Passing Strange

January 21, 2017, Planet Earth. When there is a US Presidential inauguration there are bound to be some people who don’t much care for the new President, and therefore want to demonstrate their dislike by protesting. The Inauguration of Donald J. Trump, however, is the first Presidential inauguration to provoke the largest protest march in American history.  According to Vox, the Women’s March on Washington drew as many as 3.3 million people across cities in the United States alone. And marches didn’t only occur in US cities, but also in places like London, Helsinki, Nairobi, Melbourne, Lima, and Tbilisi. Wow! A lot of people disapprove of President Trump. I’ve never seen such a protest.

January 20,2017, Washington DC. Newly minted President (as in today), Donald Trump ordered the Interior Department to shut down the National Park Services’ Twitter account after NPS shared some tweets comparing attendance at his Inauguration (low) to attendance at the Inauguration of President Obama (high). The Twitter account was reinstated the next day, opening with an apology tweet: “We regret the mistaken RTs from our account yesterday and look forward to continuing to share the beauty and history of our parks with you.”

Donald Trump shut this account down on January 20th. The very day he was sworn in as President. That he is this thin skinned and insecure–so much so that he can’t even just enjoy the biggest day of his life–is really disturbing.

January 15th, 2017. Washington DC. Since it was authorized by President Nixon in 1969-70 the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, just around the corner from the Oval Office in the West Wing of the White House, has been where White House news correspondents have received administration press briefings. Today the Trump team is contemplating moving the press out of the West Wing. The rationale offered by Vice President Elect Mike Pence is to provide a larger space–somewhere outside of the White House of course–to accommodate more media representatives from around the country and the world. If this also shields the President from the scrutiny of the press, and by implication, the American people, I’m sure that’s totally a coincidence.  After all, we still have access to Trump’s tweets.

January 12th, 2017. Washington, DC. Conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer declared today that the Trump presidential honeymoon period, which generally lasts the first 100 days or thereabouts, is officially over ten days before his inauguration. Writing in the Washington Post, Krauthammer said, “Presidents-elect usually lie low during the interregnum. Trump never lies low. He seized the actual presidency from Barack Obama within weeks of his election — cutting ostentatious deals with U.S. manufacturers to keep jobs at home, challenging 40-year-old China policy, getting into a very public fight with the intelligence agencies…It is true that we have only one president at a time, and for over a month it’s been Donald Trump.” Citing the latest Quinnipiac Poll from January 10th, which shows Trump’s popularity now at 37%, Krauthammer takes a stab at blaming it on the “unbending left who won’t accept the legitimacy of Trump’s victory,” but it’s clear from the balance of the op ed piece that the primary culprit is “Trump’s own instincts and inclinations, a thirst for attention…his need to dominate every news cycle…It has placed him just about continuously at the center of the national conversation and not always to his benefit.” Can it be that this ‘not always to his own benefit’ refers to his having taken the presidency by the throat even before taking the oath, and thereby, as per usual, showing his contempt for the well-considered conventions of the democracy? We don’t know for sure, because Krauthammer moves along quickly, having other fish to fry. What really bothers Krauthammer, is Trump’s ‘chronic indiscipline’ as displayed by his having found the time this week, with everything else going on, to use his bully pulpit to give comfort to the “anti-vaxxer” crowd. Krauthammer, a doctor and a paraplegic, spends the last five paragraphs bemoaning Trump’s unfortunate meeting with Robert Kennedy, Jr. For Krauthammer, sitting in his wheelchair, with hope no doubt invested in the rationality of science, this was an exclamation point on the “scatterbrained randomness of the Trump transition,” and “contributes to the harried, almost wearying feeling that we are already well into the Trump presidency.”

