A Mad Tea-Party

     The phrase "lawyer up" is often used with scorn towards public figures we suspect are concealing misdeeds.  Someone obtains the services of a lawyer, which supposedly means an attempt to avoid jail time.  That's part of it in some instances, but a "good" lawyer, the kind sought out by a rich well-connected public "servant" like Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump's husband and White House Innovations Director (his real title) in the Trump administration, is someone who can use highly refined legalistic bullshit to keep his privileged client out of prison.
     There's nothing wrong with getting the services of a lawyer, yet we live in an age when TV newspeople find it necessary to remind us that doing so doesn't mean one is guilty or innocent.  It's a right.  "If you don't have an attorney," the Miranda speech cops give to those they arrest goes, "one will be provided for you."  Sometimes in America cops get too nervous and empty their guns into people before they can tell their victims about how they could've had a lawyer to talk to if they'd survived their encounter with the law.  Jared Kushner, being a rich white prick, will never be shot by cops, and it's unlikely he'll ever do time behind bars, but he can look forward to weeks or months of scrutiny by the FBI, Congress, and the news media, all because he chose to marry the favorite daughter of Donald Trump.
     President Trump every day demonstrates his lack of ability to do his job properly.  He operates a mendacity machine that his subordinates must also use if they wish to retain their positions.  When the Republican-led Senate health care bill (cooked up entirely in secret like a sorcerer's spell) was released to public revulsion, with its gouging cuts to Medicaid among other proposals antithetical to health, Trump and his minions claimed Medicaid wouldn't be affected.  This blaring lie characterizes the daily nature of this administration, which can't even hold regularly televised live press conferences, preferring audio-only contentious meetings presided over increasingly by Sean Spicer's nasty deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.  Spicer seems to be crumbling.  Whenever he's challenged, even by a teddy bear-like CNN reporter trying to clarify a point, Spicer's eyes look frozen, as if he has to soon make a life or death decision.  He should decide to go to the Oval Office and tell Donald Trump to go fuck himself, record the incident with his phone, and broadcast it on YouTube and every other media outlet he can think of.  He'd become, temporarily anyway, a hero.  Interview offers would pile up, job offers from cable news stations would be available, Sean Spicer, Pundit.
     Instead, he stays true to his boss, Trump, who would and probably someday will, in true Donald fashion, fuck Spicer over in a heartbeat.
     Trump's Russia problem persists, but for me the hacking of the American election registers more as the kind of thing big states do to each other and more often to littler states.  MSNBC, with its host of "former" CIA employees acting as pundits, looks more and more like an arm of the intelligence agencies, the very same organizations that fuck with other countries' democratic processes all the time.  The long shadow of the "Russia thing," involving James Comey, Robert Mueller's investigation, hacking of the electoral process, Trump's aides (including Jared Kushner) getting close to Russian officials before the election and after, is less important to Americans worrying about politicians fucking with their health care than cable news would make it seem.  Trump's Russia problem, created, in my view, by his own decisions in dealing with foreign moneylenders, that in turn caused by his inability to honor his debts (thus his six bankruptcies), is far less a suspenseful espionage epic and more like the story of a major dickhead with too much money, someone who never learned humility and now fights against learning that with all he can muster--the power of the presidency behind him, the power to take lives, as he does in the endless war on terror every day.
     He's now seventy-one years old, out of shape, operating at the manic pace his much younger self was physically better able to handle, reportedly yelling at his wall of TV sets during news programs, exhibiting weird behavior, as in the following example:
     During a press photo op in the Oval Office, Trump sat behind his desk talking on the phone with the Prime Minister of Ireland.  He interrupted the flow of talk to let the PM know that there was an Irish reporter among the journalists in the room.  He told the reporter to come over, an attractive blonde Irish woman in a tight dress.  He told her, "You have a nice smile."  The reporter later described the experience as "bizarre."  Some people, having encountered a president, like JFK for instance, might say the experience was "thrilling," or "fascinating."
     I'm reminded of the looks NATO nation leaders were giving each other when Trump spoke in Brussels.  They looked like they were unfamiliar with the man's manner and prole speech patterns.  Americans, however, are well aware of what a weird motherfucker he is.  "Bizarre" is a nice way of putting it, but the Irish reporter pegged it well.  Strange and unusual, indeed.  That Trump has a well-established record of hitting on women adds to the incident's creepiness.  He apparently doesn't understand that behaving like an inebriated guy in a bar after midnight isn't a seemly way for a president to act, especially with cameras and microphones present.  This incident got analyzed on CNN this afternoon, hostess Brooke Baldwin interviewing for their reactions two young women, a Democratic activist and a Republican activist/frequent Trump apologist.  They split on party lines, predictably, but the brunette Democrat couldn't conceal her understandable distaste for Trump's mild lechery, pointing out with several examples his offensive behavior towards women.  The blonde Republican countered with Trump's many examples of calling out to men, even to a "male baby."  He's an equal opportunity touchy-feely guy, so went her argument.  Brooke Baldwin could have offered her own opinion, though, since she seems intelligent and self-assured, I suspect she probably thinks Trump is a creep and would never want to be alone with him.
     Ivanka Trump has untold knowledge of her father's behaviors with women.  She's a dutiful daughter, claiming in a recent interview that she doesn't discuss politics much with her president dad.  This seems very unlikely; how could she not?  Yet, he also doesn't seem like the kind of person receptive to disagreeable (to him) ideas.  Ivanka Trump was a registered Democrat as recently as last year.  She couldn't vote for her father in the New York Primary.  I suspect she also would agree with the blonde Republican nitwit interviewed by Baldwin today that Donald Trump calls out for attention women and men, and the occasional baby.  He's a father, a grandfather, he's really very normal.
     He also "lawyered up" in recent weeks, for his greatest fear, career-wise, is the Justice Department and Congress figuring out where the Trump money trail goes.  I suspect it goes in the same direction of other rich men's wealth: away from taxes and social responsibility and towards global financial entanglements in the immoral universe of "too big to fail," just as the war on terror is too big to stop.

                                                                            Vic Neptune