Maverick's World

The Daily Donald 5/1/2017

Once again - apologies for the hiatus in the posts - too much going on to cover any items effectively.

With his first terrible 100 days over, Donald Trump's team struggled to find anything they could call "achievements". The gap between the "Contract with America" and what had actually been achieved was so vast that Donald Trump publicly distanced himself from the very contract he had publicly hammered on in his own speeches throughout the campaign. With all news outlets with the exception of one (cough... cough.. FoxRussia cough cough) focusing on the widening gap between promise and performance, Trump's team panicked and held a "massive rally" in Pennsylvania.

Of course as with all thing Trump Admin, the chutzpah of holding a Nuremberg style rally for Trump was only matched by the bottomless failure of actually getting such a lofty thing done. The rally was a fair, Trump and the Pool Camera could see the large number of empty seats. The rally attendees themselves tweeted images of the event and in doing so exposed the large numbers of bald men wearing RW T-shirts that were in the audience. I am not saying everyone was a SovCit or RW terrorist but it is very bad optics to be photographed at a Trump 100 days rally sporting Neo-Nazi fashion.  It basically says that the only people still supporting Trump a bunch of racist thugs. Very bad optics.

The week before the rally was marked with several attempts at showcasing Trump's leadership. There was his plan to

1) Shutdown government until funding for his Wall was approved (that entire thing was shelved w/o much fanfare. The house voted against the Trump Budget proposal.)

2) Repeal ObamaCare (discussion on replacement stalled as GOP in civil war mode).

3) Go to War with North Korea and make South Korea pay for it (SoKo showed DJT the finger, and congressional leaders bused to the WH wondered what the fuck he is smoking).

4) Withdraw from NAFTA (Dropped after Secy. Agriculture told him that he would be killing all his supporters in Corn Country).

5) Reform the Tax Code (1 page sheet prepared and forgotten about as it was drowned by peals of laughter when people read the "15% corporate tax", "end death tax" etc.. provisions that only helped the top 1%)

6) Repeal the 1st Amendment (creating peals of laughter right now).

The BS machine ground out a lot last week, but eventually it all rained down on the man who created it - and so he was quite exhausted. The week ended with another trip to a Trump Corporation owned golf course at tax payer expense. I don't know if Donald Trump is trying to show us how bad a super-entitled white male baby boomer would be as President - but he is succeeding at that. No one is going to elect another one of those to any position if they can avoid it.

Rumint now points to a number of RICO and FARA indictments underway in jurisdictions where Presidential Pardons do not hold water. This is unbelievable right now because who would believe such a thing! Whatever the truth, it signals greater tensions that the Trump team has to cope with in the coming week.

Sally Yates is set to testify soon before HPSCI. She will likely tell us that she directly told Trump, Pence et al about Flynn's security risks and they overruled her and put Flynn in place any way. All these blameshifting attempts to lay the Flynn mess at Obama's door have failed. It is clear to all concerned that Trump knew about Flynn's illegal activities and appointed him NSA anyway.

The Citizen Sleuth project has unearthed significant anomalies in the Trump Transition Team's FEC disclosure. There appear to be a staggering number of fake names, addresses, and fraud in the money that were remitted to the Inauguration ceremony. The ceremony raises $100 M but most of it appears to be from straw purchasers of "inauguration tickets" and large corporations which Trump swore to destroy. The "inauguration ticket" scam is quite interesting, apparently people purchased these tickets but they were actually solicitations for a donation to the inaugural. This is a violation of the rules, but with the DoJ shoved so far up Session's posterior - it is unlikely anyone will actually prosecute. I guess you could call it the perfect crime.

In related news the Roosevelt Institute published a survey of the views of Trumpers. The interviews were earlier in the year and it was only about domestic issues, but we saw a full spread of the naval gazing on immigrants and POC that constitutes higher level thought among lower income White voters and entitled OWMs. These people spend so but time worrying about how immigrants, poc, women, LGBTQ etc... folks are going to ruin the future for their "kind" - they seem to be completely oblivious to the damage that they doing themselves by stalling climate change related lifestyle shifts. 

There was a massive Climate Change related march this weekend in DC. Some 200,000 are estimated to have turned up for it. It is clear form the size of these events that Trump and Trumpers have finally awakened *the* Beast. And a radical shift in the climate change discussion is now imminent.

So as the TrumpRussia noose tightens and Trump drifts in a sea of his own BS, I wonder where we are headed. Will he (like all dictators before him) repressive measures as his time ends? or will he turn on his own cadre and betray them in a grand flash? where does it leave the market which is booming on the unrealistic idea that he would actually do anything good?

posted by maverick @ 5:49 AM