A Confederacy of Trumpsters
I’m hoping that John Kennedy Toole does not roll over in his grave with my borrowing a few words from his posthumous Pulitzer-Prize-Winning work of fiction (one of only four posthumous awards in over one hundred years). I can’t help myself with this title, it came to me tonight as I’ve been listening to the latest shenanigans of the Ukraine-based Impeachment Inquiries in the U.S. House of Representatives. Even Lindsey Graham has decided that the best defense of Donald Trump is that his administration doesn’t have the ability for a coherent strategy of any sort, much less a quid pro quo strategy. That’s a fine mess that Republicans have found themselves in. I can’t tell who is a bigger dunce, Trump and Giuliani for what they thought they could get away with in Ukraine or Graham, for coming up with such a lame excuse for why they did it. How that argument doesn’t cause Graham to withdraw his support for Trump as an incompetent president is beyond me.
Next week we move into the next important phase of the impeachment hearings with even-more-public hearings. There is certainly some interest in exactly how the Democrats will prosecute their case and we all understand that how a delicate case like impeachment gets explained and laid out for both the Congressional adjudicators and the American people, will be important. But the real wild card will be the craziness with which the Republicans choose to “present” their defense of the man in the high castle. With Kevin McCarthy (R – Bakersfield) at the helm for the GOP, there has been some last-minute juggling (boldfacedly declared as a temporary maneuver) going on, with minority committee assignments so that Jim Jordan of Ohio can sit on the Intelligence Committee as ranking minority member in lieu of Devin Nunes. I am tempted to reference the entertainment value of tag-team midget wrestling when I think of Jordan and Nunes spelling each other in the ring, doing body-slams from atop the corner-posts, while the other splashes water on his face to prepare to tag-in for the next crazy ring antic.
For the first two years of the Trump Administration, dairy farmer Nunes from the northern San Joaquin Valley, was the shockingly partisan Chairman of the Less-Than-Intelligent Intelligence Committee that brazenly whispered into Trump’s ear all the secrets of the Mueller investigation news before it made its way via official channels to the White House, the press, or especially the minority members of his very Congressional Committee.. The Blue Wave of 2018 knocked Nunes off his perch while Adam Schiff (a.k.a. Little Adam Schitt- as labeled by schoolyard bully Baby Trump). It seems now that we are in the bottom half of the prime-time Wrestlemania event, Donald is finding Nunes tiresome and less than vigorous enough for the fight. He is liking the shirtsleeve, SCIF-attacking image of Jim Jordan and his “loudest voice in the room” approach to trumpeting the virtues of the innocent and humble leader of the free world.
Jim Jordan has the distinction of being our new-age Republican political attack-dog. Back when John Boehner was Republican Speaker of the House, he referred to Jordan as both an “idiot” and as “asshole”, which apparently were the top qualities needed to take on the role as Trump apologist par excellence. The man was actually an NCAA 134-pound Division 1 wrestling champion, so my midget tag-team wrestling analogy has some serious cred to it (even I can’t make all this shit up). And of course, he was also implicated in an Ohio State wrestling sexual-abuse scandal for looking the other way when he was an Assistant Coach and the team physician was accused of playing touchy-feely with the wrestlers. What would a Big-Ten team be without a “Wrestleweania” story to tell….or perhaps not tell.
So, next week’s dance card looks to be action-packed with respectable career diplomats and intelligence professionals (deep state tools though they may be) testifying about the great disrepair of our diplomatic national security program. We will hear all the sordid details of Sondland, Giuliani, and Volker (Mick Mulvaney’s self-proclaimed Three Amigos, the SNL-Western Comedy trio from thirty-something years ago) as they thrash their way through Crimea to defend the world against the perils suffered by server-thieving Ukrainians and Hunter Biden’s single-handed corruption of the ex-Soviet Satellite state. I suspect this is all just a test-run for the Donald’s post-presidential reality TV show to be called something like Mr. Trump Goes to Moscow.
What is it about our new American political reality that has Democrats like Cummings (RIP), Nadler, Schiff and Pelosi looking and acting so serious while Nunes, Jordan, Gaetz and McCarthy look like mad-hatters with clown-face make-up on? Lock-Her-Up Flynn got the memo and looks more serious now. Arrogant Ostrich-coat-wearing Manafort seems less smug and more chaste from his orange jump suit. Rick Gates and his one-o’clock, three-o’clock, five-o’clock shadow beard has lost some of the wry smile he used to sport on his perp walks. Michel Cohen is as serious as a heart attack in Federal Prison while the world has dismissed him as largely irrelevant despite his blockbuster claims of having the secrets to the Trump mysteries. Only Roger Stone with his granny glasses and his Saville Row finery, still looks as confident as ever, but then his accusers like Credico and Corsi more than make up for his silliness with their sobering stupidity. Maybe having a life-sized tattoo of Richard Nixon on your back gives you special powers. Julian Assange with his Messianic ZZ-Top look has that tilted-head crazy-man look about him that only extended life in an Ecuadorian Embassy (which now looks ok relative to British high-security prison with Sinn Fein doctrine scrawled on the ceiling), can bring about.
With each mention of another whacked-out Republican or Republican helper, I find myself wondering what caused such lunacy. I suspect life has simply become too good and too easy, so people have to fabricate ways to let their freak flags fly. That is the only modestly rational explanation I can find for this Confederacy of Trumpster Dunces.