Dirty Pool

 

If you’re looking for the perfect metaphor for Trump’s “presidency” – I’m not first to say it – it’s his Reflecting Pool debacle. From start to whatever the finish will be, it has it all: hubris, incompetence, insider graft, lying, blaming. Some things are emblematic enough that they bear repeating; trying, futile as it may be, to bring sight to the unseeing.

Yes, it seems trivial compared to his lie-based, ill-conceived, vanity-motivated Iran war; nor has it, like the war, cost America and the world countless billions, jobs, and security. Unlike the war, it hasn’t left the terrorist nation of Iran in a stronger position than it was before his senseless embarkation. What it has done is provide shorthand for the dark, fibrillating heart of Trumpism.

It began, predictable as sunrise does the day, with Trump bragging that he alone had the know-how to “fix” the Reflecting Pool, adding that Presidents Biden and Obama, of whom his jealousy is boundless, are responsible for everything wrong with the pool; as he has with everything wrong in the world he created. Then, as with climate change and vaccines, he ignored the science of adding a dark, heat-absorbing base beneath a primordial soup. Which rejects evolution and climate change, as well. Because of course.  

It’s US law that government contracts can only be no-bid when there’s an emergency. But he handed one out, to the tune of millions, when no emergency exists. To a donor. Which demands something that’s lately become rare here: a link. Voters should know who the guy is. Gaze upon him. Read of his Trump-approved background.

Trump promised it’d cost less than two million (for what is Trump if not one who keeps promises?) It’s heading toward fifteen. So far. People who know things, a disqualification for anyone in Trump’s employ, predicted the outcome: water coming raw from the Tidal Basin, heated perfectly to brew algae already contained in that water, would produce blooms in amounts, as Trump likes to say, “never seen.”

Then Iranesque damage-control escalation: in this case, teams of workers dumping hydrogen peroxide into the pool to kill the organisms (also, it appears, ducks). Which lifted the blue stuff off the surfaces of the pool. Fortunately for Trump, who denies responsibility for each of his lifetime of failures, a 62-year-old former Olympian, having biked 50-some miles before arrival, decided to see the blue floaters. Touch one, even. He was immediately arrested, giving cover for Trump’s election-level lie that bloom and blue proved vandalism, clear as the pool isn’t. Then, adding credence to lies, as is his wont, he sent in the National Guard.

I was once a devoted cyclist. On fifty-plus-mile rides, I carried energy bars and Gatorade. I never considered adding pollutants. Too much weight. We’ve seen how many people adding how many gallons of bleach had how little effect on Trump’s blooming botchery. How many vandals, unnoticed by 24/7 cameras, would it have taken to do what Trump is claiming? Putting how much of whatever into a pool that holds 6.75 million gallons would be required to have an effect? Possible? Maybe. Coming from Trump, though, who, insulated by his true believers, lies about everything, doubt is the proper stance. They cut it with knives, he tells us. Having, weeks earlier, bragged that the surface he’s installing was impenetrable by blades.

I worry for the biker, who’ll probably face trial. Hopefully, he’ll be exonerated for lack of proof. But he’s in for a rough time. As are the people arrested, like “round up the usual suspects” dictators do. Consistent with his election lies, Trump has offered no credible proof of their sabotage. There, hilarity ends. It’s exactly the scapegoat-fueled authoritarianism into which Trump and his enablers are dragging us, cheered on by MAGA and their media, facilitated by silence from millions of uninformed, disengaged voters. Compared to Trump’s manifold and worse botchery, it’s small, but it shows exactly who and what he is. Americans must no longer stand for it.

Or for the pathetic capitulosity touted by Trump as “ending” his Iran debacle. Like this Swiss cheese from J.D. Vance, ace negotiator: “This is probably what we’re most excited about as Americans, the Iranians have agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back into their country. That is a major milestone for the American people.” Lucyfying the peace football yet again, Iran denies it; once more making Trump and Vance look stupidly gullible. Maybe it’s true. If so, it’s just a return to the agreement forged under President Barack Obama and ended by Trump.

Including the other giveaways Trump approved, like ending sanctions, a broken promise to help the Iranian people, praising Iran's leaders, handing over billions of dollars, allowing ballistic missiles, and nuclear power, selling their oil (to America!!), and ceding control of the Strait of Hormuz, it’s worse. Much worse. It’s a rare Trump promise kept: total surrender.

To repeat the undeniable: Trumpism’s incompetence and mendacity end in November, or never.

