Freak Out Friday – April 5, 2019

So Trump has been spending the past two weeks claiming that the Robert Mueller report completely exonerates him, even though the four page summary of the 400 page report produced by Trump flunky William Barr explicitly states that it does not exonerate him. I mean, of course we know Trump is lying because, well, he’s Tweeting and speaking, so naturally it’s lies. But what makes this even more intriguing is that Mueller’s notoriously press-shy employees have told the New York Times that they are extremely dissatisfied with Barr’s summary of the report. That there is ostensibly plenty of damning evidence in there about Trump that Barr is anxious to sweep under the rug.

This is only to be expected. Barr got the job entirely because he was already on record about how much he despised the entire concept of the report and felt that the President was pretty much immune to prosecution. So naturally he would endeavor to whitewash the results.

Now you might think that because Trump has a “win” on his record, he would have spent the next two weeks focusing exclusively on that. I know I would have, and so would you. But no, not the Big Orange Cheeto. He immediately had to go completely off the rails.

1). Healthy, wealthy and dumbass. First the Justice Department decided to agree with an idiot Judge in Texas and proclaim that Obamacare was unconstitutional and should be scrapped. Apparently Trump is oblivious to the fact that the Democrats largely managed to recapture the House on the issue of health care. It was considered a far more effective issue of greater concern than all of Trump’s warnings about caravans heading across the southern border. It’s an issue that the GOP now wants to stay the hell away from since people have become accustomed to having medical coverage and aren’t anxious to lose it. Yet Trump shoved them squarely into the middle of it, declaring that the GOP would be known as the party of health care. Which they are, if the topic is, “Which party doesn’t give a damn if you get sick?” Upon realizing that he had stuck his foot squarely into the middle of a topic he couldn’t win, Trump declared that the mythical “much better” health care system that the GOP concocted would be introduced after 2020, once the US reelected him and restored the House to GOP control. This, of course, ignores the fact that the House, Senate and White House were all under GOP control for two fricking years and got zero done with overturning Obamacare.

2). Cleaning up his own mess. One of the favorite stunts of dictators and tyrants is to introduce a problem and then claim they are solving the problem. To that end, Trump began a trade war with China and has now announced that he is going to meet with the head of China in order to solve the whole trade war problem for which Trump himself is responsible. This, of course, he views as a good thing and very presidential, solving this problem that didn’t exist until he created it.

3) Closing Borders.. There’s nothing new about closing Borders. Borders was closed back in 2011, leaving us pretty much with just Barnes and Nobles.

Oh, and also, Trump announced that he was going to close the Southern border with Mexico. Just shut it all down. Legal, illegal, fleeing aliens, trade, it didn’t matter. He was just gonna shut it all down.

This is, of course, a monumentally stupid idea. It would impact everything from avocados and meat to car parts. It would cost billions upon billions of dollars and drive up the cost of living to absurd degrees. Fortunately enough, Trump’s handlers finally managed to talk some sense into him and then he came back and declared he was going to give Mexico a one year warning. This, naturally, assures that it will never happen because a year from now Trump will have completely forgotten about it. That’s because…

4). Seriously?. Trump forgot where his own father was born. He claimed that he was born in Germany. No, he was born in New York. His GRANDfather was born in Germany. But seriously, what kind of man cannot differentiate between his father and grandfather? What kind of adult man doesn’t know where his father was born?

It is becoming abundantly clear that in addition to being a narcissistic megalomaniac, Trump is in early stages of dementia. He can’t remember his father’s birthplace. He screwed up his wife’s name. He can’t remember the word “origin,” being unable to distinguish it from the word “orange.” The simple act of communication is eluding him. Listening to one of his lengthy rants is like spending two hours with one of those guys who wanders down Broadway muttering incessantly to himself. If the GOP were wise, they would utilize the 25th Amendment and get him the hell out of there and run Pence in 2020. But they’re too deeply buried in his hip pocket to accept what they need to do.

5). Noise cancer? Come on. We know that Trump hates windmills because he believes they screwed up his golf course in Scotland. But during one of his hours-long rants recently he hit a new level of stupidity. He asserted that the noise from windmills gives you cancer.

This is such a shockingly absurd and idiotic statement that I’m curious if even his most devout followers buy into it. It’s completely nonsensical. No kind of noise produces any sort of cancer. It’s impossible. I’m inclined to tweak the famous words of Justin Playfair: “(Don Quixote) thought that every windmill was a giant. That’s insane. But, thinking that they might be, well… All the best minds used to think the world was flat. But what if it isn’t? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what might be, why we’d all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes. However, thinking that the noises from windmills might cause cancer? That’s just idiotic. What sort of damned fool would believe that?”

The answer is, of course, our damned fool President.

PAD