Lying liars, Twitter wars, medical marvels

I haven’t written much lately, and there’s a reason for that. Watching the news over the past week or two has me shaking my head so much I think parts of it have broken loose. At the very least, it’s made me so dizzy I can’t focus on the keyboard.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know there are two things I can’t abide: stupidity and lying, which coincidentally happen to be the two main factors that made Donald Trump the faux president of the United States. He lied continually throughout his campaign and 62 million voters were too stupid to understand.

Stupidity aside, recently we have been observing a series of running feuds between the Trump administration and everyone from former presidents to members of Congress and the widow of an American serviceman killed in action. It goes something like this: In a series of speeches, comments and tweets, Trump the liar tells some lies and another liar lies to defend his lies, and yet another liar lies about why the liar lied in the first place, and finally the white nationalist who left the White House but still holds Trump’s leash admits that one of the lying liars lied…but finds a way to brag about it.

You try writing a coherent blog about all of that. I dare you.

Here’s a partial recap for those of you keeping score at home:

* Twelve days after four American soldiers are killed in Niger, Africa, Trump was asked at a press conference why he hadn’t said anything about the attack. Instead of answering the question, he claimed that former presidents like George Bush and Barack Obama never contacted the spouses of soldiers killed in action, which was a lie. Then he said he does call them when he gets the chance (another lie), claimed that letters had been written and were being sent to all of them as we speak (another lie) and swore that he’s been doing this since he took office in January (another lie).

We know these were lies because right after he said all of this, the White House had to scramble to get a list of all servicemen and women killed around the world since Trump’s inauguration in January. See? Not only did he not call or write to any of their spouses, he didn’t even know who the slain soldiers were.

* When he did actually call the widow of one of the Niger victims, she claimed that he insulted her. When a congresswoman who was with the widow backed up her story, Trump said that was a lie. He insulted the widow and the congresswoman, so they insulted him back, forcing him to insult them back, which meant they each had to go on TV to insult him back…you get the idea. Meanwhile, Trump trotted out his Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, to call the distraught widow an “empty barrel” and defend the president’s insults as basic military protocol.

* Of course, spokesmen for Presidents Bush and Obama took issue with Trump’s lies, and a little research showed that they were telling the truth, which meant that Trump was, well, you know, lying.

* About the same time, both Bush and Obama made speeches at separate events unrelated to the whole Niger thing in which they strongly criticized the Trump administration for its “nationalism and bigotry” (Bush) and the “social, economic and racial schisms that are dividing American society” (Obama). Neither former president mentioned Trump by name.

* That prompted White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to proclaim that Bush and Obama were not talking about Trump when they said those terrible things. She didn’t say who they were talking about, however, apparently leaving us to decide on our own. Perhaps it was someone named Ronald Trump who is president of a small eastern European country named Alterno Factovenia, which only appears on maps made available to Trump and his cabinet members.

Or maybe she was just lying…again. You be the judge.

* To top it off, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon – who was exiled from the White House for being too bat-shit crazy to have security clearance but who still controls Trump’s brain – seemed to dismiss Sanders’s lie by saying that Bush was in fact talking about Trump, but it doesn’t really matter because Bush didn’t know what he was talking about…just like when he was president.

That all happened over two or three days…and I haven’t even gotten into Trump’s twitter wars with Republican senators who refuse to kneel and kiss his ring. Here’s a small taste:

Arizona Senator Jeff Flake: “We must never regard as ‘normal’ the…personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions; the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, [or] the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.”

Trump: “Jeff Flake, with an 18% approval rating in Arizona, said ‘a lot of my colleagues have spoken out.’ Really, they just gave me a standing O!”

Tennessee Senator Jeff Corker: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center.”

“I don’t know why (Trump) lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country in the way that he does, but he does.”

Trump “has great difficulty with the truth.”

Trump: “Bob Corker…couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee.”

By my count, there are six Republican senators who have recently stood up to Donald Trump: Corker, Flake, John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Rand Paul. Flake and Corker are retiring and McCain has cancer and probably won’t run again. The two women have bigger balls than all of their male colleagues and Rand Paul is opposed to everything.

That leaves 46 Republicans in the Senate (and 240-some in the House) who seem willing to keep riding the Trump Train whether it carries them to glory or destruction. I find it remarkable how these medical marvels can stand erect without a spine.