That just fell out of the sky, did it?
After all, it wasn’t you who said your opponent and the incumbent president were the cofounders of ISIS.
It wasn’t you who accused the president of complicity in the Orlando terrorist attack.
It wasn’t you who accused the father of one of your Republican rivals of involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
It wasn’t you who asked a foreign power to hack the email accounts and computers of U.S. citizens.
It wasn’t you who threatened to imprison your opponent after the election and then, last Sunday, saw your last campaign manager claim that you weren’t prosecuting her because of your “graciousness.”
Oh, that’s right, it was you.
You cheated, bullied, lied, attacked, savaged, undercut, and threatened—every week, every day, every hour, for seventeen self-obsessed months—and now you tell us, your victims, that we must heal.
“It doesn’t go quickly, unfortunately, but we have before us the chance now to make history together, to bring real change to Washington, real safety to our cities, and real prosperity to our communities, including our inner cities. So important to me, and so important to our country.”
Nice pointless ad lib just there.
Having exaggerated, exacerbated, and in many cases cut from whole cloth these almost imaginary defects of safety and prosperity, you now call upon those of us who did not swallow your time-share pitchman’s snake oil of hate to solve these problems—to which you will obviously give attention only in between efforts to personally profit by exploiting the government of the United States of America.
“But to succeed, we must enlist the effort of our entire nation.”
The entire nation?
Including the majority of this nation, who voted for somebody besides you?
Including the plurality of this nation, who voted for Hillary Clinton and not for you?
All of us, including those of us you have derided in victory as “badly defeated”?
You get nothing from us.
You made this bed, and then you lit it on fire.
Best of luck.
“This historic political campaign is now over. Now begins a great national campaign to rebuild our country and to restore the full promise of America for all of our people.”
You mean people like Betsy DeVos, the nominee for secretary of education who doesn’t believe in public schools and tried to avoid paying taxes for her local school district?
Or people like Jeff Sessions, the nominee for attorney general, who prosecuted African Americans for voting, and opposed not just illegal immigration but legal immigration, and is a climate change denier?
Or people like Michael Flynn, the nominee for national security adviser, who claimed that Islam is not a religion, and who tweeted links to a conspiracy nut’s claim that Hillary Clinton was involved in “sex crimes with children,” and who insanely claimed in speeches as recently as three months ago that legislators in Florida and Texas were trying to impose Sharia law in those states?
The full promise is to be restored to them, and to hell with the rest of us.
“I am asking you to join me in this effort. It is time to restore the bonds of trust between citizens.”
Trump—you, personally, have damaged and frayed “the bonds of trust between citizens,” possibly beyond repair. You have exploited that damage and exploited the weaker-minded of our citizenry.
You have questioned the rights of those here to become citizens, and those guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to be citizens, of retaining the citizenship that is legally theirs.
You have been proved again and again a liar, a thief, a scrounger, a corrupt businessman, and a dishonest tradesman.
Where there are bonds of trust, there is no Donald Trump.
“Because when America is unified, there is nothing beyond our reach, and I mean absolutely nothing.”
And here, finally, we agree.
We will now see how—when America is unified by your already transparently corrupt and self-aggrandizing subsuming of the presidency as just another division of the Trump Corporation—we will now see how nothing is beyond our reach, and we shall first reach for your removal from the White House at the earliest possible moment.
“Let us give thanks for all that we have, and let us boldly face the exciting new frontiers that lie ahead. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.”
That last little divine touch would be less laughable if there were evidence that you had ever shown a true belief in a God, or even in an understanding of what God, or a God, or just a nameless unifying presence in the universe is perceived to be by most of the fools who voted for you.
At the 2015 Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, you were asked if you—like everybody from the faithful to the agnostic—had ever asked for God’s forgiveness.
“I am not sure I have,” you said. “I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so. I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”
Trump, either stick to that—stop adding insult to larceny by suddenly bringing empty invocations of the creator into the picture . . .
Or get serious about it.
Because, based on the actions of the first three weeks of your transition, it will not be long before the only place to which you might turn for assistance or acceptance—would be to an Almighty.
Because right now the only honest end to an address to this nation is “God help us, and God help America.”
Chapter 5
DECEMBER 2016
WE HAVE ELECTED AN IDIOT
Post date • MONDAY, DECEMBER 5
We have elected an idiot.
*
For all the insanity, and the stunning self-absorption, and the bullying, and the delusional view of America that would embarrass a high school dropout watching cartoons while strung out on meth . . .
The much more existential threat from the Swiss cheese personality of Donald John Trump roared to the forefront over the weekend, and that existential threat is simply this:
In the complex international relations that—like it or not—keep the world from blowing itself up every afternoon, Trump has just proved he has no earthly clue what the fuck he is doing.
