‘Do that one more time and you’re really going to get it’

Tell me if this happened:

When you were little, you did something bad and your mother yelled at you. “Do that one more time and you’re really going to get it.” So naturally you did it again, just to see what, if anything, was going to happen.

So have you met our faux-president, Donald J. Trump?

I read today that he’s going to conduct a telethon during his State of the Union address to raise money for his 2020 re-election campaign – in violation of the rules of the House of Representatives. (Did he get this idea from Pat Robertson, I wonder?) We can add this to the list of rules, regulations, constitutional provisions and laws he has broken during 12 months as president…a list so long I don’t have the time or the desire to report them all here.

Let’s just say he has improperly used the presidency to make money on his own properties and his name brand, accepted gifts from foreign governments in exchange for access to the White House, hired family members into key positions in spite of the no-nepotism rule, ignored the will of Congress by refusing to apply sanctions on Russia and raped the Constitution by ignoring the principle of checks and balances while attempting to establish an authoritarian dictatorship with himself as the Supreme Leader, much the same way he ran his New York real estate business or his reality TV show.   

No doubt, there are people out there right now saying, “If he does one more thing like this he’s really going to get it.” Unfortunately, the people who would say that are not in a position to do anything about it – and those who could do something won’t – which means he’ll do it again and again and again. I’m not the first to say this but I’ll say it anyway: Trump has successfully pulled off the trifecta of tyranny, the hat trick of treason and the triple play of plutocracy.

(1) First, he destroyed the media by claiming that mainstream news organizations are corrupt and that therefore, any negative stories about him were fake news. By disputing their credibility, he made it impossible for objective reporters to tell us the truth about Trump and be believed. (Exception made for Fox and Friends. Their words are golden.)

(2) Next, he discredited the nation’s intelligence operation, specifically the FBI. Why? Because if he ever was to be investigated, reprimanded, sanctioned or charged with a crime, it would be the FBI that would do it. So now he says they are also corrupt and can’t be trusted, so who is left to enforce the laws that Trump repeatedly breaks?

(3) And finally, he has told his minions and his lap dogs and his Fascist followers to stick with him no matter what he says or does because if anybody ever gets in trouble for it, he’ll have their pardon papers drawn up before the sun goes down. If you don’t believe that, I’d point you toward Arizona and Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

I know this will mess up my theory of threes, but there is one more element to this story and that is the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which by all accounts is amassing a mountain of evidence that somebody colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 election and is now obstructing justice by attempting to derail his investigation.

I have to believe that every night when he takes his cheeseburger to bed and every morning when he wakes up and looks for his Twitter phone, the first thought that crosses Trump’s mind is, “I’m going to fire Mueller today.” Nixon tried that during the Saturday Night Massacre and it didn’t turn out well for him. However, back in 1974, we had a Congress that was more concerned with the welfare of the country than it was with getting re-elected.

What would happen if Trump fires Mueller? I don’t know, but I can’t see the spineless Paul Ryan and his Republican cohorts in the House Judiciary Committee filing articles of impeachment against Trump the way the committee did against Nixon under Peter Rodino in 1974.

Remember – in the Nixon case, they had tapes. They had actual tape recordings of Nixon committing crimes. In 2018 or beyond, even if such tapes existed, Trump would claim they had been manufactured by the Democrats, doctored by the FBI or were simply “fake.” Or he would say it wasn’t his voice on the tapes. Think Access Hollywood 2.0.

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There’s no caps like snow caps

On a lighter note, I heard Trump’s interview with Piers Morgan in which he claimed the polar ice caps are “setting records.” I really want to know where he got that information and what the hell he thought he meant.

I mean seriously, did he get that from Fox and Friends? Did Kellyanne Conway tell him to say that? Or Hope Hicks? Did he misread a briefing paper, or did he simply overhear part of a conversation in which the only words he understood were “ice caps” and “records?” If so, it’s not a stretch to think his narcissistic brain translated that into “the ice caps are setting records under my presidency.” Never mind that the records they are setting are for melting into the sea.

There are two things wrong with this comment. First, that Trump made it at all, and second, that Piers Morgan didn’t immediately respond with, “Are you fuggin’ crazy? Do you even have a clue what you're talking about?” At that point, I would have been tempted to end the interview, get up and walk out, leaving Trump sitting in the chair by himself. What did Morgan do? He went on to the next question.

For the record, here is Trump’s complete answer to Morgan's question about global warming:

“That wasn’t working too well, because it was getting too cold all over the place. The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they’re setting records, so OK, they’re at a record level. There were so many thing happening, Piers. I’ll tell you what I believe in. I believe in clear air. I believe in crystal clear beautiful water. I believe in just having good cleanliness in all. Now, that being said, if somebody said go back into the Paris Accord, if we could go back into the Paris Accord, it would have to be a completely different deal because we had a horrible deal, As usual, they took advantage of the United States. We were in a terrible deal. Would I go back in? Yeah, I’d go back in. I like, as you know, I like Emmanuel… No, no, I like Emmanuel, I would love to, but it’s got to be a good deal for the United States.”

You can read the full interview here.