When I did my post,
Up until now, we've been dealing with the CALM and RATIONAL Donald Trump, I had a bunch of other news items that I wanted to include, but decided not to, because the post was long enough already, and would pace it out over the course of the new year. The sheer amount of material was overwhelming. Binging a long-running series is hard enough when trying to recall every pertinent detail without helpful recaps, and we're experiencing a real-life event in real time.
However, recent events have destroyed what sense of time we have. On a self-imposed quarantine when every day becomes indistinguishable from one day from the next, keeping a chronological rundown of how things came to this point becomes even harder to maintain. I intended to do a post about the history of US/Iran relations, but had trouble finding the comic I had in mind, and by the time I finally found it, events had moved on since then. (
Remember when the last major headline grabber was tense US/Iran relations? Good times.)
So with that in mind, here's my running comments from 2017. I'm sure most of these have passed public awareness by now. Anything that's happened over the past month has vanished into the ether.
"This isn't the End of The Beginning, it's the Beginning of The End."
Oh, God, this whole past three years has been nothing but PROLOGUE.
This is how the world ends, not with a whimper, but with every disaster movie at once?
"
Infinity War is the most ambitious crossover ever!"
*
Trump Disaster Movie* "Hold my beer."
Trump says he's getting 'tremendous accolades' on hurricane prep
This is also tangentially related to Trump’s willful selective hearing of the current impeachment hearings, where he refuses to believe all the bad news he’s hearing. I'm constantly reminded of the Head Camp Counselor, Mr. Warden, in Gordon Korman's
I WANT TO GO HOME! who, after suffering a massive flooding and storm, at the end of the Parent/Camper meeting, said,
"And so, another successful Parents' Visiting Day draws to a close."
"What does he mean 'successful'?"
"That's just his end of visiting day speech. He only has one, and it doesn't include floods."
At the White House, Trump Takes Selfies and Seethes Over Mueller
"You just haven't been screaming at it long enough for it to find better opportunities elsewhere! If they didn't want to build up mutated cells worthy of the Trump brand, they weren't worthy of the Trump name!"
Trump is so angry about the Mueller probe, he mostly just eats and watches TV
How would a woman handle a scandal again? They'd just pig out on Ice Cream while watching awful Soaps, right?
Firing James Comey was regarded as one of the dumbest political mistakes in the modern era
“President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey is rightly seen as a terrific legal blunder: He undercut an investigation that might have shown he never colluded with the Russians, and spawned one that could result in obstruction of justice charges.”
“Regardless of the legal outcome, it’ll go down as one of the dumbest political mistakes in the modern era.”
"Hold my beer."
One of the Swice Chamber commentators pointed out that Comey's statement reads like an HR complaint about sexual harassment, right down to stalkerish denials on the office phone.
Comey: Trump asked me to investigate ‘pee tape’ to reassure Melania
"I was just sitting at the corner of the Presidential bedroom where Obama was, when these high-quality hookers came up out of nowhere, and started peeing all over his bed! Totally unprompted! I have no idea how they got past security!"
The ironic thing is, if Trump simply STOPPED using his dreaded Twitter account, he could be PERCEIVED as being a scarily COMPETENT President.
Ryan denies GOP would try to impeach Dem accused of same actions as Trump
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) insisted that Republicans wouldn’t be calling for the impeachment of a Democratic president accused of the same actions as President Trump.
Said Ryan: “No. I don’t think we would, actually. I don’t think that’s at all the case.”
"Can we have that quote in writing? I want you to explicitly sign your name on a form with this exact quote for later."
Ousted White House strategist Stephen Bannon said a new phase of the Trump presidency will now begin and it will likely be “less willfully disruptive.”
“
...will likely be “less willfully disruptive,”
Ha hah HAH HAH HAH, Lol, Nope. Wishful thinking.
Trump is struggling to stay calm on Russia, one morning call at a time“President Trump has a new morning ritual. Around 6:30 a.m. on many days — before all the network news shows have come on the air — he gets on the phone with a member of his outside legal team to chew over all things Russia.”
(...)
“By the time the president arrives for work in the Oval Office, the thinking goes, he will no longer be consumed by the Russia probe that he complains hangs over his presidency like a darkening cloud. It rarely works, however. Asked whether the tactic was effective, one top White House adviser paused for several seconds and then just laughed.”
"It's GOT to Work! We're going to do this over and over until we get it RIGHT! That's the surest sign of sanity, right?"
“I HATE EVERYONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE!”: TRUMP SEETHES AS ADVISERS FEAR THE PRESIDENT IS “UNRAVELLING”
Several people close to President Trump have told Gabriel Sherman that the president is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.”
