The Carpentariat

Trump is actually quite focused

Trump biographer and Bloomberg columnist Tim O'Brien encapsulates the tribulations of Donald-under-the-legal-microscope: "The Trump Organization, the Trump Foundation, the Trump family, the Trump campaign, the Trump transition, the Trump inauguration, and the Trump White House are all being probed for wrongdoing."

In the course of dissecting each of these monstrous presidential headaches, O'Brien pens a rather peculiar observation: As numerous investigations unfold, he writes, and their facts become public, "Trump may emerge as a brazen grifter." That Trump is and always has been a brazen grifter is a given as conspicuous as Paul Ryan's cowardice. The question today is, How much of Trump's brazenness was also felonious?

While we tend to see Donald "the Don" Trump as a second-rate mobster in possession of a first-rate scrambled mind, we should in fact give him credit (or 20 to life) for having been exquisitely focused lo these many years. I mean, when looking at the list of his many troubles one is reminded of the 1954, Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman blockbuster, Magnificent Obsession (quite possibly the worst film ever made): The Donald is suffering because of hush money, missing money (inauguration committee), Russian money, charity money (misused), family money, Trump organization money, Deutsche Bank money, laundered money, and tax return money (the lack thereof).

I simply do not have attention to one subject only, as the Donald has. My public face, here, is one of politics, almost exclusively. But I also enjoy books, art, music, travel, and, I suppose, a few unmentionables. Trump? It's money in the morning, money at night, money the whole day long. He is positively consumed by money — and like all mobsters, clean money seems to be anathema to him. He gets his kicks by making it dirty.

And now the lawyers will get it. Such is the circle of a corrupt life.

 

With Trump in charge, the stock market is doing what one would expect

From the Department of Hopelessly Wishful Thinking:

Former economic officials in the Trump administration have, of late, frantically called the White House to tell temporarily employed officials there to tell Trump: Enough with the demented tweets, enough with the erratic behavior, enough with the cretinous denunciations of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell — because all of these unpresidential acts are heavily contributing to the very thing that Trump is so publicly bemoaning: the stock market's collapse.

Former WH economic adviser Gary Cohn, reports the Wall Street Journal, has specifically noted that Trump calling himself the "Tariff Man" wasn't particularly bright, either, since markets tend to desire freedom. Initiating and then escalating a trade war with China and Europe is an excellent way in which to damper investor enthusiasm. Note that this had to be explained to a president of the United States — not that this one would listen.

As well, a former Treasury Department official "spoke to [Treasury Secretary] Mnuchin and told him that Mr. Trump’s tweets and 'dysfunctional' governing style were causing stock indexes to plummet." And Trump should stop it, said the official. But again, this was "advice the president frequently gets and seldom seems to heed," adds the Journal.

Why did these former economic officials feel compelled to air their astoundingly familiar advice to the White House, and by implication, expect it to be followed? You got me. As just noted, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a newspaper story about Trump's disorderly mind and incoherent behavior. In the annals of even barely noticeable presidential competence, he's a lost cause. My one guess is that the officials said what they said only to include it in their memoirs.

 

A southern wall or bust

According to Trump yesterday, he is giving 800,000 unpaid federal employees a Christmas gift this year — the wall.

"Many of those workers have said to me, communicated — stay out until you get the funding for the wall," he said to reporters in the Oval Office. "These federal workers want the wall."

Said one delighted worker, who cleans restrooms on the job and cares for her 15-year-old great-grandson and 5-year-old great-grandson: "It’s just putting me in a bind. I am going to have to juggle my bills around. My part-time job at the Agriculture Department helps me make ends meet."

Said another wall-thrilled employee of the Food and Drug Administration: "It’s definitely going to start to get rough. It’s definitely an inconvenience, especially when the reason the government is shut down, I think most people agree, is ridiculous, because we don’t want to spend $5 billion on an electrified wall with flaming arrows."

And, with two children and a mortgage, the wife of a couple who work for the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon said: "We’re going to lose both of our incomes right now. If we don’t get back pay, that will be a significant impact. Health care, insurance all comes out of that check. That’s really scary. I just don’t know what’s going on anymore. None of us do." The couple are contract employees, who, notes the Washington Post, "typically don’t win congressional approval to recoup lost wages once the government reopens."

So, as you slide into bankruptcy, so much for a merry Christmas, folks. Nonetheless, we know you'll have a happy New Year, because, as the president assured us, you want the wall.

 

Not all that spacey

Yesterday I stumbled on this three-minute Kevin Spacey video, which, I soon discovered, other websites uniformly have insisted on calling "bizarre." I saw little that fit that description. What I did see was a clever defense by Spacey, dramatically and artistically done, in which he connects with his future jury pool in the character they know best.

