Trump spends the weekend in Mar-a-Lago while 5200 troops are stationed along the Mexican border. Our President called to remind them to stay vigilant, but where they are stationed (Texas) and where the migrants finally arrived (Tijuana) are well over a thousand miles apart. Just one of the many absurdities highlighting this Thanksgiving weekend.
At least the troops will get a huge repast with over 51,000 pounds of turkey, 16,000 pounds of sweet potatoes, 81,000 pies, 19,000 cakes and 8000 gallons of eggnog. They can watch the Dallas-Washington football game on big screens, as there won't be much to worry about along the border.
With the President under fire again, House Republicans provided cover by handing subpoenas to James Comey and Loretta Lynch for one last go-around in regard to Hillary's e-mails before they are shown the door at the end of the year. The do-nothing Congress, whose only notable accomplishment these past two years was a $1.5 trillion tax cut that put our government a further $1.5 trillion in debt, would like us to think they are still on it. Yet, no mention of Ivanka similarly caught using a personal email account to conduct government business or five other advisers who did the same, thereby potentially exposing government records to foreign agents.
We've come to expect this double standard from Republicans. The infamous email scandal was nothing more than an attempt to undermine Hillary's 2016 campaign, just as sending troops to the border was a brazen attempt to stoke fears among the conservative base during the midterms. In this Age of Trump everything is out in the open and no one seems to mind. What is odd is that it apparently only works for Trump. When other Republicans adopt the Trumpian in-your-face politicking they fall miserably flat on their face.
It will take a big Thanksgiving weekend boost to lift Cindy Hyde-Smith's campaign after multiple missteps since the general election. She edged out Mike Espy in the statewide election, but in Mississippi you need 50% to be declared the winner and Confederate Cindy fell well short of that mark. Not only was she extolling public hangings but photos have appeared of her in Confederate regalia at the Jefferson Davis memorial home in 2014. What's a Southern girl to do?
She was forced to apologize for her hanging remarks, which cut to quick in Mississippi, infamous for all its Jim Crow era lynchings. Trump dismissed it as a joke while stumping for her in Tupelo, but corporate sponsors weren't laughing. Whether Espy can pull a monumental upset next Tuesday remains to be seen? Confederate Cindy's faux pas pale in comparison to Roy Moore's scandals that plagued him last November.
It seems like Republicans are slowly waking up to the fact Trump isn't doing their party a lick of good. He may have been able to drag some high profile Republican senators across the line in this past election, but the GOP suffered staggering losses in the House, and an Espy surprise win would be one for both the Clintons and Obama, as he worked in both administrations. Even if he loses, he made the race far too close for comfort.
The rhetoric that fueled the Republican victories in 2016 no longer holds in 2018 and will be even more worn and tired in 2020. I don't think many Republicans buy it any more, as Democrats outpolled Republicans in the midterms by a whopping 9 million votes nationwide. This far exceeds the numbers Republicans polled in 2010 when they staged a massive turnover in the House. Trump being Trump is oblivious to these numbers, or just chalks them up as fake. In his mind, he is still riding the 2016 wave that carried him to the White House.
Reports say he is more surly than ever, lashing out at everyone around him. This has made him prone to outrageous remarks on everything from the California fires to Khashloggi's murder, but no problem. His base continues to support him. After suffering so much twitter abuse over his rake comment, his trolls have bombarded social media with images of wheel loader root rakes to illustrate what Trump really meant by "rake." The only problem is that logging crews use these "rakes" to clean up the roots and debris after clearing forests, not to manage them, as Daffy Donald implied. As for Khashloggi, he has now been linked to every terrorist organization known to man, including the Washington Post.
All this from a President who gave himself an A+ for his first two years in office. Regrets, he may have had a few but then too few to mention, as the song goes. No doubt we will now be hearing all about how he put Christmas back into the Holidays, having witnessed the arrival of the White House tree before heading down to Mar-a-Lago. A staple issue of the religious right wing.
The only thing we have to be thankful for politically is that we start 2019 with a Democratic House. Whatever more dirt the Republicans manage to dig up on Hillary will be soon forgotten in the wake of the White House investigations we can expect to see from Democratic-led House committees.
It's just too bad his followers will never see the light of day. They blindly follow their Commander-in-Chief through the charred forests of their once grand old party, with a heavy duty stacking rake on their front-end loader at the vanguard. Onward Trumpian soldiers!
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