Not So Cagey

 

In honor of himself, the emperor built an arena festooned with corporate logos and ordered gladiators into it, to bloody each other before his majesty and consort. Perfectly encapsulating the tone and tenor of the event -- indeed, of an entire “presidency” -- one of the hand-picked combatants, an announced favorite of Trump, took to the microphone after his win and shouted, to MAGnafied cheers and, reportedly, a “half-smile” from Trump, “Michele Obama is a man. Am I right, America?”

Thus did Trump celebrate his birthday, adding a taxpayer-funded military fly-over. No American president has spent taxpayers’ money in such a paean to self. The desecration also included the Lincoln Memorial, on whose hallowed ground half-naked men posed for their weigh-in, after which they accessed every room of the West Wing. There are no words.

Disgraceful. Insulting. Embarrassing. Humiliating. Desecration. Shameful. Disgusting. Exploitative. Shameless. It’s foolish even to try. Degrading. Egomaniacal. Indecent. Reprehensible. Vile. Contemptible. Self-enriching. Repugnant. Grotesque.

It renders me wordless.

Debasing. Obscene. Vulgar. Tasteless. Self-aggrandizing. Unbecoming. Travesty. Shamelessly corrupt.

MAGA.

Happily, we needn’t dwell further upon this debauchery (wish I’d thought of that one). Other than reverberations through history and lingering stupefaction around the world, it’s over. We may now turn our celebratory attention elsewhere.

Our national artist of the deal has capitulated his way back, for sixty days, anyway, to where things were before his lie-based vanity war. It’s a “Memorandum of Understanding,” not a deal. The Strait of Hormuz will re-open, as before Trump’s folly, except for the fees Iran may still charge. Iran’s nuclear future remains unresolved. The regime stays in place. It can resume selling oil. Bewailed by Republicans when President Obama did it, Iranian assets are unfrozen. In the eyes of the world, Trump’s war has made Iran stronger and America weaker.

At best, our dealer might even art his way back, nuke-wise, to the situation extant before he trumped the Comprehensive Agreement achieved under President Barack Obama, international inspectors and all. If not, algaeic reflections on what we witnessed on the South Lawn may have to suffice.

But Trump’s amaranthine debasement of the White House is trivial compared to his deadly war on democracy’s definitional fundament: free and fair elections, equally available to all citizens. Having hired amoral sycophants helping Trump destroy everything America once stood for, people like Kash Patel and Todd Blanche and Russell Vought, plus overt racists like Stephen Miller, it’s proceeding apace, unchecked by Congressional Republicans, some of whom know better. Two, maybe.

Coming from Trump, to repeat a truism, accusation is confession. Like having lied for a decade about rigged elections for which he’s presented neither proof nor explained how it was accomplished. Aided by repetition of the lie by Foxian media, every cabinet member, and nearly all Republicans in Congress, he’s tilled MAGA’s intracranial soil, implanting unquestioning belief. Every election MAGA loses in November will be called rigged; every MAGA will believe it.

He’s not settling for the big lie. Under his command, the US Postal Service says it won’t deliver ballots in blue states, like ours, that refused his illegal demand to hand over their voter rolls. And he’s declared mail-in ballots illegal. Were the Supreme Court’s ideological, regressive majority not rewriting our Constitution, those efforts would be down-slapped in a Minuteman minute.

In what’s certain to be the first of many, Trump’s Kash-poor FBI raided an Ohio institution dedicated to registering eligible voters. The raid included homes of its leaders and staff, and the intent is obvious: intimidation. Not just of people wanting to register, but people helping them. Just as obvious: Democrats work to protect voting by all citizens, while Trump’s MAGAfied Republican Party wants to scare them away. Otherwise, they can’t win.

The sabotage includes SCOTUS-blessed gerrymandering in Republican-controlled states, where Black-majority districts are being systematically legislated out of existence. Some blue states are trying to counter it, even as Congressional Democrats have, repeatedly, produced legislation to outlaw gerrymandering, predictably voted down by Republican majorities. “Otherwise, we can’t win” should be their official motto. 

To their list of electoral corruption, add accessibility-skewed voter ID laws and purging legal citizens from voter rolls, potentially disenfranchising millions around the country. Their lying about Democrats rigging elections serves to mute allegations of their own obvious malfeasance. Is it time to suggest elections won by Republicans were rigged? What Trump and his party are doing is as obvious as an FBI raid. They hope to bury recognition under a pile of lies.

Oh, but Trump loves America. Just not the one in which laws were followed and court orders obeyed; in which the Department of Justice enforced our laws impartially. He kisses the flag, though, posts pictures of himself doing it on his Truthless Sociopath platform. And he put on a cage fight to delight testiculated Americans, right there on the lawn of the People’s House. Sure, he’s getting richer from investing in the sponsoring corporations and planting his crypto grift’s logo around the octagon. But, hey: what’s love if not that?

