Donald Trump’s Contempter Tantrum
This Weak in Politics, Vol. 183
May 23, 2019
What can we say other than “welcome to…Infrastructure Week!”
For the uninitiated, Infrastructure Week is the week where we are supposed to be getting down to the business of bringing things like our roads, bridges, airports, and water supply systems into the late 20th/early 21st century but instead get sidetracked by a Cat 5 shitstorm of Trumpism. This week marked the 122nd Infrastructure week of Trump’s presidency.
As is often the case with the news in the Trump era, the list of things that didn’t even rise to the level of a crawl on CNN is mind numbing in terms of both depth and scope. Or scopth. Is scopth a thing? We digress.
And if the news constantly seems bad, at least there’s always this to cheer us up.
Oh f#$%.
Trump this week ordered his former White House Legal Counsel not to respond to a Democratic subpoena to testify about the president’s state of mind while he was obstructing justice. He also continued to have Treasury Secretary Steven Mdouchin (the ‘m’ is silent)refuse to turn over Trump’s taxes as required by law in the case of a congressional request. Additionally, he prodded his son Don, Jr. to refuse to respond to Democratic subpoenas, and railed at the suggestion that Bob Mueller himself ought to be subpoenaed. Or as Trump likes to describe it:
As a result, McGahan faces the threat of being held in contempt of Congress, joining the sitting United States Attorney General. Talk about setting the barr low.
Also, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development this week mistook a real estate foreclosure term for a delicious creme filled cookie. We actually feel for Secretary Carson, so here is a little tribute to him to help ease his shame.
Yeah, we got nothing. So we may just put our walkman back on and crank up the OREO Speedwagon. What? Lame? Roll with the changes, bitches. Now back to the news.
The president, as is his wont, this week stormed out of a meeting with Democratic congressional leaders before it even started, because…leadership. Later, the president said he was not at fault for stalling this week’s episode of Infrastructure Week. “I beg your pardon,” said Trump from the Rose Garden, “I never promised you an infrastructure bill.” He then urged every one to “smile for a while and let’s be jolly,” before continuing his tantrum.
The president also spoke of more troops to the middle east, vowed to circumvent Congress and sell arms to the Saudis, called the Speaker of the House “Crazy Nancy,” and described his first Secretary of State as being “dumb as a rock” and “ill-prepared and ill-equipped for the job.” Or, as we like to call it, “Infrastructure Week!”
Also, not to be so bold as to advise the Commander-in-Chief, but we’d ease up on the whole “dumb as a rock and ill equipped for his job” thing if we were you.
Also if we were you, we’d lay off the Adderral. Sorry, we digress again. Maybe we would keep doing the Adderral. We just won’t snort it.
While this was going on, Congress was again hopelessly divided, with the Democrats wanting to do their job, and the Republicans giving the president a handj…err, not wanting to do their job.
The Democrats, having actually read the Mueller Report, are holding hearings, issuing subpoenas, and discussing impeachment. The Republicans, meanwhile foregoing that whole pesky reading thing in favor of taking Bill Barr and Donald Trump’s word for it, are abbrog...abrog…abrig…ummm...ducking their responsibilities.
In fairness to the GOP, the 10 well-documented cases of presidential obstruction of justice are very difficult to discern if you don’t read the report. So instead, the Republicans are searching deep inside themselves, and into the psyche of the American people — to find some sort of sign that they are on the right track.
So Republicans are struggling to find the fact pattern that has literally been bound together and handed to them with glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explainin’ what each one was, to be used as evidence.
Meanwhile, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see what’s happening in the world, and what larger trends President Trump is an unwitting part of. Markets are being roiled, a virulent strain of twisted populism is taking hold, and the decades old post World War II western alliances that have spared us from adding another Roman numeral to that war tally are fraying. There is only one man who is happy with this turn of events.
Well, one and a half men.
Congressional Republicans would intervene and help right the ship of state, restoring sanity to our democracy, but…it’s infrastructure week.
And that’s the way the weak spent the week in a nation where we were told it was hyperbole that there was a war on women, and that the Republicans would never be so brazen as to do precisely what Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, and Georgia are doing as we speak.
But don’t worry, PJ and Squi’s beer loving, rapey bro will stop it from the bench. He told Susan Collins so.
If you enjoy reading TWITPOL please seek help. But please also follow us, “clap” for this story, recommend it, share it, tweet it, and do all sorts of other things that the kids these days do. Follow us on Medium.com and on twitter at @sbouchard67