President Elect Donald J. Trump raised a lot of eyebrows back in November by naming his relatives as members of his Presidential transition team–an ethically dubious move given that these same relatives were to manage his business in lieu of Mr. Trump divesting from his business like every other modern President has done. Divestiture avoids potential conflicts of interest (aka “corruption”), which Mr. Trump is obviously not interested in as it would be a hindrance to his kleptocratic aspirations. Today PEOTUS Trump doubled down by naming his son-in-law, Jared Kushner (who has no previous government experience and is also a New York real estate developer with massive conflicts of interest) as a senior adviser in his administration. While there are anti-nepotism laws preventing this kind of unethical corruption, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner believe that the laws don’t apply to the Presidency. Mr. Kushner is going to partially divest to take on the advisory role (e.g., he’ll sell his stake in his family business’ flagship property, 666 Fifth Avenue–the property of the Beast), so presumably that means he’ll only be partially corrupt.

Apparently all entertainers in America can be split into two camps: those who wouldn’t be caught dead associating with Donald J. Trump and Ted Nugent. This makes for a strange counter-narrative to what Trump has been telling us. On his telling, he won the election in a massive landslide victory that totally and completely humiliated Hillary Clinton and the DNC. If that is the case, then you would think that every famous musical performer in America would be vying to perform for such a popular President Elect. On January 4th, however, PEOTUS Trump tweeted that Jackie Evancho would be performing at his inauguration. Forgive me for pointing this out. I mean no disrespect, but I’ve never heard of Jackie Evancho apart from learning from Trump that she’s performing at his inauguration. What I do know is that lots of performers have expressed an unwillingness to perform at Trump’s inauguration. Aretha Franklin, Elton John, and Justin Timberlake have all been asked. All have declined. The Rockettes are performing, as they tend to do at Presidential inaugurations, but a number of the Rockettes have asked to opt out of the performance, particularly given Mr. Trump’s behavior towards women. A member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Jan Chamberlin, quit the choir to avoid performing for Trump, writing in a Facebook post, “I only know I could never ‘throw roses to Hitler.’ And I certainly could never sing for him.” Also declined after having been asked: Celine Dion, Kiss, and Garth Brooks. I’ve seen my share of inaugurations. This is new to me. He’s all yours Ted Nugent.

January 5th, 2017, Washington DC. In an unprecedented move the Trump transition team offered a terse, blanket edict to all ambassadors appointed by President Barack Obama to vacate their posts by Inauguration Day. This will leave the United States without envoys for months in some cases. The edict, dated December 23rd, is contrary to common practice, including that of Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton. It’s typical to allow a grace period, particularly for ambassadors with children in school who do not want to disrupt the school year. Melania Trump is staying in New York after the Inauguration so Baron Trump’s school year is not disrupted, so Mr. Trump is clearly familiar with the issue. This is what you call a “total dick move”. Kiss goodbye any inkling of a smooth transition. Get ready for the blitzkrieg.

January 4th, 2017. Washington, DC. Continuing his practice of tweaking everybody and everything publicly via Twitter, PEOTUS successfully got his conflict with the nation’s intelligence community to a nice rolling boil this week. Trump said that he was prepared to rely on foreign sources of intelligence over US intelligence community findings, by tweeting that he agreed with Julian Assange’s assessment of the Russian hacking case over US intelligence, and of course, that he still felt he didn’t need a daily intel and security briefing. To top it off, he announced his intention, before even meeting with officials as President, to restructure the CIA and DNI, because he felt that these agencies were becoming completely politicized. As usual, for anyone paying reasonable attention, the statement about restructuring was total word salad: we are told that restructuring is being planned to ‘address politicization,’ involves “slimming down” and has a focus on “restructuring how agencies interact.” So, to summarize, today we saw Trump again flat out deny intel concerning interference that brought him to power, and then accuse the intelligence community of being politicized! We can only surmise that this particular blend of hubris and hypocrisy will be a Trumpian hallmark. Lucky for him, the hypocrisy was outmatched this week by Senate Leader McConnell’s assertion that it would be wrong for Democrats to block SCOTUS nominees, and that the American people wouldn’t tolerate it. In any case, the new President’s inability to separate real from fake news, credible sources and methods from national inquirer or Brietbart bullshit, remains one of the greatest threats to the world as we advance toward to the inauguration. Passing strange that the Democrats are having to urge the Republicans to rally around the CIA.