Also: nipples.

What About

 

Ken Paxton. Herschel Walker. MTG. Pete Hegseth. Pam Bondi. Lauren Boebert. Matt Goetz. Kari Lake. Tommy Tuberville... DONALD TRUMP!

Graham Platner.

That’s all I have to say about that.

Well, okay. There’s hypocrisy enough to go around. But if democracy is to survive, and, given how many so-called patriots don’t care or would prefer it doesn’t, survival is hardly assured, it’s existentially critical that Democrats retake control of Congress. Also, Susan Collins is very annoying. 

If Dems were to retake the Senate – I mean, seriously, Paxton vs Talarico is a tough call?? – I’d hope they’d find a new majority leader. Which is all I have to say about that.

Speaking of Trump – our querimonious gudgeon-in-chief – it’s hard to say which is more obvious: his continual lies about his equally idiotic and catastrophic war, or that Iran is playing him like a pawn-shop ghaychak.

His only consistent approach is to lie that we won the war, that Iran has no military capability left, even as they continue to strike, and that prices are coming down. Who ya gonna believe? Trump or yer lyin’ gas pumps?

But that’s not his only consistency. Equally consequential and destructive is his penchant (I like people who pronounce it “ponSHAWN”) for hiring the most unqualified people available; people guaranteed to ignore the law and to do his bidding. Bill Pulte is the most recent and among the most glaring examples. Trump wants him to be our next Director of (oxymoron alert!) National Intelligence; a man with zero experience in the field. None. Less than Pentagon Pete had in managing the world’s largest military.

What pulled Pulte into contention is his history, as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, of drumming up fake charges against people Trump hates. For their truth-telling and for using their positions as our Constitution intended. Clever deceiver that he is, Trump posits Pulte as “temporary” director, thus avoiding the need for senate confirmation which, even from this Trump intanked collection of electorally invertebrate Republicans, appears uncertain.

He’ll be there long enough, though, to look for ways to charge Democrats with treason or something. That there’s little else of importance to be done as DNI is confirmed by Trump having him keep that housing job. I won’t mention the dildo thing. Not that kind of guy.

How about this: hiring Elias Irizarry a convicted, then pardoned, J6 rioter for a sensitive anti-terrorism job in the Pentagon? He was only nineteen at the time, and he has apologized for what he did, including, I guess, deleting a week’s worth of texts on his phone, before and after January 6. The job requires top-secret clearance. Some of the flying I did in Vietnam required that, too. They didn’t want to give it to me because my dad once had a law client who was the brother of a member of the Oregon Communist Party. I guess things are looser now, in the current administration.

At least Mr. Irizarry isn’t among the hundreds of pardoned J6 felons who’ve gone on to commit crimes running the gamut from property crimes, fraud, illegal firearm possession, planned assassination, and more. At least fourteen have been charged with sex crimes, including child abuse. Victims of President Biden’s government weaponization, Trump says, deserving of taxpayer money for reparations.

Follow the law? In testimony before Congress last week, Markwayne Mullin, another questionable hire as head of DHS, refused to commit to obeying court orders. For Trump, that’s the opposite of disqualifying.

Another consistency in today’s version of Republican conservatism is, since entering the Trump zone, axiomatic: any election in which a Republican candidate loses is, inarguably and definitionally, rigged. Evidence, consistently lacking in all instances, is unnecessary nor to be sought. All that’s required is saying so. The consistent debunking of every claim, from mules to hacked machines to millions of votes from non-citizens to forged mail-in ballots, only goes to prove it. Never has anyone produced a credible sequence of steps by which the rigging occurred.

California’s ridiculously slow vote-counting is perfect substrate for conspiracists, a group that includes House Speaker Holy Mike Johnson, a man by his own assertion in direct communication with God. “Look, some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it’s impossible to prove,” he said. “But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.” The fact that it’s impossible to prove is all the proof Ministerial Mike needs. It’s instinct. Like Trump’s gut, as opposed to expert advice, when it comes to policy decisions.

We end today's reality check with something definitely-not cognitively-impaired, gut-following Trump posted on his Truthless Sociopath platform:

“Communists always do well with the Voters or, as they would say, THE PEOPLE, in the Early Years! But, in the end, the Country, State, or City, GOES TO HELL! Great Violence proceeds at levels never seen before, and the entity dissolves into Poverty, Squalor, and Crime. Remember, breathtaking ‘Popularity’ first, and then, guaranteed DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!” 

So sayeth the “Leader of the Free World.”

Fools Give You Reasons...