Just since last Friday, Trump:
Has given aid and comfort to our Russian enemies who are aiming for nothing short of world dominance—with the help of their jackass Trump.
Has undermined this nation’s status as the only enforcer on the side of human rights.
Has screwed up—whether inadvertently or, as reported Sunday night, deliberately—nearly four decades of diplomacy balanced on a razor’s edge between China and Taiwan.
And just as the China and Taiwan diplomacy began to stabilize—he screwed it up again.
On Twitter.
Good work, moron.
*
You don’t have to live next door to the United Nations to understand why talking to the president of Taiwan, and making it public, and referring to “the close economic, political, and security ties between Taiwan and the United States,” just increased the chances that Trump will get some of us—including his supporters—killed.
Since 1979, we have played a silly little childish game with mainland China. If we don’t make a big deal about the island of Taiwan, if we don’t call it a nation, if we recognize that, psychologically, Taiwan is to the Chinese what Communist Cuba has been to us since 1959, if our diplomats and presidents and dipshits-elect like Donald Trump don’t rub China’s nose in it, the Chinese won’t wipe the more-or-less democracy of Taiwan off the friggin’ map.
It’s that simple. The one billion, four hundred million mainland Chinese Communists will not turn the
twenty-three and a half million Chinese in Taiwan into a parking lot—all we have to do . . . is not do exactly what Donald Nitwit Trump did by saying what he did to the Taiwanese president last Friday.
But of course, he did it, because he thinks he knows better than everybody else about the world when he doesn’t know shit.
And anyway, what’s the fate of twenty-three and a half million Chinese in Taiwan compared with what really matters?
“The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!”
“Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.”
Because clearly the point of an incoming presidential administration is to see how many leaders around the world call in to tell him how terrific he is!
We now see, six weeks out from the inauguration, the outlines of the Trump Doctrine: Congratulate Trump!
*
Sunday, a crowded elevator’s worth of Trumpets leaked a story to The Washington Post that this was all planned—a more “robust” defense of Taiwan—which is, of course, even dumber, especially if the idiot-elect has to publicly disguise his “planned robustness” as naiveté. Because of course he then gets mad when people call him naive, and thus doubles down on the whole thing Sunday night on Twitter.
*
So now, not only are the Chinese pissed off, not only is their help in whatever looms next for us in North Korea in jeopardy, and not only is an actual slow growth in the reliability of the relationship between our two countries at risk—but who benefits from uncertainty between the United States and China? We don’t win from it. The Chinese don’t win from it. In whose interest is the new confusion? The new setback? The new asshattery from Trump?
Russia.
Always Russia.
Russia. And by the way—guess what flooded out of a WikiLeaks dump Saturday that you probably didn’t hear about? Ninety gigabytes and 2,420 documents of intelligence related to . . . Germany. And its chancellor, Angela Merkel. Ahead of its upcoming elections.
Germany—which, since Trump’s election by a minority of our voters, has already taken our place as the leading democracy in the world and the only Western power able or willing to stand up against the passive-aggressive world war that Russia has been waging for several years—now with the aid and comfort of President-elect Donald Bumbling Amateur Putin Puppet Trump.
*
And yes, I said Trump’s election has already resulted in Germany taking our place as the leading democracy—the leading enforcer on the side of human rights—in the world.
And if these fiascos with China and Taiwan and WikiLeaks and Germany are not evidence enough, there was a third Trump diplomatic disaster that might actually eclipse the other two.
Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte—the street thug who has had thousands of his citizens murdered by police and vigilantes without trial, and in many cases without even arrest, on the pretext of an anti-drug campaign—Duterte says he, too, got on the phone with Trump on Friday and that Trump endorsed the barbarism Duterte has unleashed.
“I could sense a good rapport, an animated President-elect Trump. And he was wishing me success in my campaign against the drug problem,” Duterte said. “He understood the way we are handling it . . .”
We are many things in this country, but we have never and must never stoop to murder, disguised as law and order, by a dictator who has compared his own actions to those of Adolf Hitler.
Worst yet, Duterte said this buffoon Trump has invited him to visit New York and Washington, and bluntly, Rodrigo Duterte should not be admitted to this country even in a casket . . . But don’t tell Trump that—he knows everything.
*
If this is how this dense, pea-brained little man is going to run things, if this is how far in over his own fat, orange head he is going to be internationally, if this is how he is going to strut as president—a triple-chinned bull in a nuclear china shop—he cannot be allowed to become president.
