Cloudy, humid and a bit of sprinkles this early-evening Sunday here in California’s Central Valley. Another end to a two-day event, which not too long ago was called the ‘weekend,’ but now a week is measured just by days not seeming to end.
Idiotic, insane character — the T-Rump tweeted this last night:
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2020
Today, Bill Pullman reportedly responded: “My voice belongs to no one but me, and I’m not running for president — this year.”
I saw “Independence Day” in a theater when it came out in 1996 (shit-load number of times via home video). My son and I went, he was then 7, can’t remember the circumstances which most-likely prevented at least a couple of my other kids from attending, anyway, that speech is indeed hokey, and Americana to the max, but it surely wasn’t creepy, or scary. T-Rump’s dumb-ass version is way-creepy, with a near-comical Orwellian sense of scary. (Ted Cruz crying!).
Freaking-dumb-ass-asshole. (Yes! Two asses there, back-to-back).
If our current situation was a movie, we all could get up and walk the shit out of the darkness into warm sunshine (Saturday afternoon matinee), but reality is reality. Due to most-obvious circumstances, the world is set on edge due to the T-Rump, who before the pandemic was horrifyingly shitty, now even worse.
COVID-19 cuts the bullshit. How much longer can the US titter-totter on the brink of a watershed calamity, if we’re not already there, inside the calamity itself.
A real-time look at the T-Rump’s impact at The Washington Post the morning:
Amid a once-in-a-century deadly pandemic, Trump has inserted his ego squarely into the U.S. response while simultaneously minimizing his own role — deferring critical decisions to others, undermining his credibility with confusion and misinformation, and shirking responsibility in what some see as a shrinking of the American presidency.
…
Peter Wehner, who served in the past three Republican administrations and is an outspoken Trump critic, was more blunt, arguing Trump’s “extreme narcissism” has impeded his administration’s pandemic response.“There’s no question that he has miniaturized the office,” Wehner said.
“He’s shrunken it, he’s degraded it, and he’s defaced it. It’s a kind of civic vandalism he’s inflicted on the office.”For Trump, sometimes the message seems more important than the policy.
During a Rose Garden news conference last week, Trump announced his administration was sending $11 billion to states and territories to help them with testing.
But when a reporter asked him why every American who wants a test still can’t get a test, two months after Trump first promised they could, the president was exasperated.“That’s the problem with a question like that,” Trump said.
“We go through a whole announcement saying, ‘We’re number one in the world by far,’ by a factor of two, and even three and four depending on where you’re looking, and I get a question, ‘When will everybody be able to get tested?’”The focus, he implied, should be on his ceremonial announcement, not the continued lack of what experts say is sufficient mass testing.
Hence the problem with this entire subject matter is the T-Rump. He needs to go as soon as possible, and yes, yesterday would have been better.
(Illustration: ‘Basic Shapes,‘ by caricaturist/illustrator Chong Jit Leong found here).