“Trump’s ire is being fueled by (...) his decision last month to back the losing candidate Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primary.”
Said one person: “Alabama was a huge blow to his psyche. He saw the cult of personality was broken.”
In Call With Times Reporter, Trump Projects Air of Calm Over Charges
President Trump called the New York Times to insist that he was not “angry at anybody” and that investigations into his campaign’s links to Russia had not come near him personally.
Said Trump: “I’m not under investigation, as you know.”
After noting his “fantastic poll numbers” he said: “I’m in the office early and leave late; it’s very smooth. Honestly, I’m really enjoying it.”
"I AM TOTALLY CALM."
Trump’s mental derangement (
though one could say he was always deranged) started back when Michael Flynn was indicted and pled guilty, way back in...
December 2017? Several lifetimes ago? Back when the Mueller investigation was in full swing.
Keep in mind that despite what you see on TV, most actual criminal procedures take an astoundingly long time. The rate that Mueller did his probe with a tightly controlled staff, allowing no leaks, operated at what was considered lightspeed. And that was over the course of two years.
To be fair, considering the length of time it takes to conduct a Criminal Investigation, THIS is considered speedy.
Michael Flynn Pleads Guilty to Lying to the F.B.I. and Will Cooperate With Russia Inquiry
Perhaps most important, Brian Ross reports that Flynn is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Trump “directed him to make contact with the Russians.”
Judge postpones Michael Flynn's sentencing
It’s been often remarked that Trump could get away with more of his crimes if he could just SHUT UP. That lesson could apply to his cronies too.
“At the time of sentencing, Flynn had so much dirt that the Prosecutor recommended zero years for sentencing, and Flynn screwed it up so badly he almost went away for Treason. How much of an idiot do you have to be to have the PROSECUTION recommend you walk, and then screw it up so badly that you talk your way into almost doing time ANYWAY? Who in god's name doesn't understand that when the prosecutor says "you know what, your honor, we're good, let's let this one go" that you need to SHUT UP AND NOD?”
"The Prosecution recommended 0 days of jail. I'm tempted to add an extra digit starting with the number one for every remark you make."
"Your Honor, sir..."
"100 days now."
Donald Trump was interviewed by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes just after the election:
STAHL: “Are you going to be tweeting?”
TRUMP: “I’m going to be very restrained, if I use it at all.”
And then, a week after the Flynn revelation, Trump tweeted, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
Trump unchained: staff leaves, hardline ideas rise
“If you ask some close to President Trump what worries them most about 2018, it’s not Robert Mueller’s probe. It’s that establishment guardrails of 2017 come down — and Trump’s actual instincts take over,” Axios reports.
“Next year will bring ‘full Trump,’ said one person who recently talked to the president.”
Psychologist warns Trump’s mental state is rapidly deteriorating — and he may be ‘on the boundary of psychosis and reality’
“Oh, good. Just what the country needs. Trump going even MORE unhinged.”
Senior Trump admin official Mina Chang resigns after embellishing resumé
"Wait... what ELSE have you faked?"
"Man Up" is 99% bad advice. I'm sure there's a situation that calls for it, but I can't think of any.
The best situation to use it would be whenever Trump has a temper tantrum about anything ever.
Regarding Mueller, I'm going to share an observation from Paul F. P. Pogue, one of the politically smartest guys I know who reads the current climate better than anybody else in the room. The following is his insight on the guilty verdicts of Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort:
"Honestly? We don't know yet. I will, however, point out a fallacy in the background you're working from: the fact that these investigations have stopped short of reaching the top.
In nearly all cases, we don't know WHERE these investigations have ended up or stopped short. Because – and this cannot be repeated often enough – Robert Mueller runs literally the most leak-proof operation in the history of Washington. The Manhattan Project didn't exercise as perfect a round of OPSEC as the Mueller investigation has. They do not leak. EVER. We do NOT know what is on Mueller's mind and he and his people are not giving away their intel, at all, under any circumstances.
The individual investigations aren't stopping short, not exactly; they are goddamn near EVAPORATING. And there's a reason for that. Because the investigations are running into a big wall of silence known as "plea deal time", and a good prosecutor runs ABSOLUTELY SILENT because he doesn't want his targets to know exactly what he knows.
Consider Michael Flynn, the highest-value flip so far. Flynn pleaded guilty and turned fed's evidence IN TWENTY SEVENTEEN. Nine goddamn months ago. And that man has disappeared off the face of the earth and ever since that time, we have heard NOTHING from him, and every time the judge in the case wants to get somewhere, Mueller's people call another time-out. There's only one reason to do that: because they're not done with him yet. He is singing like a canary and has been for months, and the sentencing phase will give away exactly how much he's told them.
