Making a Deal- Any Deal

Really big noise over Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” continued on This Week. Even Matt Schlaff, Trump’s only defender on the panel was forced into the corner of having to deny that he feels Trump is incompetent. The book has been attacked on journalistic, literary and factual grounds but the reality is; every reporter who has been questioned about the statements about Trump’s competence tells the same tale. They find the accusations to be right on target. They will tell you every Republican off the record, will agree with Wolff’s premise; that Trump isn’t up to the job, but since they are as duplicitous as the President they will never go on the record with their accusations. On the other hand everyone who doesn’t have an agenda that needs Trump, is openly willing to admit that he is out of control, lacking in any kind of intellectual discipline, uninterested in anything that will not be personally advantageous and completely without any kind of moral integrity. So Trump’s competency seems to depend on the political needs of those who are questioned about it.

It’s quite obvious that a combination of thirst for power and the craven avoidance of any situation that could endanger that goal is what are driving today’s Washington. When you find, as is now the case, a huge group of Republican congressmen who will talk off the record about the ignorance and incompetence of the President, but who refuse to make such a monumental accusation public, the only explanation is cowardice in refusing to fight for the citizens agenda.

For any number of reasons, The point of “Fire and Fury” is that Donald Trump is not qualified to be President of the United States. Those who don’t want to deal with that question will attack the book on any number of other fronts. Agreed, the book is not a brilliant piece of literary accomplishment. Yes, it’s full of typos that indicate it was rushed to press to take advantage of its notoriety. No it isn’t well sourced but that seems to have been unnecessary since every reporter who has covered the White House has told these same stories, off the record. Putting them on the record simply acknowledges the fact of their existence. So let’s examine the question.

Is Trump morally fit to be President? Well, there are sixteen women who are currently accusing him of having sexually assaulted or harassed them. He speaks to suing them but has not wanted to expose himself to the truth of those accusations in a courtroom. There are his own statements about being able to handle women’s privates just because he is a celebrity. There is his sponsorship of beauty contests which allowed him to invade the dressing rooms of young women so he could ogle their nudity and just recently there is his whole hearted backing of a molester of young women for a Senate post in Alabama. Yes there have been other Presidents who have had moral questions in their private lives. Roosevelt and Eisenhower had mistresses. Kennedy was a profligate womanizer and Clinton was actually impeached because of a lie he told about the oral sex he received from a smitten intern. But Trump has stepped out on a scale that is unprecedented for sexual Presidential harassment. Any regular guy with his history would, more often than not, be in prison by now.

Still on the moral but getting into the veracity department is Trump’s obvious and unprecedented battle with the truth. This one is so obvious that Republican’s won’t even debate it. Trump lies about everything and anything, seemingly just because he is speaking. Any number of fact-monitors have published information on this and there has been almost no argument about it. He lies about stuff he said minutes before. He lies about stuff that is obvious to anyone who has any interest on any given subject. He lies about anything that he perceives will help him but what’s really bizarre is that he will also lie about stuff that hurts him. This would lead one to believe he has no recognition of what is the truth and what is not. The result of this condition is that the leader of the free world cannot be believed by any of the other national leaders he is supposed to be interacting with and therefore nothing can be accomplished by anyone attempting to do business with with our country. One would think the problems are obvious and damning to anyone sitting in the White House.

Then there’s policy and planning. Trump shows no ability to develop and follow up on any kind of policy and from all reports is unable to carry through on any kind of plan to see even his fractured policies carried out. Based on false premises and a basic misunderstanding of international trade policies, he has attacked international treaties in which we are involved He has campaigned against Obama’s Nuclear Treaty with Iran because of the false suppositions that Iran made money from it and that they are cheating on it. Both positions are incorrect, so if he really believes his own positions, he is too stupid to understand and if he doesn’t, he is just lying again.

Like a child, Trump is ridiculously easy to bait. Attack him on even the smallest question and he comes at you like a lioness protecting her cubs. His tweets are the stuff of middle school jealousy and pique. Grownups just don’t act like this, at least not functional grownups, and that, after all is what we are talking about. If the President isn’t a grownup then the country is in big trouble.

I could go on with subject after subject and problem after problem but they all lead to the same inarguable point. Donald Trump isn’t a raving, slobbering maniac, but he is certainly not up to running the greatest, most complicated country in the world. When Ronald Reagan was dealing with senility the government kept it a secret from the American people. I won’t get into whether that was right or wrong but those who stood to protect that President’s condition from the citizens of this country did not let him run amok, making horrible decisions and blabbering his stupidities, thereby damaging the nation for decades to come.

