Every week in Age of Trump is a new adventure,
not a Raiders of the Lost Ark type of adventure, but one in which historians
will look back and find a treasure trove of rich and relevant material when
they begin to document, for generations to come, how America lost its way.
Here are just a few story lines which caught my
eye last week.
o The prosecution in the Paul Manafort trial
rested, and the defense did too, interestingly enough, without offering a
defense. Apparently they were so tired
listening to the mountain of evidence against the ostrich-wearing, tax fraud
and former campaign chairman for President Trump, they just gave up. That’s one theory anyway. The more popular thought is that theyknow that Donny
Boy will simply issue Manafort his ‘Get out of Jail Free” card less than one
week after his conviction comes down and his “throw away the key” sentence is
doled out.
o By my count, exactly 11 players exhibited
some form of protest during the national anthem in the first week of the NFL
pre-season (3 Eagles, 3 Jaguars, 3 Seahawks and 2 Dolphins). These 11 represent less than .5% of the 2,340
players currently on NFL rosters. Despite this, Trump’s August 10th tweet
referenced “NUMEROUS players, from different teams, wanted to show their outrage”
and said they “should be suspended without
pay”. These “numerous”
11 players seem to get a lot more attention from our President, while the 565
refugee children who still remain separated from their parents don’t even rate
a tweet. Maybe the President with the
big brain needs as remedial math course in order to help him focus on the
larger and more important matters.
o Steven Miller, the architect of the Trump
Muslim ban (yes, let’s call it by its real name) and the separation of refugee
children from their parents was strikingly dressed down by his own uncle in a
Washington Post Editorial entitled “Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite.
I Know Because I’m His Uncle”. Dr. David S. Glosser, a retired
neuropsychologist formerly of the Boston University School of Medicine, stated
that if his nephew’s ideas on immigration had been in force a century ago, his
family would have been wiped out. According to Dr. Glosser, his family came to
the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the “America first”
nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. And sadly he noted
that only seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in their village of Antopol, Belarus
survived the Holocaust. Before this
story broke, Miller was a leading contender for the biggest scumbag in an administration
of scumbags. With his own uncle’s latest
revelation, he has now vaulted into the pole position.
o Family feuds in the White House were the
theme of the week as Kellyanne Conway got into a public spat with her husband
over his critical comments about the President . During an interview with
Washington Post reporter Ben Terris, Conway complained that her husband’s
recent tweets about Trump were “disrespectful” and possibly violated their
“marital vows”. A violation of their
marital vows….for having a different opinion, for not drinking the Kool
Aid. It’s hard to make this up, but with the President now
doing his level best to stifle the free speech of his opponents, it looks like
Kellyanne thought she would get in the act and decided she would warm up …by dumping
on her husband first.
o Omarosa Manigault Newman began the Omarosa
Book Tour with lessons learned from her mentor.
The highly paid former Assistant to the President, who was fired in week
10 of the 13 episode first season of the Apprentice, was the only contestant to
go 0 for 3 as Project Manager and to offer to have sex with Piers Morgan just
to spice up the story line. Impressive
credentials, to say the least. Omarosa’s
first shots were to call “Trump a racist” and declare that “This is an
administration where everybody lies”. Ho-hum
Omarosa, tell us something we don’t already know. The White House Office of
Personnel has been sifting through resumes for months looking for an adequate
replacement for the controversial Apprentice star. Maybe Gary Busey and Meatloaf are still
available. .
o Trump advocated a boycott of Harley Davidson
after they announced they were moving production off shore to deal with tariffs
now in play courtesy of the Trump administration. Capitalism, it’s now a crime,
who knew?
o Trump sent a message to the entire national
security community that dissent with him for any reason will result in personal
punishment when he revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director John
Brennan. The reason this is so remarkable is that it came from the White House
and was never run by Trump’s own intelligence officials. Many Trump supporters viewed it as a show of
great strength from this great man. The
Wall Street Journal called it petty. And others declared it was a way for the President to distract from the
Omarosa Tapes. If that's true, with a rumored 200 tapes still
to go, we should expect to see many more revocations before the final season of
this reality TV show comes to a close.
o One last interesting development, a new
Gallup poll out last week showed that Trump’s approval rating has dropped to
39% while his disapproval rating increased to 56%.
Perhaps it is now beginning to dawn on a few open
minded Trump supporters, that despite all of the adventures, week in, week out,
and despite their own earlier desires for disruption, that the grass is not really
any greener on the other side. Perhaps
they now see, that it’s turning brown.
