The Week in Washington: “The Most Chaotic Presidency Ever”
Christmas on Pennsylvania Avenue! It was announced yesterday that Melania Trump would fly in from Palm Beach, so that she could spend the holiday with her husband, who was holed up in Washington due to a government shutdown of his own making. The situation is the result of the president and congress’s inability to come to an agreement about funding for that damnable border wall, which Mexico is apparently not paying for.
There was every indication that a deal had been struck earlier in the week to kick the can down the road and keep the government open until February, and it seemed that the surf and turf at Mar-a-Lago was tantalizingly within reach, but then Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter accused the president of caving—on Wednesday, Coulter tweeted, “Gutless president in wall-less country,” —and the gutless president freaked out that his base was mad at him, and reneged. (Remember when Trump told Chuck and Nancy that “I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck . . . . I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it”? Of course, now that it has happened he is busy shoveling invective in the Democrats’ direction.)
Every week is crazy-town inside the beltway these days, but this one seemed more unhinged than ever, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling it “the most chaotic week of what’s undoubtedly the most chaotic presidency ever in the history of the United States.” On Tuesday, there was yet another shutdown: A lawsuit from the New York attorney general dissolved the Trump Foundation, alleging “persistently illegal conduct.” The erstwhile charity has agreed to liquidate its remaining assets and donate the proceeds. (Get out your checkbook! Items for sale include a football helmet signed by Tim Tebow and two big paintings of DJT himself.)
On Thursday, Defense Secretary General James Mattis, who has been described ad nauseam as the only adult in the room, finally left the room, in response to Trump’s precipitous decision, announced by tweet, that he was pulling U.S. troops from Syria. Though the president first insisted that Mattis was retiring, the general released a scathing resignation letter, which read in part: “My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues . . . . Because you have the right to a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”
In other news, the president is currently named in 17 local, state, and federal lawsuits, a situation that MSNBC’s Joy Reid describes as “Watergate on steroids, with Russians.” The stock market is on track for its worst December since the Great Depression, almost 90 years ago. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who thought he had sweet deal of no jail time as a reward for blabbing to the Mueller commission, found himself facing a federal judge who wiped the smile off Flynn’s face by accusing him of betraying his country and mused aloud whether Flynn could be charged with treason. And the guy Trump wants to be the next attorney general—William Barr—auditioned for the job in June by submitting a lengthy unsolicited memo excoriating the Russia probe. And that’s not all! On Thursday, to mark the signing of the farm bill, the president found time to unearth and post a video of himself in a straw hat and overalls singing the Green Acres theme song with Megan Mullally, in a clip from the 2006 Emmy Awards.
And lastly, though it is no doubt a hardship to celebrate Christmas among the bloodred trees of the White House instead of on a sunny Florida golf course, there are currently approximately 15,000 migrant children who will be spending the holiday locked in federal facilities.
