Your bag is empty.
Something has changed on the Donald Trump landscape.
As the new year plays out, the efforts of his entire administration appear to be geared to counterprogramming his impeachment trial in the Senate.
In the second week of the new year Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani and former condo salesman for Fred Trump (the president’s father), came forward to claim everyone in the Trump administration knew the president was trying to shake down the Ukrainian government to get dirt on Joe Biden, the Democrat Trump is most clearly scared to face in the November general election. That information was overshadowed yesterday by the Government Accountability Office, which ruled Trump broke the law when he withheld Ukrainian security assistance.
Fearing the worst from his impending Senate impeachment trial, Trump has vigorously fought back. As the year began he decided to kill an Iranian General to draw the attention from his many illegal and nefarious acts. This fact is almost forgotten a week later on the heels of a trade agreement with China that brought Dr. Henry Kissinger back into the White House for a rare moment of sloth.
Qasem Soleimani, the general in question, was, at the time of his death, perhaps the second most powerful man in Iran. Depending on who you ask, he was a cutthroat terrorist, an Iranian patriot or a bit of both.
On just the third day of the new year President Trump decided Soleimani was an “imminent” threat to the United States, so he had a member of the military sitting in a bunker somewhere in the Middle East conduct a drone strike that killed the general in a move as easy as wasting aliens in Halo.
Trump has defended the video-arcade assassination ever since and said Democrats are pro-terrorist for even questioning the president’s valiant move to maintain peace and de-escalate tension in the Middle East by killing a general and sending more troops to Syria in response.
But that’s not all Trump has done in the first two weeks of the new year. He has also gone underground.
He hasn’t appeared before the open press yet, and for a few days he even cut down on his tweeting. He isn’t offering anything more than propaganda and rhetoric.
His administration hasn’t conducted a briefing in nearly a year. He hasn’t appeared before the open press yet, and for a few days he even cut down on his tweeting. He isn’t taking questions and he isn’t offering anything more than propaganda and rhetoric to explain his actions.
What’s up with the Donald?
Those who’ve known him for years say he is a man who desperately wants to be liked. They describe him as, among other things, a “dangerous nihilist” and a man who can be petulant and angry if he believes he’s been slighted. They also say he’s very lonely.
These are not the best characteristics of any adult, let alone a president, but it explains many of Trump’s actions. Unable to get into the best country clubs, he opened his own. Unable to buy into the NFL he bought a team in the USFL. Some say he was instrumental in the league’s destruction.
Former CIA Director John Brennan said Trump is the most ignorant and incompetent man to ever hold the office of president. Those he hires are even more so, and those who follow him love him for it. He plays to this crowd, his base, in order to keep the masses coming to his rallies to stoke his ego and allow him the illusion, for at least another day, that somebody likes him.
Trump doesn’t necessarily like his followers, and in as much as some of those closest to him have heard him insult the crowds who adore him, Trump is imprisoned by them. Some of these people may be extreme. They may be racists, xenophobes and zealots, but they’re Trump’s people and he needs them.
This, coupled with a need to have people look the other way on impeachment, has led us all to the brink of war with Iran, a trade deal with China that bottom-line cost us billions of dollar and the impeachment itself, currently exposing the vitriol and shallow divisiveness of the Senate in ways one could only previously be imagined in Dante’s Inferno.
He went on a rambling speech that mentioned Lou Dobbs, Lindsey Graham’s golf game and fireworks at Mt. Rushmore and gave thanks to everyone but the busboys.
The Trump propaganda machine is in full tilt. Counterprogramming Impeachment hearings with a rambling, frightening speech this week in Wisconsin that addressed witch hunts and bad plumbing, Trump also tried to drown out the House vote this Wednesday to send articles of impeachment to the Senate by announcing “phase one” of the China Trade deal.
Even according to the administration, the deal does little to address the billions already lost in the trade war, but Trump took more than an hour to announce it. He imprisoned reporters, guests and members of the Chinese delegation in the East Room and while he refused to face any questions, he went on a rambling speech that mentioned Lou Dobbs, Lindsey Graham’s golf game and fireworks at Mt. Rushmore and gave thanks to everyone but the busboys.
Welcome to the White House in 2020. It doesn’t have to make sense. It often doesn’t.
In fact Trump long ago abandoned any attempt at reality. He is purposely avoiding it. He is as extreme as he wants, driving fear into people’s hearts that he’s a dangerous man. It all helps to keep him from addressing impeachment, his lack of vision and his miserable, wretched corruptness.
The more arcane, anachronistic or asinine his comments, the more he knows we’ll pay attention to them—and the more we keep from dealing with his sleight of hand.
Donald Trump at the beginning of 2020 is the most dangerous man on the planet, not only for what he has done, but what he represents and how successful he has become at doing it. The press has little recourse but to report his madness, and while the House seems to want to address his shortcomings, the faithful and the Senate still do not.
As long as the judges and the economy are where the GOP wants them, nothing apparently will happen to Donald Trump.
The administration accuses the Democrats of fighting their targeted Iranian assassination because, according to one senior official, it hasn’t hit them at home yet. “Things would be different if they were targeted with their friends at Cafe Milano,” I was told by a senior White House official. “But this is a terrorist regime that kills Americans. We were justified. Look, this is as easy to defend as the other accusations made by Democrats of this president. ‘No Collusion. No Quid pro quo. Terrorist regime.’”
As long as the judges and the economy are where the GOP wants them, nothing apparently will happen to Donald Trump.
Iran is a dumping ground of diversion. China trade deals are the same. Trump is creating enmity internationally to try and save himself domestically from an impeachment that is choking him.
His response is typical. He continues to deflect and attack. But as the new year unravels he’s trying out a new trick: silence. At least to some extent.
Gone are the long visits on the South Lawn with reporters as he answers our questions he pretends he can’t hear with answers that make no sense. Gone are open press events. We are left with only pool sprays where a few select reporters get to ask questions in a very limited way before a president who spins those questions into propaganda that in no way answers the questions.
The press office refuses to meet with reporters on a daily basis and continues to try and limit reporters’ access to the president—even fighting court battles the administration has already lost as it tries to keep reporters from covering Donald Trump.
This year opens with the scariest of scenarios: A president provably committed crimes on an international stage to benefit his re-election effort. The country he committed it in is now investigating his associates for the actions they took. The GAO has issued a ruling saying the president broke the law. The House leadership under Nancy Pelosi withheld passing articles of impeachment to the Senate until much of this news broke. Now the Senate—which many observers believe is fixing to aquit—faces renewed skepticism for the coming trial and must decide whether or not to allow witnesses.
Win or lose at trial, Trump has lost for a majority of Americans what matters most, indeed if he ever had it: credibility.
The president of the United States is a dangerous liar. Most everyone who works for him aids and abets his criminal activity. Knowing that, Trump has apparently decided to change tactics at the beginning of the year. He’s not going to change his criminal behavior; he’s just going to try and talk about it less.