This happened yesterday. In the White House. In the very office where great men like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt once fought to hold our nation together and protect its people.
The man on the left is Michigan’s own Ted Nugget, who, as you may recall, not too long ago called for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to be hanged. One would think that our President would want to keep his distance from a draft dodging, child molesting, racist like Nugent, but maybe, after 100 days in office, he’s finally given up on trying to maintain the illusion of being a legitimate president. Maybe, with impeachment looming, and the right wing media in chaos [more on that in just a minute], this is all he’s got left… a desperate appeal to his angry, white, male base… the people who still see it as delightfully refreshing when a man like Nugent calls Hillary Clinton a “toxic cunt,” or Barack Obama a “subhuman mongrel”… to stick with him in spite of everything that’s happening.
The iceberg that Trump is standing on appears to be rapidly melting beneath his fleshy pink feet. Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly are out at Fox News, having been shown the door after the costs associated with their decades of reprehensible behavior toward female subordinates finally became too much to tolerate. Far right agitator Milo Yiannopoulos has not only been forced out at Breitbart, in the wake of making comments defending pedophilia, but he’s also been banned for life from Twitter, after having instigated a campaign of online racist attacks against actress Leslie Jones. And Tomi Lauren, commonly referred to as “White Power Barbie,” has been fired from The Blaze by Glenn Beck, who, by the way, came to the conclusion during the presidential campaign that Trump is “dangerously unhinged”. Oh, and, just a few days ago, the news broke that, in a Texas custody case, the attorney representing Infowars host Alex Jones informed the judge presiding over the hearing that his client was merely a “performance artist”, manipulating his rabid, conspiracy theory-believing fans for fame and profit… While I’m sure all of these influential Trump supporters will resurface in the future, it’s remarkable that, at least right now, their stars all seem to be on the decline. And, what’s more, this is happening at a time when, inside the White House, the talking heads aren’t fairing much better, with Kellyanne Conway having been sidelined and Sean Spicer increasingly being seen as a joke by the American people.
And it’s not just the talking heads on the far right that are flaming out. Everyone in Trump’s orbit seems to be moving rapidly along the “crash and burn” continuum.
Not only are Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Roger Stone all being investigated for the roles they may have played on behalf the Russians to influence the outcome of the last election in Trump’s favor, but news just broke yesterday that Congressman Jason Chafettz, who recently came to Trump’s defense by claiming falsely that evidence existed backing up the President’s claim that he’d been spied on by Obama, wouldn’t be seeking reelection. And, not just that, but he said today that he might not even finish out his current term.
And all of this is having an impact. A Gallop poll release earlier this week showed that Americans – even ones that voted for him – are increasingly seeing Trump as a liar who can’t be trusted. As of right now, according to the Gallop poll, only 45 percent of Americans think that Trump keeps his promises. And that’s down from 62 percent in February. That’s a 17 point drop in less than three months.
So, yeah, I suspect Trump may be shoring up the 20% of Americans that care more about Kid Rock, Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent than they do about the fact that their President apparently doesn’t know who the leader of North Korea is or or in which direction our armada is heading.
The popular theory has been that Trump couldn’t afford to dump his white nationalist strategist Steve Bannon because he held the keys to the so-called alt-right. The thinking was that Trump, as long as he had Bannon (and thus Breitbart) by his side, couldn’t drop below a 35% favorability rating, allowing him to stay in office. Now that the floor is dropping, though, and the base is starting to erode, it looks as though Trump is fighting to find a new way forward. Word is that he’s considering the possibility of firing Bannon, and relying more on his family members to run the government. And it looks as though he may be trying to establish new lines of communication with the so-called alt-right, and form new alliances. [Word is that he just recently had dinner with the Koch brothers.]
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I just can’t help but think that hosting photo shoots like this in the White House is a sign that the wagons are starting to circle in advance of a final conflict. I mean even Trump’s friend Tom Brady decided to skip a visit to the White House yesterday. That tells me the center is rapidly slipping away… And I think that explains the desperate appeal to the Triumvirate of Stupidity pictured in these photos.
[Trump should have let Nugent take the photo on the lawn of the White House for target practice.]
