Several of our beloved Republican friends and family members are imploring us to take it easy on President Donald Trump and his heroic efforts to make America great again, but this is a hard time to oblige them. Try as we might, we just can’t muster any kind words for the past week of Trump’s presidency.
It all started last Tuesday, a midterm election day when the Democrats won a slight majority in the House of Representatives and the Republicans only slightly padded their majority in Senate despite an unusually favorable electoral map and generally healthy economy. On Wednesday Trump declared a near total victory during a even more contentious than usual news conference, complaining that a black woman reporter from the Public Broadcasting System’s questions about Trump’s embrace of the “nationalist” label was racist, and calling a white male Cable News Network reporter whose press pass was shortly thereafter revoked by the White House a “rude and terrible person,” and he also taunted all the losing Republican candidates in districts and states that Trump lost by a landslide for for failing to fully embrace him, and vowing a “war-like stance” against in incoming Democratic majority in the House.. Later that day he forced the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an otherwise loyal foot soldier who had committed the unforgivable sin of ethically recusing himself from from a special counsel investigation into the “Russia thing,” and temporarily replaced him with a little-known Justice Department official who was on the televised record saying he would put an end to that pesky “Russia thing” problem.
By the end of Wednesday the counting of all the early votes around the country had bolstered the Democratic landslide in the House to post-Watergate record levels and diminished that slight Republican majority in the Senate, and several prominent congressional Republicans were openly objecting to to Trump’s temporary appointment of an obvious political hack who was clearly chosen to protect Trump from that pesky “Russia thing” investigation. When a Harvard-educated black woman reporter from CNN asked the obvious question of the day during an impromptu news conference if the appointment had been made to thwart the special counsel investigation, he snarled that “That’s a stupid question, but I’ve been watching you, and you ask a lot of stupid questions.” He then completed the trifecta by calling the other third prominent black woman in the White House press corps a “total loser,” even though she was mostly out of the news of the day.
By Thursday Trump was distancing himself from that political hack he’d appointed as acting Attorney General, saying he didn’t know the guy and only appointed him because he’d been chief of staff to the Attorney General he had just forced to resign, which gave all the other networks a chance to gleefully replay Trump’s assurances to Fox News viewers that he knew the interim appointment well. Meanwhile the Democrats’ victorious midterm election day totals swelled, and Trump was “tweeting” plausible yet unconfirmed allegations that the Democrats were cheating and that any results that don’t favor the Republicans are illegitimate.
On Friday Trump was flying to Europe for a solemn centennial commemoration of when the United States and its longtime French and English and other democratic allies won a temporary victory in World War I, but Trump managed to mangle even that golden opportunity. Before he touched ground on French soil Trump “tweeted” his disapproval of the French President Emmanuel Macron, based on some bad reporting about French president Emmanuel Macron’s proposal for a formidable pan-European military force, which Trump incorrectly considered a threat to the United States even though it was the sort of European militarism he’s long urged.
Saturday was cold and rainy in France, and thus Trump cancelled a trip to a cemetery where more than a hundred thousand American veterans of World War I were buried, even though all those effete Euro-weenie heads of state were somehow able to make their way to pay their respects to their country’s fallen heroes.
Sunday marked the centennial of that 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 when America and France and England and the rest of our allies won a hard-fought victory in World War I, and although it was only a brief respite from World War II that effete Euro-weenie Macron gave a compelling speech that it was won because of the democratic western world’s cooperation and despite the the unabashedly self-intered nationalist impulses that caused it. We note that Trump paid his presidential respects to America’s fallen heroes but didn’t give give a similarly compelling defense of his unabashedly self-interested nationalism, and don’t expect that he’ll do so until the next never-ending campaign rally of die-hard fans, who know as little about history as Trump does.
Today is another Monday in America, where the economy seems to be humming along well enough despite the recent downturns in the stock markets and all the nationalist trade wars Trump is currently waging, and there’s no denying that some of Trump’s critics are rude and terrible people, and there’s always a chance that “Russia thing” might prove overblown. Even so, we can’t currently muster any defense of Trump’s presidency.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 
No surprises here. More of the same old tired anti Trump fever.