Because after January 20, if he decides to spend a week prioritizing receiving congratulations for his inauguration and tweeting out his petulance about Chinese taxes—if he can’t manage to keep his fucking ego out of these opaque but essential balancing acts, the ones that stitch together the world as it is—he could get us all killed before his next appointment with whoever colors his hair.
WE HAVE ELECTED A SHITTY BUSINESSMAN
Post date • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6
We have elected a shitty businessman.
Amid everything else, from the psychosis to the orange bull in the nuclear china shop, we have elected a guy who doesn’t know the first thing about the American economy.
“Any business that leaves our country for another country, fires its employees, builds a new factory or plant in the other country, and then thinks it will sell its product back into the U.S. without retribution or consequence, is WRONG!
“There will be a tax on our soon to be strong border of 35% for these companies wanting to sell their product, cars, A.C. units etc., back across the border.”
First of all, that’s exactly what he didn’t do with the Carrier Corporation in Indiana—the thing he is still boasting about as if, instead of a tax break for some rich guys, what he had really done was give everybody eternal life.
Carrier got $7 million in taxpayer money from the state of Indiana to not move eight hundred jobs to Mexico.
And it’s still moving one thousand jobs to Mexico!
And it’s not facing a 35 percent tax for selling its Mexican-made products in the United States.
Donald Trump. Shitty. Businessman.
*
But of course, it’s far worse than that.
Consider for a moment what would happen if he really were able to unilaterally and immediately impose this tax.
Don’t think about the thousands of jobs at the hundreds of Carrier-style companies around the country.
Think about the jobs as yet uncreated.
Trump—Shitty Businessman—is telling companies, domestic or international, that if they open new plants in the United States, or hire more Americans in their operations already in the United States—there is no going back.
Those jobs better be forever.
If another company in Carrier’s position—let’s call them Shmarrier—hires one new employee in this country, then something happens to the economy—of the country, or just of Shmarrier—and they have to fire the guy and move his job to . . . Canada, suddenly, according to the Trump Shitty Businessman Plan, there could be a 35 percent tax on Shmarrier products sold in this country.
Explain to me the motive for Shmarrier—or anybody else—ever to expand their U.S. business again!
Explain to me the motive for Shmarrier—or anybody else—ever to hire another American worker again!
Add to that—this idiot Trump states, as if there were no laws, as if there was no Congress, as if there were no courts, that “there will be a tax,” as though he could just make them up as and when he wants them.
What kind of business wants to invest in a country where the economy is predicated not on regulations or just patterns, but on the whim . . . of one Shitty Businessman?
And as if to underscore this, the vice president–elect—the one whose home state just bribed Carrier with $7 million of our taxpayer money so Trump can boast about what a soooooper genius he is—went even further.
When it comes to punishing companies that move jobs out of this country, Mike Pence says, “The president-elect will make those decisions on a day-by-day basis.”
Again—it ain’t his call.
There’s no reason for Trump to know this. He’s just a Shitty Businessman.
But Pence has supposedly been governor of a state for nearly four years. A state with laws
and a legislature and courts.
And he has just told all those businesses that are considering hiring Americans: Great, but don’t try to fire them, because if he’s in a bad mood, Generalissimo Shitty Businessman will slap you with a 35 percent tax because a guy who got over two million fewer votes than the other candidate is convinced he’s Moses coming down the mountain with the goddamned Commandments in his hands.
President-elect Shitty Businessman has just thrown the brakes on a huge part of the American economy.
And what’s worse, he may have also thrown the economy into reverse.
There was a second part of that tweetstorm.
“These companies are able to move between all 50 states, with no tax or tariff being charged.”
This is an even dumber deal.
Not only do our imaginary executives at Shmarrier have no motive to add jobs in this country, but now, with the economy stalled by the 35 percent revenge tax from Donald J. Trump, Shitty Businessman, they can say to the governments of whatever states their plants are in, “If you don’t give us more tax breaks or build us new facilities—we’re moving to Wyoming.”
First you cut the legs off the economy by punishing any company that expands its workforce on the logical premise that, yes, in bad times it can downsize its workforce.
Then, with jobs scarce, you give all employers everywhere an official sanction to pit one state against another—hell, pit one county against another—as if this was a nation of sports teams looking for a new taxpayer-funded stadium.
The states and communities willing to bribe companies the most, and with lower standards of living so employees have to get paid the least, will be able to take this country’s economy to the fucking cleaners because . . . we . . . have . . . just . . . elected . . . a . . . shitty businessman!
BATMAN VILLAINS
Post date • WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7
The incoming cabinet and White House staff of the idiot-elect is so collectively and individually nefarious, so reeking of financial corruption and moral decay, that it beggars political comparison.
Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke) Page 16