I confess I wasn't a "House of Cards" fan. I watched maybe 20 minutes of the first episode and found it more caricature- than character-filled. Perhaps I didn't give the series enough of a chance. Anyway, in the video below, Spacey exploits his television role as Frank Underwood in a kind of Richard III manner, in the hope, naturally, that viewers-as-jurors will be seduced by doubt. I thought it ingeniously eccentric, but certainly not bizarre, in the sense of flaky or preposterous.

 

May all your days be merry

Merry Christmas to you. I trust you're having a lovely day, full of family or just a quiet, solitary day at home, such as our esteemed leader is having, while Melania has a brawny, handsome caddie or two at Mar-a-Lago. Perhaps a tennis coach as well.

Here at the Carpenter compound I had intended to make a full, post-gift-opening breakfast for Ms. Carpenter, university sophomore and future U.S. senator in presidential training. Somehow, I forgot to buy eggs. Thus she can run for high office on the now-valid premise that she grew up in want. A real Dickensian tale of woe and overcoming.

Again, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays (Ms. Carpenter's cat is Jewish, so we're sensitive to these things) and I'll see you tomorrow, at which time together we'll ponder the fate of the nation under a cuckolded imbecile.

 

As the world of Trump turns

The announcement appeared to catch Pentagon officials off guard, reports the Washington Post.

Replace Pentagon with the name of any other executive-branch department or agency and you have, these days, the most familiar typewritten sentence in the reporting of American politics. Virtually every Trumpian announcement is haphazard, impetuous and vastly ill-advised, and so it was with yesterday's presidential pronunciamento that Defense Secretary James Mattis will be leaving two months before he leaves; that is, on Jan. 1, not Feb. 28, the latter being the original resignation date submitted by Mattis.

Haphazard, impetuous, ill-advised, ignorant, vindictive, hotheaded, peevish, tempestuous, imperious, arrogant, subliterate or just plain stupid — take your pick, or take 'em all, for they all describe Trump, the most A-Z vulgarian ever to darken the Oval Office. Mattis was getting good press, so Mattis had to go — now. That, in part, was the perfectly vacuous thinking of Donald J. Trump, which, by way of contrast, only underscored Mattis' intelligence.

"I am pleased to announce," Trump tapped out on Twitter between bites of a with-everything Big Mac, "that our very talented Deputy Secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan, will assume the title of Acting Secretary of Defense starting January 1, 2019. Patrick has a long list of accomplishments while serving as Deputy, & previously Boeing." And what kind of acting defense secretary will Patrick Shanahan be? Why of course. "He will be great!" added Trump.

The president's flustery emotionalism has become even more fragile than that of a middle-school lass. Trump has "told aides," reports the Post, "that he especially resented the narrative of Mattis as a manager of Trump who served as a human guardrail against the president’s impulses," and "In recent days, Trump went so far as to tell White house aides that he does not need Mattis and that his defense secretary was not as important a figure as others believed."

A really gaudy Manhattan penthouse hath no fury like a Donald scorned. Mattis failed more times than not in his role as a human guardrail, still it is fair to say that the four-star general gave at least a patina of respectability to Trump's underworld administration. I suspect Mattis' Establishment credentials enraged Trump even more than the general's tutelage. This president seeks the reductively disreputable so as to burnish his mobster image; experts and intellectuals have an air of wussiness about them.

So, what's the next, expected caught-off-guard announcement from Trump? Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Right? There's a headline good for another couple days' distraction.

 

A Christmas Story

Nicely captured by the brilliant Ann Telnaes is the characterological essence of the Trump administration's chief goons, led, of course, by the gooniest of them all, the Don.

The father once said to the son, "I don't apologize — that's my life, petty corruption and corrupt pettiness — but I thought that when it was your time, you would be the one to hold the strings: Senator Trump, Governor Trump …" Added the father, "Well, it wasn't enough time, Donald. It wasn't enough time." To which little Donald replied, "We'll get there, Pop. We'll get there."

And Donald Trump did. Through assorted malefactions and as yet untraceable collusion with fellow gangsters — those activities being the family way — he did even better, becoming president of the United States.

Since then, allegations have mounted, indictments have heaped, and others' criminality has pointed directly to Trump. The vile stench of gangland governance has wafted over the nation and, some of it, under the radar. The orange creature who would be king has latibulized and retreated into solitary executive time and screaming paranoia; he sees enemies and prosecutors — both federal and state — everywhere, and he is right to do so.

They are coming for him, and the beleaguered Don has no Brother Pantangeli against whom to extort, no adjacent Cicero in which to relocate, no old country to which he can permanently flee. In becoming the highest lowlife, Trump made himself the flashiest target of career-ending investigations — and he has nowhere to hide.

