As The Donald Turns; A Stitch In Time

Time is always at a premium, whether you are a parent, a student, someone with projects to do at work, a writer with deadlines to meet or president of the United States. President Trump has taken on many time saving issues in recent days. We at As The Donald Turns follow his lead with our new episode, “A Stitch in Time.”

As The Donald Turns; A Stitch In Time

If At First You Don’t Succeed Lie, Lie Again

Much of America changed their clocks over the weekend to alter time. Even though it is only mid-March, it is time for Daylight Saving Time. Some people like having the daylight hours later in the day. Some don’t like the change. But that President Trump, he is nothing if not a people pleaser. He is not likely to know the history of DST or why the country has it, but he just wants to make people happy.

Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2019

As we said, time is a critical element to the president, any president. Why just last week, President Trump saved approximately 1.8 seconds in his meeting of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board. He referred to Apple CEO Tim Cook as “Tim Apple.”

Trump explained why he did it. Time is precious and he needed to save some of it.

At a recent round table meeting of business executives, & long after formally introducing Tim Cook of Apple, I quickly referred to Tim + Apple as Tim/Apple as an easy way to save time & words. The Fake News was disparagingly all over this, & it became yet another bad Trump story!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2019

The problem with that answer is that he gave another one over the weekend at a 2020 campaign fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. At that point he denied he ever said, “Tim Cook.” He told the gathered checkbooks that he said “Tim Cook of Apple,” but that the media didn’t hear it and then lied about what he said. Of course the entire original flub was caught on video with no editing. So much for that story.

So, we are dealt a lie over the weekend and a new one Monday via twitter. Which lie do we believe? It’s hard to know, (not really….they are both weak efforts), but we are sure of one thing. The president wasted time concocting two lies, when one should have done the trick. As John Wooden famously said, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” Donald wasted precious seconds of Executive Time trying to do it over, when he could have put more effort into the first lie to make it stick.

Everybody Yang Chung Tonight

Speaking of saving folks time, many reporters who do not work for Fox will have questions about how Cindy Yang has had access to the president. Yang is the founder of the Florida “spa” that was busted last month in a sex worker trafficking investigation. She herself is not implicated in any of the charges, but she and her family opened six locations that were all part of the investigation. Yang watched the Super Bowl at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private party. But her time with the president goes back to the 2016 campaign. She also got a VIP seat at his inauguration ceremony.

Again, Ms. Yang is not yet implicated, but she is the founder/owner of these establishments. We know many FOD’s (Friends of Donald), are now hurriedly looking through their calendars to see if they ever met this woman, so they can start spending the time to come up with an explanation. But hey, we are here to help…and save time. Here ya go….

What’s A Few Trillion Among Friends

We also would like to save the president some time. He put forth his 2020 budget proposal Monday. In the interest of time, here is your answer. “No.”

Ok, I guess we do have to take the time to go a little deeper. The president has a proposed $4.75 trillion spending plan for the next fiscal year. It includes a cut in Medicare of $900 million, and a similar one for Medicaid. It has a cut in government coverage for prescription drug coverage. There is also a $100 billion cut to the US Postal Service, which is odd, considering Donald trashed them in a 2017 tweet for not making enough money. Student loan funds available from the federal government would also be slashed by $200 million. So how does the budget proposal come out as the biggest spending bill in US history? Let us save you time. Big increases in military spending, and $8.6 billion for the wall. And don’t take the time to ask; No, Mexico is still not paying for the wall.

The budget proposal increases the deficit for each of the next four years. Remember the time when some businessman from New York ran for president, saying he could get the deficit under control within his first term? Whatever happened to that guy?

The budget proposal was discussed in brief time Monday. It was handled by Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought. He is the acting budget director, because the guy who is supposed to have the job, Mick Mulvaney, is the acting Chief of Staff. There is also an acting Secretary of the Interior, acting Ambassador to the United Nations, and acting EPA administrator. And with Bill Shine stepping down last week, once again there is no one permanent running the communications department for the executive branch. You see, in this administration, it’s easier to act like you have the job, than to actually do it. Saves time.

Hey, You Look Familiar

Speaking of pretending to do your job, Vought’s appearance was at an event we used to call the daily press briefing. We say used to, because this was the first time Sarah Sanders appeared at her job behind the podium in the briefing room in 42 days. She has been busy polishing her resume. Saves time later when the inevitable happens.

In short order, Sanders condemned the Democrats for not taking a stronger stand against Anti-Semitism, claimed her boss never once said the Dems hated Jews, (which he did on Friday), advised that it was time to stop caring about what Michael Cohen said, and said the president had often spoken out against noted bigot, Congressman Steve King of Iowa, (which he never has). When you only show up every five to six weeks to do your job, it’s best not to take too much time to worry about the truth.