 

After last week’s column detailing only a fraction of the grotesque corruption Trump and his familiars are getting away with, I heard from a sometime commenter. “The most corrupt administration in US?!!,” he wrote. “Laughable! Thank God for President Trump. No he’s not perfect but the Biden and Obama administrations absolutely corrupt and throw in the mainstream media, including the Herald and the propaganda they push against America and you got corruption, buddy. At least Trump is standing up FOR America which is why the MAJORITY voted for him.” (sic)

I requested examples of Biden or Obama’s “absolute” corruption and for evidence of Trump being “for” America as opposed to only himself. I also pointed out that whereas Trump did win the last election, the majority of votes went to others. On the assumption he can’t differentiate between news and opinion, of which the Herald provides a variety, I didn’t ask for examples of its “propaganda against America,” of which there are none.

I guess he’s still formulating an answer.

His comment helps us understand Texas Republican primary results for US Senate. Longtime senator John Cornyn, a vanilla Trumpist who tried to get a Texas highway named after him but failed to grovel enough, lost to AG Ken Paxton; a man so glaringly corrupt that his own party impeached him and the Republican senatorial campaign committee spent $100 million to defeat 

him.

After a last-minute endorsement from Trump, he crushed poor Mr. Cornyn. After which the Republican campaign committee endorsed him. A serial adulterer and liar, an unethical scammer still under indictment, and first-order election denier. Sound familiar?

Two possibilities: either Texas Republican voters limit their news to Foxoid sources and haven’t heard about Paxton’s and Trump’s transgressions, or they know and consider them reasons to vote for them. Not despite. BECAUSE. The choices are equally damning of people still supporting Trump.

In the case of my commenter, it must be a bit of both. Bombarded for years from Fox with “the Biden crime family,” he swallowed it without chewing, despite, after years of “investigations,” having been shown no evidence of it. Fobbing off Trump’s self-dealing, lying, and illegal billions in family-enrichment as “not perfect,” the only inference is he’s okay with it. Admires it, probably.

To comprehend Trump supporters’ mentation, consider the latest verbal atrocity spewed by Deputy Chief of Staff and co-president, Stephen Miller: “The American people understand the hell that we inherited and the extraordinary paradise that President Trump is building.” That’s “climate change is a hoax” level lying. “Iran was weeks away from a nuclear bomb” b.s. “Nothing less than absolute surrender” narcissistic puffery. It’s the kind of barefaced, transparent lies away with which the Trump administration gets, daily. Not only gets. Has them amplified by rightwing media, hourly.

Here’s Miller’s “inherited hell”: Post-Covid, the lowest inflation and fastest-growing economy of any nation. More job growth than any previous president, most small businesses being created. Infrastructure being rebuilt. Reversed Trump’s Covid incompetence. There’s lots more. (I’ve been urged to dispense with fact-confirming links, but readers can easily find them.)

And Trump’s “paradise”? Soaring debt; an unending, unnecessary war based on a lie; accelerating inflation, especially food and gas; depletion of our military assets; handing world leadership to China; fulfilling Putin’s dream of weakening NATO; creating – deliberately – the most political division in our country since the Civil War, right out of the fascist playbook; and, to beat a moribund horse, wallowing in the most government corruption we’ve ever seen.

I’d have listed spewing hate for anyone who doesn’t support him, punishing dissent, and turning his DOJ into his personal Stasi, but MAGAs see those as positives. Same with his nightly barrage of repetitive grievances, childish name-calling, and pathological lying. It’s unsurprising that Stephen Miller, as loathsome a person as ever slithered the earth, produced the foregoing outrage, or that he assumes people will believe it. Nor, by now, is it surprising that they do. MAGA news sources are built around the concept that if a lie is repeated often enough, it’ll be accepted as truth.

It’s how my respondent can assert, with certainty, despite being unable to produce examples, that Presidents Obama and Biden were more corrupt than Trump. That kind of unquestioning credulity bodes ill for our republic, the survival of which depends on citizens’ ability to think.

But let’s end on a happier note. As Trump systematically destroys America’s efforts to study and mitigate climate change, other countries are filling the void. Australia has become a leader in solar power and, addressing sunshine’s inexplicable absence at night, its homes are increasingly equipped with high-capacity storage batteries. Elsewhere, Türkiye, where I just was, is creating massive solar farms, and, by law, manufacturing equivalent batteries to go with them. Several European countries are approaching 100% clean energy.

As Trump’s America, blind to science and averse to facts, falls behind – and not just in sustainable sources -- enlightened world leaders may yet save the day. Addressing climate change elsewhere, it seems, is easier than regaining sanity here.