Mob Rule

(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)

The week started with a shamelessly partisan White House ceremony where for the second time Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as Supreme Court Justice and Trump declared that the judge had been ‘proven innocent’ by the scam investigation that had been micro-managed by Don McGahn, Kavanaugh’s biggest fan.  To give the event an air of neutrality the whole Supreme Court had been summoned to appear, which meant that Ruth Bader-Ginsberg had to be woken up from her power nap and that Clarence Thomas had to be pulled out of his porn collection.  At a rally the next day Trump tried to fire up the troops with faked indignation about the actions of Democratic senators and protesters at the Capitol, claiming that the Democrats would bring ‘mob rule’ to Washington if they win one or both chambers of Congress.   Encouraged by a closing motivation gap and a boost in the polls the Republican strategy is to keep their base disgruntled about the Kavanaugh confirmation process until the elections, which may be hard to do because Kavanaugh was eventually confirmed, and even in the Trump-era it’s difficult if not impossible to keep the side that won upset about its victory.

In the middle of the week DC was surprised by the announcement that Nikki Haley had submitted her resignation as US Ambassador to the United Nations and would leave her office by the end of the year.  At a joint press event Trump was all smiles, saying that he had known about the ambassador’s plans for a while, and Haley promised not to primary Trump in 2020, but there was ample speculation about a rift between her, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo that might have brought about her decision to resign.  Timing is everything, and if the GOP gets clobbered in the upcoming elections Haley can point at the date of her resignation letter, absolve herself from any culpability, and still be a formidable candidate for any office in 2024.  Trump displayed his reality show superficiality by praising Haley for making her job ‘glamorous,’ and she did him one better by heaping praise on Jared Kushner, even calling him a ‘hidden genius,’ which could have been tongue in cheek because Kushner’s plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is still in hiding.  Apparently Kushner is waiting for his friend, Crown Prince Muhamed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, to endorse the plan before he releases it.

Since Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, where the president was a sucker for the cunning adoration bestowed upon him, Kushner and the Crown Prince have been thick as thieves, but their relationship will be tested by the disappearance and probable murder of Washington Post columnist and Saudi regime critic Jamal Khashoggi, apparently at Muhamed’s orders.  Of course one more murdered journalist doesn’t count if you’re friends with Putin and in love with Kim Jong-un, so Trump’s declaration that the US wants to get to the bottom of it deserves a grain of salt.  Since the Saudis are among the best customers of Trump properties and US weapons manufacturers sanctions are unlikely.

Trump’s total disregard for his presidential duties was on display when hurricane Michael hit the Florida panhandle on Wednesday.  Instead of being on the phone all day with governors, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the FEMA Director, as previous presidents have done in similar situations, Trump attended a campaign rally, ‘because he didn’t want to disappoint the people who showed up.’  Catering to the same audience he had USA Today publish an Op-Ed of which every sentence contained at least one lie, most notably the statement that ‘Medicare for All’ would destroy Medicare for seniors.

The president could have gotten into a celebrity pissing contest with Taylor Swift, who urged her Instagram followers to register to vote and support the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Tennessee.   But Taylor Swift has twice as many Instagram followers as Trump has followers on Twitter, so he only declared that he now likes her 25% less.  Trump could gripe about it with Swift’s old nemesis, Superman Kanye West, who was clearly off his medication when he came to the White House to discuss prison reform.

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