(EDITOR’S NOTE: Please welcome a distinguished guest to the enoughalreadynow.com table this week. While we’re at it, let’s also welcome, Bob Crespo … Bob is a proud Brooklynite who swings a mean axe and has a keen (warped) sense of what is transpiring in America the Beautiful during these long, ear-bleeding days of Trump, The Failed Oligarch. Bob really is a better-than-average guy — an artist even — who I’m sure regularly verges on top-notch. His weekly takes are pure gold. Enjoy. -D. Earl)
By Bob Crespo
Trump began the week by leaving a chaotic America and flying to Asia to make trouble for other countries. He will be gone for 12 days, and Trump Administration spokespeople are on 24/7 alert to explain away the President’s embarrassing statements.
On the way to the airport he slammed his own Justice Department for not prosecuting Hillary Clinton for imaginary crimes, just to mess with his favorite whipping boy Jeff Sessions’ head again, and condemned the Bowe Bergdahl sentence of no jail time, in spite of the fact that the Presiding Judge said his Commander-in-Chief’s public comments on the case had definitely compromised his own judgment and convinced him to be lenient.
While Trump attended the obligatory Pearl Harbor tribute on Saturday, his White House carried the ball admirably by downplaying a major scientific report on Climate Change by 13 (count ‘em!) Federal Agencies.
The Climate Science Special Report is a long awaited document of major importance scientifically, militarily and economically. The Pentagon is already making plans for a compromised ecological future since their mandate is protecting the country without the luxury of being able to deny the truth for political expediency.
Sunday saw another horrific terrorist attack when a lone gunman killed 26 people and wounded 20 more in a Texas church with an AR-15 automatic rifle. From a golf course in Japan, Trump assured us “this isn’t a guns situation” but “a mental health problem,” seeking to stifle questions on whether or not it is time to talk about gun control (it never is).
Then he went about the real business of his Asian trip; playing golf and insulting foreigners. First he used a meeting with the Japanese families of North Korean hostages in an attempt to embroil Japan in his blood feud with Kim Jong Un, then he doubled down by saying he (!) “could not understand why a country of samurai warriors did not shoot down the missiles.”
He whined about the trade deficit and insisted the Japanese buy American armaments to counter the North Korean threat that Trump himself created.
He advised Japan to rearm in big way, a nation so traumatized by WW2 and 2 atomic bombings that they have been committed to peace in every ensuing generation, including this one, maintaining only a small defensive military force, and is constitutionally limited to spending just 1% of it’s GDP on military spending.
The nations of the Asia-Pacific region are also not too eager to see a remilitarized Japan, for obvious historical reasons.
His boorish behavior and provocative statements at every public event in Japan kept the Trump spokespeople busier than a gun store after a mass shooting.
His visit to China promised to be another exercise in Spin Diplomacy for the White House Translation Staff, especially since Trump became upset when a reporter mentioned China’s President Xi’s recent string of success without praising Trump too.
Wait until one of his aides reads Xi’s statement to Trump, the one about the USA and China acting as equals on the world stage. Under no president before Trump was that possibility mentioned by a Chinese leader.
Xi Jinping is not a stupid man and can read the handwriting on the wall, as well as headlines and approval ratings. Like Putin, he sees global opportunity with the USA led by a vain and manipulable buffoon with no grasp of his job and under investigation for serious crimes.
Before China however, Trump could not resist visiting South Korea to further torment his Twitter enemy Kim Jong Un. Oddly enough, he told South Koreans “it will all work out,” without explaining how, leaving them wondering if the working out part involves massive bloodshed and destruction in their country.
Speaking of criminals, it appears Trump’s Commerce Secretary is one, and had business dealings with Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law in a series of convoluted and shady banking deals.
He has a lot of company according to some eye-opening leaked documents called “The Paradise Papers,” detailing how the ultra wealthy hide their business dealings and money overseas while avoiding paying any taxes. Millions of documents reveal a Who’s Who of the world’s ultra-wealthy individuals stashing their money and business dealings overseas to avoid taxation, including members of the Trump Administration.
When he got to China, however, Trump reversed 2 years of China-bashing in an instant, instead praising the Chinese for taking advantage of an idiotic America, throwing his own country under the bus with gusto. Perhaps this was just sweet talk to enlist China in his blood feud with North Korea, but it was a pretty convincing condemnation of the USA by the President of the USA.
Trump seems determined to establish that the Pre-Trump America and Post-Trump America are two different countries, and that the old America was led by 44 weak and incompetent traitors who did nothing right, while the New America can do no wrong under Trump’s (?) strong leadership and unprecedented brilliance.
Which just goes to show us that you can take Donald Trump out of the country, but you can’t take the ignorant and delusional asshole out of Donald Trump.
This was a also a week when Trump threw his fellow Republicans under the bus when the GOP was soundly defeated by Democrats nationwide in an off-year election that sent a message to Trump and to Republicans in Congress that people are getting tired of Making America Great Again at the expense of actual Americans. Looks like the jig is up.
Of course Trump is incapable of admitting defeat, so he claimed the defeated Republicans “never embraced me,” which is an understatement of epic proportions as Republicans in every elective office trip over one another disavowing Trump as if they’d never heard of the man until a week ago.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives’ tax plan has been roundly condemned as Industrial Strength Trickle Down that even appalled the slash-and-burn Republicans in the Senate, with 80% of the proposed cuts going to established corporations and wealthy individuals, an especially tone-deaf maneuver coming on the heels of The Paradise Papers.
Giving tax breaks to people who need nobody’s help (and who are are already stealing the eyes out of our heads) isn’t the best idea Republicans could have put forward right now, but it is their only idea since 1980, and they figure that this time Trickle Down will work if we only give enough of our hard-earned to the very wealthy. Not likely in an awakening America, and voters are not amused.
A corner was turned this week and… 2018 here we come!
