Freak Out Friday – June 8, 2018

This has been a rather chilling week for Trump idiocy as he has finally said what we all thought: He thinks he’s above the law.

Let’s bury that lead and move on to other things.

1). A true disaster. Trump met with FEMA to discuss US preparedness for disaster relief. We have had solid proof, of course, that our endeavors in such areas are a spectacular mess. Puerto Rico’s spiraling death toll since the hurricane hit it, and the continued disheveled state of the island with American aid ranging from minimal to non-existent, should have been the main focus of the meeting. Instead, according to the Washington Post who obtained tapes of the meeting, “President Trump had a lot else on his mind, turning the closed-door discussion into soliloquies on his prowess in negotiating airplane deals, his popularity, the effectiveness of his political endorsements, the Republican Party’s fortunes, the vagaries of Defense Department purchasing guidelines, his dislike of magnetized launch equipment on aircraft carriers, his unending love of coal and his breezy optimism about his planned Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.” So basically they covered everything except what they should have been talking about.

2). Breezy optimism. It’s a major concern that all Trump is is breezily optimistic since he is doing absolutely nothing to prepare for an admittedly impressive nuclear summit. The fact that it’s happening at all, considering that the two leaders involved are both maniacal dìçkhëádš, is astounding. The fact that Trump is not the slightest bit prepped for it is alarming. I did more prep work for debating Todd McFarlane than Trump has done for this summit. When asked about how much he is doing to get ready for it, he gave one of his classic self-contradictory statements: “I think I’m very well prepared. I don’t think I have to prepare very much.” The fact that this idiot has actually had an uptick in his popularity is nothing short of horrifying.

3). Well, that was unexpected…, no wait. Totally expected. The run up to the G7 meeting in Canada has been busy enough as Trump trades idiotic tweets with Macron and Trudeau and announces he will depart on Saturday before meetings about trivial subjects such as energy, the environment and the oceans. But it gets better. Remember that it used to be the G8 before Russia was evicted four years ago due to its annexing Crimea. Trump, however, speaks with Putin quite frequently, presumably getting orders. And Putin apparently commanded Trump to get them back into the G7. What concessions would Moscow make to achieve this reinstatement? Let’s check. Hmm. Let’s see. The answer is: Nothing. The other countries are supposed to invite them back, despite the fact that they interfered in our election, despite the fact that it now turns out they helped Brexit to occur. They should now be put back in a position of power in the world. Two words come to mind: Screw and that. But that’s Trump’s position, and it now seems as if it’s good that he’s leaving early because they might just kill him if he stayed longer.

Meanwhile Trump continues to assail Canada, the country with which we have traditionally had the best relations between any two bordering countries in the history of the world. He continues to claim that Canada has violated NAFTA over the prices of dairy products…which is naturally wrong as you can find here. He even claimed in a phone call that Canada burned the White House during the war of 1812. No; that was the British, you schmuck.

4). Philadelphia freedom. . The winners of the Super Bowl traditionally go to visit the White House. In this case, a number of team members said they were going to pass. Can’t blame them, really. This ostensible show of disrespect so infuriated the needs-to-be-loved Trump that he publicly disinvited the team. But his psyche couldn’t allow him to admit that it was because they hurt his widdle feelings. So instead he claimed that it was because they disrespected the flag by kneeling. Putting aside all the idiocy involved in that debate, it is worth pointing out that exactly NONE of the Eagles knelt during the anthem. Zero. Zilch. They decided they didn’t want to join in on the protest and stood the entire time. So Trump decided to keep the team out of the White House for an utterly fabricated reason when the real reason was that he felt they disrespected him. Now if that’s what he wants to do–keep them away because he felt they dissed him–fine. Say that. The fact that he couldn’t admit his personal weakness and had to falsely claim they were dissing the flag is just the latest symbol of his weakness and stupidity.

5). Pardon me?. The Founding Fathers created checks and balances in the government for a reason. They had rebelled against a country that was ruled by a king, and they wanted to make sure that the American president would not rise to that level of dictatorship.

All of which Trump threw out the window when he asserted that he could likely pardon himself of any crimes that Mueller charged him with. But he quickly added that he shouldn’t have to because he didn’t do anything wrong.

In a rare instance of both sides of the aisle in Congress acting in tandem, both GOP and Dems asserted that the President was wrong. That as per assertions made during the Nixon era, no man can be a judge in his own case. And that if he ever did try to pardon himself, that would immediately trigger an impeachment hearing.

Considering all the šhìŧ that Trump has done to which the GOP has turned a blind eye–things that they would have gone after Obama with in a heartbeat–it’s nice to know there’s something that would present a final straw for the GOP, which has remained relentlessly silent during all of Trump’s idiocy and incompetence. So far they’ve acted purely as enablers, voluntarily giving up their Constitutional right to ride herd on the executive branch. It would be nice to see them doing their jobs for once.

Did he do anything right? Yes. He finally pardoned Alice Marie Johnson, the great grandmother who was serving a life sentence for a first-time, non-violent cocaine arrest. Except I suppose the problem is that every time he pardons someone now, it seems as if he’s floating a trial balloon for pardoning himself.

PAD