film / tv / substack / social media / lists / web / celeb / pajiba love / misc / about / cbr
film / tv / substack / web / celeb

GettyImages-467968914.jpg

Donald Trump Still Has a Giant Bug Up His Ass

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | April 3, 2018 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | April 3, 2018 |


GettyImages-467968914.jpg

Donny Trash still has a bug up his ass this morning.

First of all, ‘Cheatin’ Obama’? Really? Did you focus-test that one, Mr. President? Is there any one incident upon which you are basing that?

You know what I’m looking forward to? Michelle Obama on the campaign trail for the midterms. You know what’s 10 times better than a silly nickname? Belittling a man over and over and over without ever naming him. This is Michelle Obama campaigning against Trump:

michelle-trump.gif

Second of all: No. The President’s approval is not at 50 percent. It’s at 39 percent, according to Gallup, and it’s basically been between 35 and 40 percent since May 2017.

Screen Shot 2018-04-03 at 8.39.12 AM.jpg

Things are not on an upswing for Trump. Political opinion has concretized here, and for the record: Obama’s approval rating basically bottomed out around the 2010 midterms at around 44 percent. At 44 percent, the Republicans picked up 63 seats. Good luck hanging on to the House with a 39 percent approval, Trump, especially after the stock market has wiped out all its gains this year and it may lose more because of the trade war that Trump started and the attacks he continues to make against Amazon.

And another thing, Donald: Amazon’s stock may take a hit, but it will still be around in 10 years when you are dead, and next year, when your power has been neutralized, and in three years when you’re tweeting from your permanent home in Mar-A-Lago.

— Most of us will survive this. Not all of us, unfortunately. I point you to this searing piece from Propublica on a teenager who turned against his gang, MS-13, and gave the police evidence to help authorities arrest his fellow gang members.

Under normal circumstances, Henry’s choice would have been his salvation. By working with the police, he could have escaped the gang and started fresh. But not in the dawning of the Trump era, when every immigrant has become a target and local police in towns like Brentwood have become willing agents in a nationwide campaign of detention and deportation. Without knowing it, Henry had picked the wrong moment to help the authorities.

Henry has been picked up by ICE — the very organization to whom he informed — and is awaiting deportation back to El Salvador, where he is marked for death because he snitched on his fellow gang members.

— Sadly, too, the damage has already been done to people like Jill McCabe, an ER surgeon and the wife of Andrew McCabe, who had the audacity to run for office in order to improve access to healthcare for the people in her state. This is McCabe, in her own words:

To have my personal reputation and integrity and those of my family attacked this way is beyond horrible. It feels awful every day. It keeps me up nights. I made the decision to run for office because I was trying to help people. Instead, it turned into something that was used to attack our family, my husband’s career and the entire FBI.

Nothing can prepare you for what happens when your life is turned upside down by current events. Nothing prepares you for conversations you have to have with your teenage children. Nothing prepares you for the news crews staking out your house, your back yard, your place of business. Nothing prepares you for the fear you feel every time you receive a package from a stranger.

I have spent countless hours trying to understand how the president and so many others can share such destructive lies about me. Ultimately I believe it somehow never occurred to them that I could be a serious, independent-minded physician who wanted to run for office for legitimate reasons. They rapidly jumped to the conclusion that I must be corrupt, as part of what I believe to be an effort to vilify us to suit their needs.

McCabe’s husband, of course, was fired two days before his pension kicked in. Why? For doing his job.

— Speaking of Amazon, these attacks by Trump have probably made Jeff Bezos more popular than ever. I mean: He’s the richest dude in the world, and not exactly a guy anyone might sympathize with, and yet, Trump is somehow turning him into a resistance hero. From Vanity Fair:

Now, according to four sources close to the White House, Trump is discussing ways to escalate his Twitter attacks on Amazon to further damage the company. “He’s off the hook on this. It’s war,” one source told me. “He gets obsessed with something, and now he’s obsessed with Bezos,” said another source. “Trump is like, how can I fuck with him?”

Only in 2018 can the underdog be the richest man in the world.

— Meanwhile, part of why Trump is lashing out probably has to do with how the Mueller probe continues to close in on him. According to a memo filed with the court last night by Mueller, it was Rod Rosenstein who gave him the authority to investigate Paul Manafort for “collusion” with the Russians during the 2016 election, in case you’re wondering why Trump continues to go after the DOJ.

— Finally, I’m not sure how much longer Scott Pruit, the head of the EPA, will have a job. He’s been under fire for weeks over ethical improprieties, and now we have learned that he asked the White House for raises for two of his top aides. The White House denied him those raises, so he used a provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act to work around the White House and grant those aides the raises.


When he’s fired — and he will be — I’m not sure how Trump could find a worse guy to replace him.

But he probably will.