Manafort's trial is basically a great big squeeze on Mueller's part to get Manafort to cooperate. There's a reason none of the charges actually involve Trump: Mueller is charging these people with all the OTHER stuff he can pin on them in hopes they'll flip on the big fish. Once again, charging them with Trump-related stuff means giving away some of the cards.
And Cohen? Dear god, COHEN. "Cohen flips" are the two biggest words in the entire Trump scandal dictionary. This is, no joke, the "SCOTUS demands Nixon hand over tapes" moment. This is PRECISELY where it all starts to crash down in an impossible-to-escape way for Trump.
Because Cohen is the single most dangerous person in the world to Trump. Cohen knows more about the Russian collusion than Trump does. He probably knows more about the Russian collusion than PUTIN does. I GUARANTEE Cohen knows for sure if the pee tape is real or not. Every single dirty deal Trump ever got himself into, Cohen did all the real work on.
Cohen knows everything. He's the dude who made shit happen. By HIS AND TRUMP'S OWN ADMISSION, he was authorized to spend six-figure sums on Trump's behalf without Trump's knowledge. He's Tom Hagen to Trump's Corleone. Every single dirty thing that ever happened since the day he entered Trump's life, Cohen was in the room or on the phone.
And that guy is, at this very moment, negotiating to rat Trump out."
Remember when the Mueller investigation was in full effect? And Robert Mueller was our best hope for getting rid of Trump?
Things Are So Bad For Paul Manafort He Now Has To Wear Two GPS Monitoring Bracelets
"Just be glad you weren't wearing FIVE Bracelets."
"What do you need one around my neck for?"
"Six now."
FBI Conducts Raid at Trump Lawyer Cohen’s Office, Attorney Says
"I never knew Michael Cohen in all the years he worked for me!"
"I know many people are filled with glee about the Cohen development. I’m personally terrified that today is Bolton’s first day on the job, in the midst of what is soon to be a full scale Trump meltdown."
"This is what Gen. Kelly is paid for. I'm sure that doesn't make you feel any better."
The DOJ didn’t notify Trump they were raiding his attorney."
Let that sink in.
It was mentioned online that Trump was watching the raid live as it went down. If true, his reaction would’ve gone from
“This TV show is really realistic!"
to:
"This raid is so unrealistic! Fake News!"
When was the last time the President: (a) caused the stock market to crash, (b) killed a man in one of his properties; (c) had the FBI raid his lawyer, all in a few days?
Dow’s 400-point rally is nearly erased in final hour on report of FBI raid of Trump’s lawyer
"If I'd known the FBI was raiding my Lawyer's office, I would've sold earlier!"
Trump doesn’t seem to like being president. So why not quit?
His pride would never allow him to abandon what's essentially the highest possible position of power (even if that power is illusory) without finding a way to stick it to whoever's next in succession, and a large cash payout. And as he is now, in a political field, not a business one, he's sorely out of his element.
Also, he'd never outright Admit that he became President, not through his own power, but from outside help.
The GOP That Failed: The party didn’t decide. And now Republicans are stuck with Trump.
One ironic instance of how Trump fails where normal Politicians would excel in - anytime a Leader in Charge is under threat of scandal or the hint of a scandal, they divert their voter's attention by declaring war on a country far away from them. We're fortunate enough that Trump is too incompetent to even consider declaring such an act, since it'd divert attention away from himself.
It’s easy to fact check Trump’s lies. He tells the same ones all the time.
Here's an easier way - his lips are moving.
All the President’s Lawyers
New York Times: “There may never be enough Trump Lawyers to get the job done. The work is hard, sometimes even humiliating. In fact, the one irreducible character trait of a Trump Lawyer is that he or she is willing to take on Trump as a client, one who often either doesn’t solicit their advice or simply ignores it; who subverts their legal strategy on national television; who requires them to deny facts that he has confirmed and confirm facts that he has denied; who won’t stop tweeting inflammatory, threatening and clearly false statements. It’s a lot to ask of a professional.”
“Washington lawyers have defended spies, embezzlers, strongmen, torturers. But the prospect of defending Trump has apparently given them pause. Brendan Sullivan of Williams & Connolly, who represented Oliver North, and Ted Olson of Gibson, Dunn, who represented the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, are among the veterans of Washington scandals who have reportedly rejected overtures to join Trump’s legal defense team.”
"I've defended Rapists, Pedophiles, Child Abusers, Womanizers, Shareholder Bandits, Robber Barons, Wife Beaters, Psychopaths, Debt Defaulters and Con Men."
"But I've never had to defend someone who checked all of the above at once."
