Editor’s Note: As The Donald Turns is an ongoing series, written by Tony Siracusa. It started during the 2016 presidential campaign as a satirical diatribe, with its title coming from the old television soap opera. It has since turned into a regular accounting, still somewhat satirical in nature, of the activities in and out of the Oval Office of one Donald J. Trump.
POTUS has blessed us with so much material to work with this week, we are back with another As The Donald Turns, the “Demoralizing and Disheartening” episode. As I begin writing this, it is about 3:30pm on the west coast, so I know Donald has called it day in D.C., and I feel confident this will give him some new reading material tonight—that is, if he liked to read.
• Obviously SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch has now gotten a dose of how more than half the country feels. In a closed door meeting with Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, Judge Gorsuch referred to Donald’s regular attacks on the judicial branch as, “…..demoralizing and disheartening.” Blumenthal quickly went public with the comments, although he did so on Morning Joe on MSNBC, so maybe 20 people saw it. The story spread quickly and the need to verify was on pace. Former Senator Kelly Ayotte, who is acting as the judge’s Sherpa in his tour of Senator’s offices confirmed that he did in fact say that and had no problem with it going public. The only thing left was for Donald to trash his own Supreme Court nominee.
• Naturally, Donald did not do that. He just trashed the guy who had the meeting with the Supreme Court nominee. Blumenthal had an issue embellishing his military service record from the late 1960’s and it came out during his 2010 Senate race. During the campaign he set the record straight, apologized and won his senate race. Donald decided to treat the seven-year-old-story like he had just cracked the Viet Cong’s secret code.
@realDonaldTrump
“Sen.Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie),now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?”
3:57 AM – 9 Feb 2017
So it was not about discussing what Judge Gorsuch told Blumenthal…it was more about trashing the messenger. And Senator Blumenthal was not alone.
@realDonaldTrump
“Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave “service” in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!”
5:19 AM – 9 Feb 2017
Donald says everyone has misconstrued what the judge says….everyone except the judge and those in the room with him. Alternative facts, indeed.
• Wednesday, when telling everyone how right he was about the immigration ban, Donald said, “a bad high school student could understand (the law and his executive order).” Well that makes a bad high school student smarter than Donald, because as I write this piece, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just rejected Trump’s appeal to reinstate the ban by a 3-0 vote. Donald’s response was quick, mostly because it was coming close to his 6:30pm quitting time.
“@realDonaldTrump 18m18 minutes ago
“SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!”
Yes, Donald is going to see more “so called judges” and some “so called justices” as they review the order of the “so called president.” The ruling was 29 pages long which means they went in depth in addressing the constitutional powers he attempted to exercise with the executive order. It means the law, as it was before, with a 2 year vetting process for immigrants and refugees, goes back to being the rule. Guess what Donald. You appear to be not as smart as a bad high school student.
• Speaking of laws, and breaking them, our favorite Revolutionary War re-enactor, Kellyanne Conway broke one Thursday. It started when Donald trashed Nordstrom for dropping Ivanka’s clothing line. It had not been selling well and apparently Nordstrom decided in January to make this move. Donald, being a big believer in free enterprise and corporate decisions trashed Nordstrom’s free enterprise and corporate decision.
@realDonaldTrump Feb 8
“ My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”
That tweet was actually originated on his personal account and was soon retweeted with the POTUS account. So the President of the United States used the twitter account of the highest office in the land to throw shade at a private corporation because they were being mean to his daughter. What’s worse is, according to the Tick-Tock from that day, he sent it 20 minutes into his national intelligence briefing.
That brings us to Revolutionary War Barbie. She did an interview with the GOP PR channel, the one that some call Fox. She was on with Doocey and the Dimwits and did the interview from the White House press briefing room. She blurted out her support for Ivanka and urged everyone to buy Ivanka’s line of apparel. It’s nice to have friends like that in your corner…the kind that will violate federal law to support your clothing line. Yes, sports fans, Conway violated 5CFR-2635702. She used her public office for the private financial gain of an individual. Conway’s salary comes from the taxpayers of this fine country and she just sold out for Ivanka.
• Our favorite press secretary, Sparkle Pony Spicer, addressed this with the media at his daily press briefing. He said Kellyanne has been counseled. That was it. His entire statement. I don’t even know what that means. What kind of counseling? Is she grounded? Does she have to keep seeing a counselor? Is it a career counselor? A guidance counselor? We are left with so many questions. She probably had to get a reprimand from a lawyer followed by her pay raise from Donald. Meanwhile, Donald Jr. tweeted that Trump supporters should boycott Nordstrom. Wait. I thought Donald was man of the lower income people, a real populist. How many of them were shopping at Nordstrom?
• Sparkle Pony had to spend a lot of time Thursday addressing the Gorsuch comments. The media finally started doing its job. When Spicer skirted around one reporter’s question, the next one would ask a follow up on the same topic. This went through four reporters until Spicer started to lose his cool. He said presidents calling out court cases goes all the way back to Jefferson. I assume he meant Thomas and not George, because that time when George Jefferson was going to take Weezie Jefferson to court was a doozie.
What “so called press secretary” and “so called president” don’t get is, this is not about disputing the verdict of a case. That’s okay to do. It is the personal disparaging from Donald that is so repugnant. He is not smarter in constitutional law than people who, you know, went to law school. He had a poorly crafted, poorly executed order because he thought he was bigger than the system. It would be a bad idea to go to SCOTUS with this. He would be better served going back and ding the order correctly. But this is Donald, and he has to prove he is smarter than a bad high schools student.
So much more to get caught up on. Fortunately Donald never leaves us shy of material.
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