At the end of eleven weeks in office Trump congratulated himself on the spectacular success of his first thirteen weeks. The man is truly a legend in his own mind.
It is April 17, the beginning of the actual thirteenth week of the Trump presidency. In Mr. Trump’s 10-Second Convictions the New York Times Editorial Board first itemizes, more completely than my recent post, Trump’s many flip flops. It goes on to say,
To attribute the president’s pirouettes to personal growth would … require ignoring what’s actually staring us in the face — that there is no foundation to this presidency. With his all-important ratings tanking, the reality-TV maestro is rewriting the script, enthusiastically swapping out any position in pursuit of a “deal.” He is revealing himself to be a tactical, transactional president, with no guiding convictions or principles beyond “winning.” Not winning for everyone, as he so famously promised. Winning for Mr. Trump.
Democrats or House Freedom Caucus members, NATO members or Middle East dictators, potential allies or adversaries — all must be deeply unsettled by the one clear pattern emerging here, a pattern that is consistent with Mr. Trump’s treatment of others in private life, from his stiffing of his creditors to his swindling of students at Trump University: betrayal.
As I said, this is not a man you can do business with, because he will sell you down the river as surely as God made little green applies.
We laughed about “Bush’s brain.” And some of us, of a certain age, will remember yucking it up when the Gipper claimed that trees cause pollution. But now the laughter has a darker tone. Trump’s unfitness for office is hilarious, but the laughter sounds a lot like whistling past the graveyard.
Ellis Weiner imagines Ivanka’s Notes for the Babysitter:
My daughter is five, and should go to bed at eight-thirty. She can watch a half hour of TV beforehand, but that’s it. And you have to watch her to make sure that she actually brushes her teeth.
The three-and-a-half-year-old will go down pretty easily around seven. …
Donald is seventy. His normal bedtime is two or three in the morning, but don’t worry, we’ll definitely be back by then. He can watch Fox News as much as he wants. If he starts yelling at it (smh), just ignore him. The kids are used to it and their rooms are soundproofed.
But here’s the most important thing: There is to be NO TWEETING AFTER 9 P.M. When you tell him that, he’ll yell stuff like “People have said that I’m a tremendous tweeter!”; “It’s only eight—all the clocks are fake!”; and “I’m not tweeting, I’m sending a text message to 26.4 million people!” Don’t bother arguing. Just make him hand over his phone. If he whines that “you’re being very unfair,” remind him that if I find out he’s been bad he’ll be sorry.
Sometimes, while he watches Fox News, he has “really brilliant ideas,” and he thinks he can just command you to execute them. Three weeks ago, he told Alexandra—in a single night—to “order a team of skywriters to write ‘ISLAM SUCKS’ above Kabul”; to “use eminent domain to have the government take over Hollywood”; to “have the Pentagon require all U.S. servicemen to wear Trump ties and Trump combat boots”; and to “get Eric started on a Trump combat-boot line.” Alex promised she’d look into it in the morning. Of course, by then he’d totally forgotten about everything
