Day One: Trump passes his final in Dictatorship 110 with an A+.
The very first day of Trump’s midterm, he took the final for Dictatorship 110 and passed with flammable colors. I had already shown before how Trump had carried out all of the assignments in Dictatorship 101.
Update already: The White House has pulled CNN’s Jim Acosta’s Press Pass. Trump now thinks that he owns all news networks, and thinks he can get anybody fired, or at least deny them their calling. Guess what? Jim Acosta no longer has to constrain himself in dealing with this President. Jeff Sessions will be a nice guy because he wants to run for Senate again.
As everyone predicted, Trump claimed a Victory, and cited many unnecessary statistics to again show how he is the most winning President ever. After this excessive display of how he had bested the Democrats, he then pretended that he wanted to work with the now Democratic House.
Among things to compromise on were clean air and water. After spending two years destroying regulations on this, the only way he could work with the House would be as trades for things that Democrats would not like, like a Wall.
Trump than threatened the House that if they try any investigations, he would put on his Trump the Avenger face, and counter with investigations in the Senate. That was a strong dictatorship move on the House, as well as making it clear that he was also dictator over what the Senate would do. Checks and Balances? Out the door to the Gulag.
Trump made a list of all the Republican victories by States and positions, but failing to share credit by naming any of the victorious Republican politicians. But he did name and denigrate several Republican politicians who lost because they would not swear loyalty to Trump or his political stances. Two more dictatorship lessons.
He refused to answer a reporter’s question from Jim Acosta at CNN, saying that CNN should be ashamed to have him as a reporter, and calling CNN “the enemy of the people”. He told a black reporter that asked about whether he would stop using the phrase “Nationalist” saying five times that her question was racist. Dictators hate the free press.
Trump said that he almost had a complete victory, but would work with the House on negotiations, if only they would not investigate anything (despite their constitutional duty to do what is needed.)
Then at lunch, I see the headline that Trump has fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had to recuse himself from heading the Mueller investigation. Trump didn’t meet with Sessions, but sent his Chief of Staff John Kelly to ask Sessions for his “resignation”. Doing it this way, Trump tried to insult Sessions as much as possible. Is Sessions a hero of the resistance? Not at all. He carried out all of Trump’s horrible Constitution-challenging actions.
Then Trump put Session’s liason to the White House and Chief of Staff Matthew G. Whitaker as Acting Attorney General, and supervisor of the Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. Whitaker has editorialized and interviewed that Mueller should be limited, and was using too much money, echoing what Trump just said. The dictatorship move to end investigations. He also said that the investigated meeting in Trump tower was okay. Democrats are arguing that these preprejudices mean that he should recuse himself from overseeing the investigation. Remember when Putin said that he would take over the investigation of the murder of a political opponent as he left the Kremlin? That was textbook, but Trump is on the way to replace that.
Trump promised that he would select a new Attorney General at some point.
Trump promised to work on crystal clean water and beautiful clean air with the House. That’s odd, since he spent the last two years removing every regulation on clean air and clean water. Our health is just a bargaining chip for Trump.
Still 272 days for Trump to train until the next election. Dictatorship does not always strike like lightening. It creeps up day to day by repetition, until people accept the demagoguery as truth.
In contrast to Trump’s victory claims, there are six New Democratic governors. Over 38 million more Americans will have Democratic Governors, and now the majority of Americans have Democratic Governors. This bodes well for Climate Action. The carbon tax did not pass in the state of Washington, however, starting at $15 per ton of CO2.
