’s off/It’s On/God knows. Remember how astounded everyone was that Trump actually seemed ready to sit down with North Korea for peace talks? His mindless followers even began stumping for the Nobel Peace Prize even though nothing had been actually accomplished by Trump. South Korea, yes, Trump, not so much. And then think about how utterly unsurprised everyone was when Trump dropkicked the entire meeting while of course blaming Kim Jong un. Well, apparently someone convinced Trump that he’d be scratching his Nobel Prize chances if the meeting went away. So now he’s turned around and stated that he’s still open to a meeting which he himself scratched, and whether or not it happens is ostensibly in Kim’s hands even though Trump was the one who cancelled it. Part of me is wondering if this is going to turn into an espionage film in which Trump and Kim get together and then masked men come sweeping in, kidnap them both, and holds them for ransom with the demand being to replace both of them. I’d watch that.
3) Gee, I thought he loved unions. Trump signed three executive orders (you remember, the things he always slammed Obama for using) that are designed to make life much harder for civil service workers. The government said that it was for making “better use” of taxpayer dollars. The American Federation of Government Employees disagreed, stating, “President Trump is attempting to silence the voice of veterans, law enforcement officers, and other frontline federal workers through a series of executive orders intended to strip federal employees of their decades-old right to representation at the worksite.” So, y’know, that’s going well.
4) She couldn’t have told us this, oh TWO YEARS AGO?!? 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl stated that back when she was interviewing Trump after he’d won the GOP nomination, she asked him off camera why he kept going on and on about “fake news.” It was old hat, and he must have known that. Trump’s reply was perfect: “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.” He flat out admitted it, and Stahl kept that to herself until recently when she was being interviewed by PBS’s Judy Woodruff. It didn’t occur to her to try and get him to say that on camera? All that’ll happen now is that people who dislike him will say, “Of course that’s why” and all his supporters will say, “Lesley Stahl is lying.”
5) Stephen King is back! Remember when Trump blocked Stephen King and others from following him on Twitter? Here’s the thing: his Twitter feed is a government account. And there’s a rumor that the government is not allowed to restrict others from speaking. What’s the thing called again…? Oh, right. The First amendment. That’s part of the Constitution that Trump swore to uphold. Judge Naomi Buchwald stated that Trump’s blocking people violated the First amendment. The thing is, she didn’t order Trump to remove the blocking because she simply assumed that one she said what was what, Trump would take care of it himself. Yeah. Good luck with that.
Did he do anything right? Thanks to Matt Adler for pointing this out to me. Trump, after getting a phone call from Sylvester Stallone, pardoned Jack Johnson. Johnson, a legendary figure in boxing who inspired the play and film “The Great White Hope,” was ostensibly found guilty of violating the Mann Act when what he was really convicted of was becoming a boxing champion while being black. People have been asking presidents for decades to pardon him, but none did. But Trump did so. So ostensibly good on him for that.
Here’s the problem: If Trump had been around in 1913, he would have been one of the ones who actively condemned Johnson. Why do I say that? The most obvious reason is because how he has relentlessly and racially gone after black football players who knelt during the Star Spangled Banner. Trump’s relentless bashing of black players prompted the NFL to unanimously declare that players must stand during the anthem or face sizable financial punishments. You know that they did it to shut Trump up as his bashing was unquestionably having an effect on the game’s profitability. So, you know, good for Jack Johnson and good on Trump for doing something that was genuinely good. But I think it has far less to do with Johnson and far more to do with Trump (a) trying to fool us into thinking he’s not a racist, and (b) doing something that Obama had failed to do. So…yay?
Me, I think that the NFL football players, during the anthem, should criss cross their arms in the “Wakanda Forever” salute. Let them try to legislate against THAT.
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