Forceful Chief of Staff Grates on Trump, and the Feeling Is Mutual“President Trump was in an especially ornery mood after staff members gently suggested he refrain from injecting politics into day-to-day issues of governing after last month’s raucous rally in Arizona, and he responded by lashing out at the most senior aide in his presence.”
“It happened to be his new chief of staff, John F. Kelly.”
“Mr. Kelly, the former Marine general brought in five weeks ago as the successor to Reince Priebus, reacted calmly, but he later told other White House staff members that he had never been spoken to like that during 35 years of serving his country. In the future, he said, he would not abide such treatment, according to three people familiar with the exchange.”
"...he later told other White House staff members that he had never been spoken to like that during 35 years of serving his country."
If the guy who faced continuous verbal abuse from Boot Camp Marines (
I assume) can't stand the continuous verbal barrage from Trump...
Then there was that time Trump was convinced Obama was spying on him.
Department Of Justice Says It Has No Evidence Obama Ordered Wiretap Of Trump Tower
Contradicting Trump, DOJ Admits There Is No Evidence Of Trump Tower Wiretaps
"Who are you going to believe? Me, or the lying FBI?"
Trump boasts he can 'comprehend very well, better than I think almost anybody'
Keep in mind that he said the following. Try to make sense of what he said:
“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, okay, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you're a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right — who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”
Stephen King Compares Trump To Cthulhu; Cthulhu Issues Angry Denial
Trump is practically Azathoth, the Mad Blind Daemon-Sultan who speaks only in tongues, and has to be constantly distracted by a dozen Musicians, lest his actions destroy the Universe. Remember when he touched the Orb? That took place in Riyadh, which is almost, but not quite close to R'yleh.
At times like these, I think of Nyarlathotep, a cosmetic prankster, who would've positively relished at the sheer amount of outright despair culminating worldwide from Trump getting elected, and being confronted by a rival Elder God trying to stop these events from occurring, and being grudgingly told in a defeatist tone,
"Well, you won."
Then, Nyarlathotep would give an enigmatic smile, and reply, "Did I?" before ambiguously vanishing from this plane.
Another relevant analogy would be:
*Smiles in Nyarlathotep* "Oh, so you want to feel oppressed? Here, have an insane ruler who speaks in tongues and has to be continuously entertained, lest he unintentionally destroys the world."
"No thanks, our current dictators are bad enough!"
*Frowns in Nyarlathotep* "You have yet to experience anything on the same level as Azathoth. Trump doesn't even come close."
F.B.I. Interviewed Flynn in Trump’s First Days in Office, Officials Say
By the way, let's not forget the fact that Sally Yates warned the White House about this days before she was fired as Acting AG.
Her popping up in this story is kind of like a plot point that was set up in the second episode of a series suddenly re-emerging just before the big mid-season finale. If it turns out her firing was somehow connected to this? A lot more people than Flynn are seriously screwed.
Rule #1 is that it's ALWAYS the cover-up. Rule #2, the one people forget, is what I have suddenly and randomly decided to name the Mandarin rule. The screwup that gets you? You'll NEVER see it coming. Nixon got his ass kicked by a goddamn stupid burglary raid that went bad. Clinton was so focused on Whitewater and Paula Jones that he forgot it made ALL his sexual peccadilloes fair game. And Trump? Well, Trump has been juggling so many eggs in the air for so long that he's been trying to get everyone to ignore the mass of broken shells and yolk on the floor, right until he slips.
The best evidence that Trump's people are actually trying to kill Sally Yates?
SHE'S STILL ALIVE.
"Here's the target. Make it look like an accident."
"AWRIGHT! I'm gonna go all
Final Destination on her Ass! First off, I'll suspend this ice bucket over her front door. When she comes in to dry herself off, the towel will pull this string attached to a stray cable that will activate the TV, turning onto the news to the latest Trump scandal. The resulting noise will be so irritating to her ears she'll reach for the remote, never noticing that there's a puddle of spilled root beer all over the floor. Her sticky feet - "
"On second thought, make it as obvious as possible."
Trump blasts media, anonymous sources _ after WH uses them
"Don't trust those untrustworthy nameless cowards who won't out themselves! Trust my totally reliable sources! Believe me!"
And as if things weren't bad enough...
Scientists Say They Can Recreate Living Dinosaurs Within the Next 5 Years
"Absolutely nothing can possibly go wrong here."
"I wanna hunt down and kill a dino without any pesky butterflies getting in the way!"
Woolly mammoth on verge of resurrection, scientists reveal
Bring Back the Woolly Mammoths so we can hunt them! And prevent another prehistoric butterfly bringing about the Trump Presidency!
That was what caused the last election, wasn't it? Cultured Hunters seeking a grander palate than shooting down near-extinct creatures?
