* Aaron Blake gives us a collection of Trump’s actions combined with tweets from the past that promote the opposite.
Over the last two weeks, President Trump has attacked Syria without congressional approval, ratcheted up the use of force in Afghanistan with a huge bomb, and moved to reverse the Obama administration’s policy of releasing White House visitor logs.
Each of these actions runs completely counter to the views and values once espoused by Trump on Twitter. And they join an amazingly long — and growing — list of old Trump tweets that have become eerily applicable to Trump’s own presidency in ways that scream “hypocrisy.”
Using the word “hypocrisy” to describe this doesn’t feel like it captures the depths of how disturbing it is. Because Trump tends to say whatever will inflate his ego at the moment, neither do words like lie or mendacity. Do we need to make up a new word to describe this? Give me some suggestions.
* One of the ways Trump attempts his ego inflation is by lying about his predecessor. So we get nonsense like this:
Aiden Quigley is assigned to cleaning up the mess.
The MS-13 gang, which is based in Central America, was formed by Salvadorans fleeing that country’s civil war in the 1980s. The FBI recognized that the gang was a growing threat in the early 2000s — before former President Barack Obama was elected — and in 2004 created a task force “to investigate this violent international street gang,” according to the FBI. In 2008, the FBI stated that MS-13 had expanded to at least 42 states and Washington, D.C.
* How about that announcement that the U.S. was ordering an American aircraft carrier into the Sea of Japan to send a message to North Korea? Oops.
The problem was, the carrier, the Carl Vinson, and the four other warships in its strike force were at that very moment sailing in the opposite direction, to take part in joint exercises with the Australian Navy in the Indian Ocean, 3,500 miles southwest of the Korean Peninsula.
White House officials said on Tuesday they were relying on guidance from the Defense Department. Officials there described a glitch-ridden sequence of events, from a premature announcement of the deployment by the military’s Pacific Command to an erroneous explanation by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — all of which perpetuated the false narrative that an American armada was racing toward the waters off North Korea.
Meanwhile, the idiot in the White House says that his predecessor is the one who got “outplayed” by North Korea.
* Ruh-roh on getting tax reform done anytime soon.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the Trump administration’s timetable for tax reform is set to falter following setbacks in negotiations with Congress over healthcare, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
Mnuchin told the Financial Times in an interview that the target to get tax reforms through Congress and on President Donald Trump’s desk before August was “highly aggressive to not realistic at this point”.
* My Texas roots inspire a “Bless your heart, Senator Cruz.”
Ted Cruz…expressed concern Monday that the “Democratic radical left” would prompt a government shutdown in the coming weeks as Congress faces an April 28 deadline to pass a spending bill.
“You know, I very much hope we don’t have a shutdown,” Cruz told reporters. “I will say I’m concerned. I think [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer and the Democrats want a shutdown.”…
“You know, one of the dynamics we’ve got is the Democratic radical left is demanding of Senate Democrats that they oppose everything, that they engage in across-the-board obstruction,” Cruz said Monday. “And so I do have some concern that to appease the radical left, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats may do everything they can to try to provoke a shutdown.”
Just in case you’ve forgotten, this is why that is so damned cute coming from Cruz.
* Finally, it’s only Tuesday and I’m already feeling pissy about our current state of affairs. So I’m turning to Mary Chapin Carpenter for a little calm reflection.
