The week that was? You can say that again

Back in the early 1960s, there was a TV show called “That Was the Week That Was.” It was originally a British comedy program hosted by David Frost that took a satirical look at the news and politics of the day. An American version of the show with the same name aired on NBC from 1964 to 1965, also featuring Frost as host.

If that show were still on television today, this past week would certainly qualify as one of the weeks that was. I mean, setting satire aside, all of these events actually happened in just the past few days:

* For one thing, we had the revelation that the president’s people have been doctoring his photographs to make the fat man look thinner and to suggest that his tiny hands are bigger and his stubby fingers are longer. And that was the funny part.  

* Next, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told the President of the United States he couldn’t come over to her place to stage his annual “State of the Union Fact-Free Fantasy Forecast, Fictitious Fib-a-Thon and Red Hat MAGA Rally” until he stopped shutting down the federal government. She hit him where it hurts. Telling an attention-starved reality show star and malignant narcissist he couldn’t have an hour and a half of free television time to spew out unhinged propaganda was like telling a newborn baby it couldn’t have milk.

* That same president, via Twitter, openly threatened the safety and well-being of his former attorney and his family if the one-time “fixer” had the audacity to testify before a Senate committee investigating the president, all the while continuing to chant “no collusion” and pretending that he hasn’t done anything wrong. Frankie Pentangeli much? Apparently, none of Trump’s army of dime store lawyers has ever bothered to explain to him what the terms “obstruction of justice” and “witness intimidation” mean.

* Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a theoretical billionaire who seems to have problems with the math required to calculate his own assets, said he can’t understand why federal workers affected by Trump’s month-long government shutdown couldn’t get by without their paychecks, suggesting they just take out a bridge loan to cover their debts. Because, you know, banks are always bending over backward to loan money out to people who tell them they have no income with which to pay them back.

(Note to Mr. Ross: In case you’ve missed it, multiple scholars and other smart people are currently writing books about the myriad things you, the president and the rest of his Swamp Creature Cabinet aren’t able to understand. The utter incompetence of Trump and his advisors and their complete lack of connection with anything resembling the real world and its people will be studied and written about by historians, psychologists and textbook authors long after you and your cohorts are buried deep in the ground.)

* Then, the president who bills himself as the world’s greatest negotiator offered legislation to a Republican-controlled Senate that would have given him $5.7 billion for a border wall, and tried to call it a compromise by throwing in a bunch of crap that the Democratic Party didn’t want. Republican control or not, the Senate turned him down. At the same time, the Democrats offered a proposal to reopen the government while giving the president absolutely nothing, and while their bill also was defeated, it managed to garner more support than the president’s own plan. Oops! Called that one wrong, hey Mr. Trump?

* Just today, the government shutdown got so bad that one of the nation’s largest airports had to suspend operations for several hours because it didn’t have enough air traffic controllers to ensure safe takeoffs and landings. La Guardia, we have a problem.

* Also today, one of the president’s long-time aides, Roger Stone, was indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for lying to authorities, obstruction of justice and witness tampering in connection with Russian interference in the 2016 election. To illustrate the similarities between Trump and another infamous Republican president, Stone arrived for a news conference displaying the Richard “I am not a crook” Nixon two-handed, arms outstretched victory salute. Not a good look, Roger, mimicking one president who was almost impeached while defending another one who soon may be.

* And finally, in the coup de grace, the aforementioned Mrs. Pelosi ate the president’s lunch right off his plate by forcing him to reopen the government and admit defeat without giving him a single penny for his all-concrete / steel slat / some kind of material to be determined later southern border wall. That prompted meme makers to develop images showing certain of Trump’s body parts stored inside a jar. You can google that or simply use your imagination.

So Trump walks away with the same “compromise” he could have made 35 days ago and spared 800,000 government workers the pain of being furloughed or having to work without getting paid. I'm seeing an image of Howie Mandel and a couple dozen women in electric blue mini-dresses toting silver briefcases and shouting, “Deal or no deal?”

I'm also thinking that when the history of the world is written, there will be a short chapter describing the past few days as one of the "weeks that was" in the presidency of Donald Trump. I doubt if even the satirists at the British Broadcasting Corporation could conjure up this kind of political theater.