May 1, 2017

Snakes on a Plane

100 Days and Counting:  Trump celebrated his 100 days in office by detailing the very long list of his legislative accomplishments.  Since that didn’t take much time, he then went on to blame the Democrats for Republican inaction, especially Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, this week’s scapegoat.  He further revved up his dedicated admirers in Harrisburg with an attack on the lying press and as expected knocked the “elitist” Washington correspondent’s dinner which he used to attend back when he was a press loving elitist.  After that he quoted from his favorite song, The Snake, equating immigrants with a snake who bites a woman after she invites the snake into her home, dedicating his reading to Homeland Security Kelly and the INS.  Somewhere in the audience Jeff Sessions was seen applauding wildly.  Trump also insisted that his very beautiful wall will be built though the budget resolution passed late last night to fund the government through September 30 includes increases for energy and science, funding for Planned Parenthood, Puerto Rico, and opioid addiction, and an increase for the military and border security but no funds for the wall.  Still the crowd clung to every word as they cheered him on.   America remains divided.       

South Korea Clean-up: Playing clean-up for Trump, National Security Adviser McMaster reassured South Korea that Trump didn’t mean it when he said they would have to pay for the THAAD anti-missile system that they aren’t sure that they want.  He said that Trump was just making a philosophical comment about the need for more cost sharing among allies.  Pence, proving once again that he will shill for Trump upon command, also pitched the cost-sharing explanation, but affirmed that South Korea was off the hook for the THAAD system.  After the South Korean presidential election, Trump will probably send a bill for costs related to the USS Carl Vinson mobilization with a small credit for the week it only pretended to be off the Korean Peninsula.

Philippine Friendship Week:  Another week, another despot to cozy up to.  At this rate, Trump will run out of dictators by his 200 day celebration.  Over the weekend, Trump had a real bonding experience with Philippine President Duterte, another one of his favorite leaders.  Trump’s advisers had him call Duterte as part of a routine outreach to Southeast Asian leaders but Trump surprised them, and not in a good way, when he went off script telling Duterte how much he admires the way he hunts down and kills drug smugglers, users and anyone who opposes his government who he can call a drug smuggler.  He probably also gave Duterte a virtual high five for the very nasty expression he used to insult our former president, the one who was born in Kenya.  Further distressing his national security team, Trump then invited Duterte to come visit him in Washington.  While he was cozying up to one human rights violator, one of his other BFFs, Turkish President Erdogan, continued to chip away at free speech by banning Wikipedia from Turkey’s Internet.  Yesterday evidencing Trump’s envy, Chief of Staff Priebus confirmed that Trump is looking into ways to make it easier to sue the press.        

Trumpcare and Preexisting Conditions:  Trump again promised that the repeal and replace of Obamacare was imminent and reassured everyone that his new beautiful plan would most definitely provide the best possible coverage for people with preexisting conditions.  He doesn’t seem to know that the most recent version of Trumpcare, the one he failed to force through Congress in time for his 100 day gala, allows states to opt out of the community rating system that protects people with preexisting conditions from prohibitively high rates, relying instead on state run high risk pools, the failed system that existed before Obamacare.  Pence also defended Trumpcare though unlike Trump he’s actually read the proposed legislation and appears to understand that people with pre-existing conditions would be screwed, he just doesn’t care.

Blame it on China:  As more damming information about the vetting of former security adviser Flynn comes to light, Trump has returned to attacking the press for pointing fingers at Russia for the interference in the 2016 elections.  Despite his new found friendship with China’s President Xi and his reliance on Xi’s help defusing North Korea, he even suggested that China could have been the one who broke into the DNC database and Podesta’s emails. Trump said this despite his earlier acknowledgement that the Russians were to blame.  Meantime, the FBI continues to investigate all things Russia, just not fast enough.