Sunshine with a wisp of cold this early-evening Wednesday here in California’s Central Valley, outside is a breath of relief against the ugly, full-blown crazy of the nowadays — just in the backyard a few moments ago doing a B&M (Wine, wood-tip) when a huge flock of some-type birds coiled themselves directly above. I could even pretty-distinctly hear a thick flutter of all their wings as they circled the immediate sky. An amazing spectacle for a few seconds until they finshed their twirling rings and disappeared to the south, out of sight.

Meanwhile, back at the laptop and the dirge to the T-Rump, now in the final days of his most-horrible indentation upon America on so many levels it’s near impossible to describe, or even list. Especially this year, and even more especially, since the election — in a life of continous publicity-seeking, T-Rump has been hunkered behind closed doors without much fanfare and when he does appear, he makes a psychotic-ass of himself.
T-Rump’s falllacy in appearances this year is when shit goes off script — as a TV phony and way-ignorant asshole he can show how idiotic he really is, and how awful a person.
In its way, COVID has shown how much he is truly lily-livered-shitty.

Remember this from near the end of November, T-Rump’s surprise press conference lasting only 64 seconds, yet time anough to blather weird-ass shit about how wonderful the stock market (zilch about COVID), then zipped away without taking questions: ‘“Well that was weird as shit,” one reporter was heard saying after Trump’s departure, a sentiment others echoed on social media.‘

Trump took no questions after today's very quick appearance in the briefing room to talk about the stock market.

You can hear a reporter say, "Well that was weird as shit." pic.twitter.com/lrkjlEHx3h

— The Recount (@therecount) November 24, 2020

And more recently — just earlier this month T-Rump couldn’t handle public scrutiny once again when he presented wrestling legend Dan Gable with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. T-Rump appeared to have gotten his feelings hurt, turned sulky and made a bigger ass of himself to the world.

T-Rump says to Gable: “Now, I’m larger than you a little bit. Do you think I could take you in wrestling now? Would I Have a big advantage?”

Gable: “You would have no chance.”

Not too long after that dialogue, seemingly reporters’ inquiries about Joe Biden and the election pissed him off and, coupled with Gable’s fuck-you comeback, the T-Rump ‘just kind of walked out, looking agitated, leaving Gable and his family hanging in the Oval Office.‘

This is unreal. Trump abruptly walked out of Dan Gable’s Medal of Freedom ceremony today, leaving Gable shrugging and at a complete loss about what he was supposed to do. pic.twitter.com/mOzlLn8poC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 8, 2020

What directed me to this subject was a piece by Poppy Noor at the Guardian this afternoon on the T-Rumps forays into the public domain this year, and as a TV/spotlight hog how haywire the scenes — first with the press:

Trump turned press briefings from a forum to keep the president accountable and to inform the world about his policy decisions; to a daily performance ripe with monologues, insults and interruptions.
Absolute loyalty was expected, and dissent was treated like treason.
Journalists who tried to hold him to account were treated with disdain, interrupted or admonished, with their right to ask further questions revoked.

Many believe public officials should remain above drama and spats, but Trump seemed unable to stop himself from putting on a show — especially if it seemed he wasn’t “winning”.

“Be nice, don’t be threatening,” he told PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor when she asked the president about New York’s lack of ventilators back in April.
“You’re a fake,” Trump would proclaim to reporters who asked him difficult questions.
When asked about the US lives lost to the virus at a press briefing, Trump thought it pertinent to respond to an Asian American journalist: “Ask China.”

He might as well have been pointing a finger at each of them proclaiming, “You’re fired.”

And ‘that photo op‘ last June:

As protests grew across the country this summer in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Trump must have known how it looked.
Here was the president of law and order, sending in troops to fight his own people; the man who fought against lockdown; the man who likened Democratic cities to “war-zones,” teargassing peaceful protestors.

But Trump knows a picture is worth a thousand words.
Before the reality could sink in, of the president who hid in a bunker during the civil unrest, he made sure he had the perfect photo opportunity.
His bodyguards parted crowds of choking protesters to deliver it to him: standing outside St John’s Episcopal church in DC, Trump stood with a Bible in his hands, looking sombre, as if the city around him wasn’t on fire.

The whole program is an anti-wag-the-dog scenario, due to T-Rump’s complete-imbecilic approach to everything, which for us is the ony saving grace about him — he’s foolishly incompetent. What if these folks were smart, or at least, smarter than a stump?

We’d be fucked even worse…

(Illustration: Pablo Picasso’s ‘Seated Pierrot,’ found here).