Swiftie

 

It was a bad week for Trump. Immunity. Mayorkas. Holy Mike. But there’s more important stuff to talk about.

A few weeks ago, our granddaughter went to see the Taylor Swift movie. Her mother sent videos of her, happy beyond words, dancing and singing in the aisles. She’d worn her T. S. shirt and a cute skirt, and, based on hundreds of other girls similarly attired, was definitely among friends.

When it was over, and the undocumented Hondurans came through the theater with voter registration forms, she happily signed up. So did all of the other girls. She’s not entirely sure who she’ll vote for in November, but she has time. She’ll be eight by then. She’s still into fairy dust and unicorns, so she’s considering Marian Williamson. We’re trying to talk her out of it, but you know how it is with kids that age: can’t push too hard or they’ll do the opposite, just to tick you off. At least she’s not mentioning Dean Phillips.

Her grandmother and great-grandfather are Forty-niners fans, so she’s torn about the Super Bowl. She cried a little when Travis Kelce broke Jerry Rice’s post-season reception record. Taylor is for the Chiefs and when our granddaughter watches Fox “news” she hears about the nefarious plot vis a vis (as she likes to say) Trump.

Whoever she votes for, she’ll use a drop box. At her age, voting in person is tricky. Not that it hasn’t been done; it’s just that, based on every instance of discovered fraud, Republicans are a lot better at that sort of thing. And she’s definitely a Democrat. Goes to a very diversely-populated public school in Portland.

Much as I’d like to think otherwise, our granddaughter had very little to do with convincing those billionaire Republican NFL owners (Mark Cuban excepted) to throw games in order to get the Chiefs into the Super Bowl, platforming a Swift/Biden endorsement. She stopped after a couple of calls because a few of them had read my columns and hung up on her.

In other news, Putinophilic mouthpiece Tucker Carlson is in Russia. At the time of this writing, we don’t know when he’ll be interviewing Vladimir Putin, which he says he’s doing “because no one has told [people] the truth.” But we can be sure they’re already talking Trump. It’s likely a one-way thing, with Putin’s demands of Trump received and Tucked in eagerly. Making no secret of his devotion to Putin and his Europe-conquering plans, rhymes-with-Tucker will be only too happy to deliver the latest mail, the color of which need not be stated.

In return for another round of election meddling to reinsert Trump, Mr. Putin will be insisting on bigger things. Bigger than previously removing sanctions on his oil. Bigger than sharing state secrets with Russian agents in the Oval Office. Merely threatening to pull out of NATO will no longer suffice. Maybe adding another S into USA and changing the A to R, too. Tucker’s just the syco to phant the manifesto to Mar-a-Lago. Would destroying a certain tape quid the pro? Doubtful. Not until Putin gets everything he wants. Toward that end, Trump had barely begun.

We may soon learn whether the conditions for repeat scale-thumbing from that side of the world include making Carlson Trump’s VP, giving Putin an inside twofer. Were that to happen, what would Elise Stefanik do? Stop calling the jailed J6-ers hostages and return to her pre-groveling position that they deserved punishment to the full extent of “the law;” a term the following of which is headed to antiquity in a second Trump “presidency”? Unlikely. Though Rudy’s probably a lock for A.G., she could still be Secretary of Defense. Unless it’s Alina Habba. Only the best.

If the preceding seems peripheral to the posturing produced by a political party pandering to a perverse predator, there are times when, watching the residua of that party behaving with such dereliction, attempting humor is self-preservation. How else to respond to the abject uselessness they’ve demonstrated by rejecting a border bill they’d demanded and which gave them everything on their wish list; so much so that they’re justifying their no votes by lying about what’s in it?

With disgust, at minimum. And despair for our country. A lame attempt at badinage? If only it were possible to laugh off consequences like possibly handing Ukraine to Putin and allowing Trump and his prostrate propagandists to keep lying about the border. In a saner world, such blatant proof of their hypocritical unseriousness would mean they’d get not a single vote in November.

Speaking of which, our granddaughter, deep-sixing the deep-state plot, now says she plans a write-in for Taylor Swift.