The Week in Washington: “Every Heartbeat Hurts”
Why is President Trump acting like a dog with a bone, like a toddler with a rag doll, when it comes to this hurricane-in-Alabama business? Is he hell-bent on keeping this story alive—in short, he insists that he was right when he claimed Hurricane Dorian was headed for Alabama, even after virtually all forecasters disputed this—because he can’t stand being wrong? Has he in fact lost whatever slender thread of sense he may have once possessed? Or is it all part of a diabolical plot to distract us from the fact that on Wednesday the Pentagon announced that the administration was diverting 3.6 billion from military construction projects to build the Trump border wall in a hurry—in other words, by the 2020 election?
Whatever the reason, this sorry state of affairs reached its nadir on Wednesday, when the president proffered a doctored weather map with a suspicious black line added that grazed Alabama. Asked by a reporter how that clearly fake addition got there, Trump professed total ignorance. But in fact he did know—as was subsequently reported, the culprit was likely none other than the Sharpie-loving president himself. "No one else writes like that on a map with a black Sharpie," a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told the Washington Post.
As thousands were reported missing and feared dead in the Bahamas, as the Carolinas were under siege from Dorian, the president was still hammering away at this ludicrous matter. On Friday evening, he was back in I’m-rubber-you’re-glue territory, tweeting, “FAKE NEWS. I would like very much to stop referring to this ridiculous story, but the LameStream Media just won’t let it alone. They always have to have the last word, even though they know they are defrauding & deceiving the public.”
On Saturday, there was a far more important development than a Sharpie-defaced weather map: The president announced, again via Twitter, that he had canceled a previously undisclosed summit at Camp David with Taliban leaders, after the Taliban took responsibility for an attack last week that killed a U.S. soldier. (Let’s face it—the commander-in-chief is just no good at keeping secrets, whether it’s a classified photo of an Iranian missile site or a hush-hush meeting with terrorists.)
In other news, guess where VP Mike Pence stayed on his recent jaunt to Ireland? Was it a) somewhere in the vicinity of Dublin, where he was meant to do some government business or was it b) 181 miles away at the Trump National resort in Doonbeg? We think you know the answer. At first, it was reported that Pence’s family is from Doonbeg, and when he heard that, the president said, "Stay at my place!" But then, as in so many other cases, there was an immediate dial-back. According to CNN: “A spokesperson for the vice president later said in a statement that the decision to stay at the property was ‘solely‘ a decision by the vice president's office and ’at no time did the President direct our office to stay at his Doonbeg resort.’"
And Moscow Mitch McConnell has a new nickname! The senate majority leader is now also known as Muzzle Mitch, since he is apparently in favor of free speech only when his own name isn’t involved. On Hugh Hewitt’s radio show last week, he whined that calling him Moscow Mitch is “modern-day McCarthyism. …You know, I can laugh about things like the Grim Reaper, but calling me Moscow Mitch is over the top.”
Lastly, on Wednesday the Department of Health and Human Services released its report on the mental health problems suffered by children separated from their parents at the border. As CBS News reported, “According to program directors and mental health clinicians, separated children exhibited more fear, feelings of abandonment, and post-traumatic stress than did children who were not separated… some children would exhibit acute symptoms of grief, like crying inconsolably. These children also expressed physical symptoms of the mental trauma, including one child who reported that ‘every heartbeat hurts.’"
Originally Appeared on Vogue
