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All Alone in the White House

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Anyone hoping for a Scrooge epiphany from Trump on Christmas morning is sadly disappointed.  The President is still the same ill-tempered manchild he was before holing himself up in the White House in a pathetic effort to elicit sympathy from the public for the wall he so badly wants in the New Year.

In a surprise move, Trump chose to forgo his trip to Mar-a-Lago to stage what has basically turned into a sit-in strike to get Senate Democrats to accede to his demand for $5 billion in the temporary spending bill for his wall.  He managed to get the Senate Republicans on board, most of them anyway.  Outgoing Bob Corker called Trump's pathetic stand a "made-up fight."

Trump tweeted through out Christmas Eve as he wallowed in self pity.  At one point he forced Melania to sit beside him to field calls from children.  He couldn't even get through this simple task without questioning a 7-year old's belief in Santa.  Did I already say pathetic?

Meanwhile, Congress did go home for Christmas.  There was no work on a last-ditch bill before the New Year to appease Trump.  There were some behind-the-scenes discussions that yielded no fruit, leaving our Scrooge-in-Chief to ponder many things on twitter, notably the stock market which took another vicious hit on Christmas Eve.

The funniest thing about this latest plunge is that Trump chose to hail his Secretary of Treasury, Steve "Munchie" Mnuchin, who was directly responsible for the historic sell off by calling six banks to see if they had the liquidity to cover all the losses we have been seeing on Wall St.  In Trump's words, a "very low IQ" move.

If that weren't enough to get our sour president worked up, a 9-year Mexican girl made a mockery of his wall by flying a red balloon over it with a Christmas wish list, picked up on the other side by a 60-year old Arizona man who decided to be her Secret Santa by contacting a Nogales radio station and tracking down little Dayami and her sister to give most of the gifts she asked for.

Nothing seems to be working for this guy, but he won't give up.  This morning he was urging investors to buy the cheap stocks in hopes of a Santa Claus rally to get the Dow back above 22,000 before year end.  Sad.

While Trump chose to hunker down in the White House with Melania and Barron, the rest of the family went to Mar-a-Lago for the holidays.  Ivanka was caught jogging in her spandex tights Christmas morning.  One assumes Jared was fretting over the market declines back at the resort, as one of her secret service agents filled in for him on her run.  Donny Jr. served as man of the house.  Eric and Lara were also caught by cameramen on the gardens.  Lara looking pretty buff, which may explain why Ivanka chose to out for a run.

Donny Sr. really didn't need to go to all this trouble to shame the Democrats into bending to his will.  Nancy laughed his wall off as "beaded curtain," and Chuck was more worried about invasive bugs found on Christmas trees than he was Trump's puerile demands.  In fact, almost no one is paying Trump any attention other than the media.  So, Trump did what he does best - lie - in a pathetic effort to look like he is doing something in Washington besides firing off surly tweets at all his political enemies.

He'll owe Melania a big fat diamond ring for having to sit through his Christmas day protest with him.

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