This Weak in Politics, Vol. LXII
February 9, 1984 (see what we did there?)
It has been another typical week in the United States in 2017— full frontal assaults on the press, a sitting president attacking a department store, lawsuits, fake news, fake massacres, and a 25 point 2nd half comeback in the Super Bowl*.
Let’s start with the White House and the president’s shaken confidence in his White House staff. This week it is press secretary Sean “Sinead” Spicer who has caused the president the most heartburn. It’s not that Spicer is spinning lies from the podium — that is the very job the president would like him to do. It is, rather, that Spicer’s rocky tenure at the White House has not just been mocked…but more egregiously, it has been mocked on Saturday Night Live by a woman portraying Spicer his/herself. In SNL’s defense, the resemblance is uncanny:
The flare-up over Spicer’s portrayal on Saturday Night live is not the White House’s first clash with the comedy show. Trump has repeatedly been bothered by his own portrayal by Alec Baldwin, which out of respect for the president, we will not post in this edition. (But it can be found here. And here. And here and here and here. We will stop now, as we have learned that there is an entire list of little things that upsets President Bannon, and we don’t want to pick at scabs.) While again, not his first criticism of NBC, the President seems particularly irked this week with the Spicer/McCarthy situation.
The truth is that Trump (pictured here) believes that being portrayed by a member of the opposite sex is a sign of weakness and an assault on one’s masculinity.
On the plus side for Trump, if Spicer gets portrayed by women frequently enough that people begin to believe (s)he is actually a woman, Trump will be able to pay her 77 cents on the dollar.
Trump has very strict rules about how men and women should act and how they should dress, and is almost puritanical in his adherence to these rules. Longtime friend “Rudy” Giuliani, says, for example that Trump has not “motor-boated” him (Mom, do NOT look this up) since pictures of the two surfaced some years ago. Though sources tell us that Rudy is willing to go along again should the Secretary of State spot open up again.
In other news, the executive order that the president signed, known as the “travel ban” is now making its way through the judicial system, with oral arguments being heard on Tuesday as to the constitutionality of the ban and the standing of the parties involved. (We had lawyer friends give us key words for this piece like “standing” and “parties.”) At issue are questions of whether the president has the authority to enact such a ban, and whether states have a firm Constitutional argument against the order.
Key to the Administration’s argument is their contention that this is not a Muslim ban. In fact, they do not understand how anyone could possibly think that Donald J. Trump would call for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s Representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.
It’s not even simply the modifier “Muslim” that White House officials quibble with, though they quibble with that as well. They are upset that the lying media keeps calling the executive order a ban at all. Despite their best efforts, the term “ban” seems alive and well and is still frequently used by some on social media:
White House insiders are also outraged by leaked reports that the president is a twit-for-brains who spends his evenings isolated, obsessing over his image, admiring the trappings of his new job while watching cable news obsessively in his bathrobe. These reports also suggest the president then gets enraged — three tweets to the wind — and begins blasting out immature and ill-conceived messages ranging from criticism of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ratings to childlike foreign policy proclamations. White House staffers took issue with this characterization, calling it an absolute lie because the president, pictured below, doesn’t wear bathrobes.
As for the matter of the obsessive late-night tweeting — a relatively odd habit for a president, or, well, any adult male — much has been written. Many feel the tweets are a positive — a president reaching out to his constituents without a filter, while others see signs of immaturity, lack of sophistication and behavior beneath the dignity of the office.
The grammar in the tweets, coupled with the lack of quality and clarity of the executive orders the president has been signing have already inspired a new TV game show: “Are You Smarter Than The 45th President?
The show was short lived however, as absolutely everyone was winning due to the bar being set so low. Here, for example are the first 4 successful contestants:
Our astute reader(s) will note that one of the contestants above — Betsy DeVos — is now officially a cabinet member in the Trump Administration.
That’s because this week, a bipartisan coalition of a full half of the United States Senate (50 members) voted against her confirmation. As such, a man who became vice president by virtue of being on a ticket that got fewer votes than their opponents, broke the tie. See? Democracy!
The Trump administration spoke of this unprecedented necessity of a tie breaking vote (51–50) for a cabinet nominee as “a historic confirmation in which more people than ever participated in the voting process!”