For what it’s worth, and I don’t think I’ve ever shared this with you before, I think it’s possible that, in the long run, we’ll look back and say we were lucky that Trump won the White House. This, of course, is assuming that we can get him out of office relatively quickly, before too much more damage can be done. Had Clinton won, I think it’s likely that the far right movement would have grown even more aggressive, with the prodding of Bannon and Trump, who would have, without question, accused Clinton of having stolen the election in some way, likely involving undocumented people of color casting millions and millions of illegal ballots. At least, the way it is now, we’ve been given the opportunity to see Trump, and this entire movement, for the hollow monstrosity it truly is. It’s been hell, and I know it will likely get worse before it gets better, but at least the American people are getting to see the extent to which they’ve been lied to. At least, now, people are beginning to understand that Trump didn’t really have a plan to defeat ISIS, or a way to give everyone insurance, or anything else that he promised. Sure, we might not do anything with that knowledge, but at least we know, and have that opportunity. As of right now, there’s no one to blame but ourselves.
24 Comments
I would give anything to have eavesdropped on that dinner conversation though. What did they talk about? Guns and shooting stuff?
In the top photo, Trump is explaining how he plans to replace U.S. Treasury Bonds with shares in Brawndo™ … because, of course, it has electrolytes.
To quote Ted Nugent, it looks like Trump is becoming a “toxic cunt.”
#ToxicCunt
I would love to have heard their conversation around the Hillary Clinton painting.
This is the equivalent of your Mom secretly paying kids at your school to show up to your birthday party.
“Hooked on Phonics Graduates Help President Trump Sound Out Some of the Big Words.”
What I found interesting is that this wasn’t just a photo shoot and dinner. He hung out with them for FOUR HOURS. He apparently gave them the white house tour and knew a great deal about all the furniture, paintings and decor– all of this is very famously the purview of the first lady. Why does our president have 4 hours to spend with rock stars and media whores? Are his staff creating intentional diversions by surrounding him with shiny celebrity yes men and women? I think his role is actually that of a Monarch. He;s not actually running anything and, in a leadership vacuum, all the factions in the WH are in-fighting for power behind his back.
The Nuge talked about hunting rights issues including the Endangered Species Act and the BLM, plus “health, fitness, food, rock ’n’ roll, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, secure borders, the history of the United States, guns, bullets, bows and arrows, North Korea, Russia” and a half-dozen other issues.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/us/politics/sarah-palin-kid-rock-ted-nugent-white-house.html
Sarah Palin spoke in detail about what they talked about.
I remember Obama talking in the past about how, as President, you have access to the brightest people in the world to consult with on everything from national security to economic strategy.
How did he call them together? Does Trump have something like the bat signal on the roof of the White House?
Being thankful for Trump over Clinton is like choosing a terrible pilot over a mediocre pilot, then hoping that the landing will be terrifying enough to show the the pilot was terrible enough never to choose him again, while praying that a crash doesn’t happen. Sad!
If the copilot Pence takes over, then there probably will be a safe landing. The passengers in first class will deplane to their final destinations while everybody else will be re-accommodated.
Meanwhile, in an alternate reality.
http://imgur.com/a/K8DFN
Really, the only thing that could have made this more spectacular is if the cast of HeeHaw had reunited to sing a song.
Mark, I understand what you are saying about looking back on Trump. My thought is that the time machine people living in, say, 2248 (just a random year) looked back at when things went wrong and traced it to Clinton winning. As devastated as they were about having to change the outcome of the election they knew they had to do it. But they didn’t want Trump to win big so they made the electoral college thing happen, and small things like the guy who opened the email attachment that led to his computer getting hacked which led to the emails getting leaked. That’s what I tell myself anyway.
Not only did he meet with them for four hours but he did so at a time when the whole world is worried about the possibility of a nuclear war with North Korea.
Kid Rock is a real working class hero… His childhood home is for sale for a cool million.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/macomb/2016/11/04/kid-rock-macomb-county-house/93299716/
I’m sorry but I can’t get over the fact you use the word “only” to describe the 45% of Americans that think Trump keeps his promises. How is this possible? Why isn’t it 15% or 2%? So far, the only thing he’s accomplished if making us the laughing stock of the world. I don’t know about you but I am getting tired of all this “winning” he promised. If almost half of Americans think this dolt keeps his promises, then I think the real work is figuring out what’s wrong with America. We already know what’s wrong with Trump. He’s a psychopathic narcissistic crybaby with the emotional and intellectual capacity of a unruly 3 year old.
Hey, he held on to Obamacare…so far, so good.
and so my husband said to me, you know he really wanted to repeal Obamacare to which I say, still, the Republicans dont. whatever. the point is when he asks them to do something, they dont..he’ll get use to it.
That’s gonna be Senator Kid Rock to you in 2018.
Funny.
It’s like a duck thanking the hunter for being a poor shot as the hunter reloads.
Is Rixk Snyder EOS?
and i always thought he was DonBee…well, not always, just usually.
More wagon circling……
Trump met with Matt Drudge in Oval Office: report http://hill.cm/0xaaBxc