Let’s look at Trump’s reaction to this book. Instead of pointing to what few accomplishments he has had in his first year in office and ignoring the book, he childishly jumped off the shelf and attacked it with full guns blazing. He rants about how smart he is, what a genius he is, how he has made billions and makes all good decisions. Most of us recognize that this is the reaction of a five year old and that’s just not what we want in the White House. Trump’s reactions to “Fire and Fury” are proving the truth of “Fire and Fury.

In a fascinating and incredibly revealing televised meeting between the President and members of both parties, Donald Trump announced that he is for a clean DACA bill, that we still need a wall and that he must have a comprehensive immigration reform bill. He did this while denying that we can get a clean immigration bill or DACA reform unless he get’s his Wall. Yes, I’m confused too. But more important and much more to the point; the President is confused, very confused. It was clear that he didn’t understand what anyone wanted and had no idea of how to give it to them. He mumbled, stuttered, and reversed himself at the suggestion of members of both parties who were fighting in public for what they each wanted. What became clear is that the show itself was set up to illustrate that Trump could gather the troops, and all it showed was that the troops were fleeing in every direction.

Maybe the idea for this pathetic comedy was to show that Trump could make a deal. He stated that he wanted what the people in the room wanted but the people in the room all wanted different things. The Democrats wanted DACA protection. Trump wanted The Wall and the Republicans wanted to restrict immigration, all to the exclusion of what everybody else wanted.

It’s obvious that the basis of this meeting was “Fire and Fury,” and Trump’s need to prove to the public that he isn’t a slobbering, raving idiot that those interviewed in Wolff’s book see as a man leading them over the cliff.

Sure Trump probably wants to get a DACA bill but more than that he wants a useless, crushingly expensive wall that will accomplish nothing and cause other, more important problems to starve for cash. Trump loves to say that stuff isn’t complicated but that’s only because he doesn’t understand the complications implicit in almost every government process.

So maybe we have to take a look at the whole mess and figure out what everybody is carrying on about. First there’s DACA, This is, for any thinking human a no brainer. There are about 800,000 young people out there who were brought to this country as kids and have no responsibility for being here. They are now American educated and entering the workforce. They are for the most part without criminal backgrounds and are in a position to supply at least part of what this country needs in the workforce. To do that effectively they need some kind of official recognition of them as legal residents or in the best of all possible worlds citizenship. So what’s the problem? What’s always the problem? Small-minded assholes that don’t want anyone else to benefit from what their ancestors benefited from and that the assholes pissed it away. For decades the GOP has sold a bill of goods to their small-minded followers that immigrants take work from them and even if they don’t, they surely eat up the welfare funds. It would seem that one has to decide if one wants work or welfare but in GOP thinking there is no one who gets welfare that wants work. So the first order of business is to pass some kind of legislation protecting the Dreamers and giving them some legitimacy. And what’s standing in its way? A lot of crooks who can’t pass up an opportunity to grab something ffor themselves even as they give these kids what they should be given, both for their sakes and for the country’s sake.

How this works is Trump wants his “Wall,” a Wall that has no practical use and will cost $18 billion bucks. That $18 billion wasted on Trump’s Wall means money not spent on education, infrastructure and many, many other important programs for vets, kids and the elderly. But Trump doesn’t care, which is only one of the reasons that he isn’t fit to be President. He just wants a bill to sign and a Wall to pose in front of.

 

And then there’s the GOP leadership in congress. They are willing to give up the DACA permission as long as it doesn’t include citizenship because that would get their feeble fan base up in arms “They don’t want them wetbacks comin’ over here takin’ their jobs.” You know, the jobs they can’t do because they aren’t educated enough to even understand what’s needed.

 

So how do you put all this together and get everything to work, or at least to get the DACA problem solved? If Trump is to be believed he’s exactly the guy to foster this kind of deal. If only he had actually written that book instead of his co-author he might really have some clue how to get it done. But watching him at this press event that was all about the solution to this problem you realize that Trump doesn’t understand anything about it. He really doesn’t understand the predicament of the young dreamers. He has no idea about what the Republicans want or why they want it and he really doesn’t see that wasting $18 billion on his Wall that won’t keep anyone out of the country is a gigantic waste of money that needs to be spent in other areas.

As stated above, Trump is not a slobbering, raving idiot, but he is a lesser man, sorely unable to deal with the complications of the world he is facing or the job he has unwittingly stumbled into. He wants to do the right thing but he always sees the right thing as something that will benefit him and if he can’t see a personal benefit he doesn’t really see any reason to expend any energy on whatever it is that’s under consideration.