Democrats were firmly opposed to the nomination, pointing to the fact that Mrs. DeVos knows absolutely nothing about anything.
Republicans, on the other hand were very impressed with her checkbook and with her straightforward Republican message on education:
Secretary DeVos’s (ouch) confirmation is one of just a handful of cabinet positions made official even though we are almost 3 weeks (yes, it’s only been 3 weeks) into the new president’s term. Her confirmation was seen as the most contentious of the nominations, a title then given to the nomination of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III, Trump’s pick for Attorney General. (Editor’s Note: Beauregard was confirmed during the writing of this story). His nomination proceedings got very heated as Senator Elizabeth Warren had the audacity to read the words of the late civil rights icon, Coretta Scott King, from the floor of the Senate.
Senate Majority “Leader” Mitch McConnell thought reading King’s words was a significant violation of Senate protocol and did not meet the standards of decorum that should be afforded racist Attorney General nominees. (On the note of dignity and decorum, Republicans have indeed maintained dignity throughout the process — the racist senator from AL has in fact been elevated to the role of Attorney General of the United States, and will likely be replaced by the current Attorney General of Alabama, to make sure that he doesn’t investigate and press charges in a sex/public funds scandal case against the Governor who will be appointing him. Believe it or not, this is all Kosher…unless, of course, someone tries to read the words of Coretta Scott King at any point).
Therefore, as of this writing, the confirmed or soon-to-be-confirmed team of what Trump spokes“man” Sean Spicer calls the most qualified and star-studded administration in modern history is as follows:
Moving off the cabinet and onto the Trump family, Melania and Ivanka Trump both found themselves in headlines this week.
Daughter Ivanka’s signature line of over-priced, faux pretentious crap was dropped by Nordstrom’s this week, causing the president to tweet attack the retail giant from his official White House account. This caught the attention of media watchdogs who note that doing so crosses the imaginary line President Trump pretended to draw between his business empire and his new job as the most powerful person on the fucking planet. It was just weeks ago that Trump pretended to sign stacks of blank papers that were meant to appear like documents turning over his business to his sons (you know, because that wouldn’t pose a conflict.)
In a similar vein, there was progress in one of the 3,500 suits involving Trump, his family or his businesses. In this particular suit, the complainant was Melania Trump (why do we get the feeling that this is not the last time we will see the phrase “the complainant was Melania Trump?”) in which a publication falsely accused the First Lady of having been an escort (and not the chargés d’affaires kind, more like the Craigslist kind. Note the impeccable use of French, Kasie Hunt @Kasie? There’s beaucoup more where that come from.) Mrs. Trump’s suit sought substantial monetary damages to replace the loss her reputation suffered. The suit alleged she could make lots of money selling clothes and fragrances while being First Lady because she “has the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person…to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world.” We regret that those words are quoted directly from the suit. Luckily for freedom and for America, the suit has been settled, the reputation restored, and Mrs. Trump can resume efforts to cash in on her status as First Lady. Phew! Swamp drained!
And finally, we turn to world news. (That’s right, we at TWITPOL know many facts and related characteristics of up to 5 foreign countries, including; France (cheese), England (English muffins), Yemen (a target country in the “non Muslim ban” “Muslim ban”) New Jersey (bridge closures) and Mexico (murderers, rapists, bad hombres).
But we digress. In France, far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen (Donald Trump with even more ovaries and bigger hands) is rising in the polls in the upcoming French elections. This is an eerie echo of a certain election on this continent, as allegations suggest that there is Russian influence in the election (with Vladimir Putin favoring Le Pen) and a preponderance of fake news about Le Pen’s chief opponent François Fillon. Further echoing another recent election, chants of “Enfermez-le! Enfermez-le” are dogging (or chien-ing) Fillon at every turn and third party candidate Pepe Le Pew (Jill Stein with coherence) lags in a distant third place and poses no threat other than to take votes away from Fillary (see what we did there?), handing the victory to Le Pen.
And that’s the way the weak spent the week in a nation where the rotten stench coming from the White House can be bottled and sold even though some blogger called the first lady a tramp, and where reading Coretta Scott King violates decorum.
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- This was just a gratuitous reminder that the New England Patriots came back from a 25-point deficit to win their 5th Super Bowl title.