The really peculiar facet of this allegoric tale is that it's really no allegory at all. Trump is a criminal kingpin, he is on the lam, as it were, and he is about to be nailed, in one way or t'other. He's the ghoulish Icarus of American politics, and his flameout will be spectacular.

Finis.

 

In shutdown mode, Democrats must hang tough

The crisis of illegal activity at our Southern Border is real and will not stop until we build a great Steel Barrier or Wall. Let work begin!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2018

The Democrats now own the shutdown!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2018

That, in brief, is Trump's strategy to win the shutdown battle — a combative "caravan redo," as one administration official put it to the Daily Beast. The strategy is a kind of Republican atavism, reminiscent of the party's 1952 K1C2 Formula for winning the presidential election; it threw at Democrats the rather catchy charge of Korea, Communism and Corruption.  

Republicans rule by folly and campaign by slogans, but this time they're doing both. Trump and friends intend to slam the Dems for "wanting illicit drugs, terror, and 'trafficking' pouring over the southern border" as they pursue the imbecility of a bootless wall, so that the United States government may reopen. They never use a popgun when a cannon will do.

The White House informed the Beast that it will dispatch spokespeople to spread the word, rile the base and, it hopes, humiliate Democrats. Fact is, they're already spreading. Said "prominent Trump surrogate" Matt Schlapp: "I think the key for the president is to make it abundantly clear to the incoming [Democratic] majority in the House that he is going to blame them for each and every [migrant] caravan, for each and every rushing of the border, for the violence that occurs as a result of illegal immigration. The game is on. He is going to go after them… It is going to be their fault and they will own all of it."

It seems not to have occurred to Schlapp, Trump & Assoc. that Democrats can just as shamelessly blame the White House for each and every border violation, since it's the White House that has shut down so many of government's operations. This is not to mention that the Dems have Trump on tape: "I am proud to shut down the government for border security…. I will be the one to shut it down." Only a GOP Janus — meaning all of them — could afterwards claim that a shutdown is Democrats' fault and "they will own all of it."

Not to be outdone in cynical marketing was the White House's execrable Stephen Miller, spawn of 20th-century immigration, who told CNN: "Right now as we speak there is a surge of illegal immigration heading toward our country that presents a national crisis now. Not a month from now, not a year from now, right now. And this president took an oath, like every lawmaker in Congress, to defend the citizens of this country. How many more innocent people have to die in pursuit of an open-borders agenda?"

Sound familiar? It should. Miller's message was Trump's message just prior to the midterm elections, which, by "historic" numbers, cost his party the House. Thus if Democrats keep their nerve — and if Nancy Pelosi has anything to say about it, they will — Trump's "caravan redo" is likely to be a midterm redo, with Republican blood everywhere.

For Democrats already hold the public-opinion edge in this, the most mindless shutdown yet. Reports the Washington Post: "By a 14-point margin [in a Quinnipiac poll], more voters overall said they would blame Trump and Republicans than Democrats, 51 percent to 37 percent"; "independents … sided more with Democrats, with 48 percent of the swing-voting block saying Trump and Republicans would be to blame compared with 39 percent who blamed Democrats"; and "54 percent of voters still oppose the wall." According to a CNN poll, "57 percent of Americans opposed the wall." An October CBS poll "found a similar 60 percent in opposition." Surprising is that among wall supporters — i.e., nearly all of them Republicans — 43 percent opposed shuttering the government for a wall, said a Fox News poll last year.

This shutdown-as-showdown will be more a test of Democratic resolve than Republican. Trump was correct when he said in the instantly infamous Oval Office meeting with Pelosi and Chuck Schumer that the last time (the only time) you guys shut down the government, it didn't go so well. In January the Dems caved (over the Dreamers) in one of Schumer's NY minutes; they looked foolish and disoriented. Trump, however, is always foolish and disoriented. Hence if Democrats just allow him enough time, he'll collapse as if he's on the phone with Erdoğan. So hang tough, Mr. & Mrs. Congressional Democrat — and stick it to Trump with unwavering purpose.

 

A rudderless White House and craven Congress

As with Franco still being dead, Republicans are still proving that they can't govern. Theirs is the third government shutdown in a mere two years, stresses the Times. This time the chaos and incompetence are because of a wall that virtually nobody wants, save for a lunatic fringe, because said wall is useless, expensive, and stupid. Thus, under unified Republican governance, so to speak, the United States proves to the world — again — that it's a bumbling muttonhead.

At least in this go-around of superpower-cum-superdunce, there's some comedy. Having been unequivocal, just days ago, that "I will shut down the government, I am proud to shut down the government," Trump now says the shutdown is all because of Machiavellian partisanship. "[Democrats] want to try and do anything possible to hurt us, because of the fact it’s politics," he said Thursday. "I understand that. I don’t even hold it against them, except you should always put your country first, and they’re not doing that. They’re putting politics first."

