Flipping Flynn

(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)

At the beginning of Trump’s week Roy Moore was the problem.  White House representatives could not say that they believed the women accusing Moore of active pedophilia, because they would immediately get the question if the women accusing Trump of sexual assault shouldn’t also be believed.  So a lot of smokescreens were set up, for instance that Moore’s past behavior had been litigated because the voters in Alabama had elected him, and the fact that Trump had not campaigned for Moore was presented as proof of at least passive disapproval.  Only Ivanka Trump issued a statement that could be interpreted as critical of Moore.  But apparently Steve Bannon tried to convince Trump that Moore’s voice is needed to pass a tax bill, ignoring the Republican establishment’s conviction that if Moore is elected he’ll be a ball and chain on the leg of every Republican running for office in 2018, as well as a royal pain in Mitch McConnell’s ass.  In the end Bannon prevailed.  Kellyanne Conway, violating the Hatch Act, in effect declared that a pedophile is better than a Democrat, and Trump emphasized that Moore has denied all allegations.

With regards to the tax bill the attitude of both Republicans in Congress and the White House is that passing something, anything, even a very unpopular bill, is better than not passing one.  So at a time when social and economic inequality is at a longtime high in the US the country faces a redistribution of wealth on behalf of corporations and the richest Americans at the expense of the middle class.  The lopsidedness of the GOP tax plan is only matched by its viciousness.  Citizens of ‘blue’ states are punished for voting Democratic, and for inexplicable reasons graduate students are being targeted by taking away their tuition deduction,  which will force many of them to break off their studies.  After all, who needs doctors and engineers?  One of the selling points of the plan, most forcefully brought forward by Gary Cohn, is that tax cuts for corporations will result in job creation.  Cohn, however, got a cold shower when he asked an audience of CEOs for a raise of hands by those who expected to invest in jobs as a result of the tax cuts and saw only a few.  Even more bizarre is the assumption that the tax cuts will result in an average $4,000 raise for workers.

With all this going on the president somehow found the time to engage in a number of digital altercations via his Twitter account.  Of the NFL he demanded a suspension of football player Marshawn Lynch for kneeling during the national anthem, he blasted LaVar Ball, the father of a college basketball player who had been detained in China, for not showing enough gratitude after his son’s release, and he predicted that Senator Flake, spelled Flake(y), would vote against the tax bill.

Towards the end of the week Trump got bad news concerning his current and his former National Security Advisor.  According to multiple sources McMaster called Trump an ‘idiot’ and a ‘dope,’ echoing Tillerson’s ‘fucking moron,’ and Mike Flynn’s lawyers stopped communicating with Trump’s defense team, a strong indication that Flynn is now collaborating with Mueller.

And then there were the expulsions.  Trump considered it time that 59,000 Haitians, admitted after a devastating earthquake, go back to homes that don’t exist anymore, and the latest rumor is that he wants Ivanka and Jared to quit their White House jobs and move back to New York City.

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