Everybody loves a Parade
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
It was to be expected that becoming the most powerful man in the world would take Trump’s narcissistic personality into so far unknown territory. Halfway another week during which things didn’t go well for the president he asked the Pentagon for a parade, remembering how watching the July 14th parade in Paris had cheered him up. Of course there is little to celebrate for the US military these days. They were outplayed by Russia and Iran in Syria and are at best stuck in a stalemate with the Taliban in Afghanistan that could easily last another sixteen years, but that doesn’t bother Trump. The purpose of the parade is not to celebrate the military, one of Trump’s major loves, according to Defense Secretary Mattis, but to celebrate Trump, whom the president happens to love a little more. So we should brace ourselves for the images of Trump, more pompous than ever, with Ted Nugent and Chuck Norris as his guests of honor, watching tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue cracking the asphalt and making a unique contribution to the Swiss cheese that American roads look like because of the potholes that are no longer repaired.
Early in the week Trump declared that the Democrats had been ‘caught’ by the Nunes memo and accused them of treason for not applauding during the State of the Union. Republicans who can read, however, realized that the timeline in the memo contradicted its conclusions, and the backlash about the president’s treason remark was such that he had to pretend that it had been a joke. In spite of Trump’s firm commitment to testify under oath for Robert Mueller his lawyers pulled that promise back, knowing that their client cannot tell the truth and that if he could tell the truth it would incriminate him, creating a unique dilemma that probably will make the president take the 5th. Nunes’s attack on the FBI was complemented by senators Grassley and Graham, who asked the Department of Justice to investigate Christopher Steele, in spite of the fact that a Washington Post article detailed how highly respected by American security services Steele had been throughout his MI6 career. Senator Johnson accused Obama of having tried to influence the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, but it turned out that he had focused on Russian interference, which was actually his job.
The extent to which Trump is aiding and abetting the Russians became clear when he decided not to impose the new sanctions a large majority in Congress had requested. Meanwhile Secretary of State Tillerson announced that the Kremlin is planning large scale interventions in the 2018 elections, and a director at the Department of Homeland Security revealed that the Russians had already hacked into election systems in 6 states, and made attempts in many more.
Trump’s treason joke was followed by another attempt at comedy, when he declared that he would ‘love a shutdown.’ The shutdown came and went while Trump was sleeping. After waking up he had to consider making the Democratic memo that contradicts the Nunes memo public and what, if any, redactions to make. Instead of reading the memo Trump will have it read to him.
In the White House Chief of Staff John Kelly continues to show his racist and misogynist sides. He suggested that many Dreamers are too lazy to get off their asses and tried to hold on to a staffer who had beaten up two ex-wives. It may not cost him his job, because that’s just how Trump likes it.
Ga HIER naar toe voor alle afleveringen