 

Trump wants his wall, just like a four year old that wants a particular toy, not because he realizes it’s the best toy but simply because he decided he wanted it and that’s all there is to that. He will cry until he gets it or until he cries himself to sleep. Or, and this is key, until someone distracts him with a different, shinier toy. Unfortunately right now the only toy that seems to he more appealing to Trump is dropping a bomb on North Korea and that is really something that we shouldn’t shake in front of him.

Real goals aside, the show that we witnessed yesterday, written, produced and directed by Steve Miller, the same Steve Miller that had to be bounced off a TV show the other night because he, like his boss, couldn’t control himself or bring himself to realize that lying isn’t always the solution to everything, was in fact a failure. If it had been a Broadway Show, it would have closed out of town because it was all, as previously stated, to make you think that Trump has it all under control when what we saw was a pathetic mess that showed Trump unable to understand the questions at hand and even more unable to come up with any viable answers. And once more the nation is the big loser.

So how does anyone get what he or she wants out of this show business event produced to prove that Trump isn’t just an incompetent boob? The answer has always been compromise but compromise demands that there be some points of agreement on each side that opponents can give or take from to arrive at a mutually advantageous point. There are a couple of different pictures of DACA that can work into such a scenario. There are also some points of give and take on immigration policy that can support such a process. But it’s on “The Wall,” the ludicrous Trump campaign promise, where compromise dies. The problem is absolutely straightforward. There is nothing about The Wall that makes any sense. At this point I history more people are going back to Mexico than are coming here from Mexico. Therefore to build a wall would be to prevent illegal immigrants from going back home, exactly the opposite goal as has been promoted for building it. In addition, “The Wall” will cost a fortune, money that indisputably could be better spent on any number of programs that are bleeding for lack of funds. These are reasonable points but the most important point is that Trump, the man who is demanding that we build this useless, costly eyesore is the one who promised that it would be paid for by not us but Mexico. So if he gets his way, he lies. Not that that has ever bothered Trump but should we really be destroying other programs by using their money to promote a lie. Even in a Trump led country this seems to be a violation of morals and reason.

But wait a minute! Trump is really the only one in the room that is absolutely stuck on The Wall. So maybe he should be sent out of the room while the grownups debate on how to get DACA approved and how to fix the immigration system so it works for everyone. Yes, I mentioned grownups and we all know that there really aren’t many of them in congress right now but there are probably enough to actually get something done. That “something” wouldn’t make everybody happy. There would in all probability be no citizenship for the DACA kids but there should be a legal status that enables them to work, live and pay taxes like everybody else. The solution probably won’t end immigration issues as some of the far right fanatics want, but it will probably allow for a constricted process that will include more security and a loosening of restrictions on those who bring marketable skills to our shores.

But where does that leave Trump’s Wall? Well, if they can get him out of the way while the big kids work, in the garbage can. But that means we are left with a petulant President and there’s nothing more turbulent for the Internet than a petulant President so what do they give Trump to make up for taking away his toy? Simple, a new toy! Not a bomb for North Korea but a new bill to sign. We have all seen that signing his name to almost anything makes Trump happier than a pig in shit and this will be a big sty for him to waddle in. He can tell the progressives how he did the right thing for the DACA kids. He can tell the conservatives how he is limiting immigration and can tell himself that the Wall is still on the table, even if it isn’t the one on which he signs the bill. It’s a win/win and both parties give the President a big jelly apple of a bill to sign. He can even send out for a new box of gold pens. There will definitely be joy in Mudville if only the big boys can get Trumpie out of the room while they make a deal that could help the nation.

Democrat Dick Durban and Republican Lindsay Graham worked together and came up with a bill that could possibly, actually, solve all the problems addressed above. But before they could present it to the President, Steve “The Snake” Miller dragged proven bigots, Tom Cotton and Bob Goodlatté into the meetings. The proposal would have authorized a ten-year track to citizenship for the DACA kids, $2.8 billion for border security with $1.6 billion for The Wall; it would require green card holders to complete the citizenship process before sponsoring adult children and cut he Visa Lottery program by 50%. It looks like a pretty good bill mainly because there is something in it for everyone to hate and lot for each of them to like. So it turned out that Steve “The Snake,” was worried that the bill would be too liberal so he pulled in the above bigots to fight the process. When the discussion moved to protecting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries Trump got involved. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries coming here?” he wanted to know. Then displaying his significant signature, ignorance, Trump suggested that we bring more people here from places like Norway. It seemed that no one in the room wanted to point out to the Bigot in Chief that people from Scandinavian countries don’t want to come here, manly because he is President.

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