What is Trump's solution to the political impasse that he imposed? The Times reports that he possesses "[no] strategy for averting a shutdown…. During a meeting with Republican senators on Friday morning, Mr. Trump would not provide specifics about what kind of plan he could support, including how much money he would accept for fortifying the border, despite their repeated efforts to ascertain his conditions for a deal."

Instead — and this reminds me of Adolf waxing philosophical about Teutonic Will as the Russians were blowing up Berlin, block by bloody block — "The president talked at length about the wall and repeatedly pressed the senators about eliminating the filibuster so they could fund it with 51 votes."

The truly black comedy, however, came from none other than that keen steward of prudent conservatism, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, who said, he actually said about hundreds of thousands of federal workers who will lose their incomes over Christmas: "It's actually part of what you do when you sign up for any public service position."

Well, it is when Republicans are in charge, anyway.

 

And I thought you were supposed to know something before you run for president

Politico:

Trump jabbed at Rep. Beto O’Rourke on Friday, wondering aloud during an exchange with reporters why the Texas Democrat has been suggested as a potential 2020 presidential candidate even though he fell short in his Senate bid earlier this year.

"I thought you were supposed to win before you run for president," said the president.

Because he knows his own country's history as well as I know the Orang Ulu dialect of Borneo, Trump wouldn't know this, but Abraham Lincoln also lost his Senate bid before going on to the White House.

 

President Scrooge

Yesterday, Trump told a group of senior GOP lawmakers, "I’m OK with a shutdown."

Those not OK with a government shutdown are 800,000 federal employees who will either work without pay or not work at all — also without pay, of course — at the departments of Treasury, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Interior, State, Transportation, Commerce, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development.

In lost productivity, the cost of a shutdown will run in the billions, most likely, and millions of Americans will be inconvenienced.

All because Trump "was agitated over suggestions in the conservative media that he was caving on his border wall campaign promise."

Said Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, on the House floor: "Mr. President, we’re going to back you up if you veto this bill…. But more importantly the American people will be there, they’ll be there to support you."

True enough, except it's not. Fifty-one percent of respondents to a Morning Consult poll said they'd blame Trump or the Republican Congress for a shutdown; 55 percent said Trump's cherished wall "is not important enough to shut down the government — far greater than the 31 percent who say it is important enough."

But what's a shutdown to Trump? Why should he care? He has his, so those 800,000 federal employees and their hobbled Tiny Tims can just spend Christmas wondering when their next paycheck will come.

 

The revival of irony

A few passages from merely the first three paragraphs of a WaPo story on Donald "I-alone-can-fix-it" Trump:

"Trump began Thursday under siege" … "howls of indignation from conservatives" … "thrusting the government toward a shutdown" … "the president’s erratic behavior" … "resignation letter was a scathing rebuke of Trump’s worldview" … "the most fragile moment of his presidency" … "vulnerable to convulsions on the political right" …

"Trump single-handedly propelled the U.S. government into crisis" … "[he] sent markets tumbling" … "a fracturing of Trump’s coalition" … "Hawks condemned his sudden decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria" … "Conservatives called him a 'gutless president' … "friends began privately questioning whether Trump needed to be reined in."

We often read of The Death of Irony. Well, since he knows, deep down, precisely how incompetent he is, Trump has resurrected irony — "Big time," as the also ironic Dick Cheney would say.

 

And then there was none - Jim Mattis and Gen. Trump

In what the NY Times called "the sharpest, and most public, protest" of the administration's foreign policy illiteracy — an epistolary protest that "condemned Mr. Trump’s approach to the world as destructive to American influence and power" — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' conscience had had quite enough:

“My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held. Because you have the right to have 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 sum, Trump is disrespectful to allies and ignorant to the core, in the defense secretary's opinion, which puts 40 years of experience against two years of amateurism and its resulting chaos. Rather unconventional it is for a high-ranking cabinet member to publicly tell the president of the United States that he's an idiot. But Mr. Mattis did just that.

The Times adds that his "core complaint was that Mr. Trump had lost sight of the importance of the competition for global power with Russia and China, who want 'a world consistent with their authoritarian model.'" Here, Mattis may have been a bit off track, since Trump, too, wants a world — or at least an America — consistent with an authoritarian model. China and Russia have simply shown him the way.

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse said it was "a sad day for America because Secretary Mattis was giving advice the President needs to hear." The latter would be a given in any other administration, but wise counsel has always been a bridge too far with Trump in command. His clever bowels, you know: "I have a gut," said the president last month, "and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me."

With Trump we have rule by a kind of medieval obscurantism. His mind is like a steel trap: No enlightenment is allowed to get in.

There is, however, a possible bright side to Trump's infinite darkness. His benighted withdrawal of American troops from Syria angered more than Sen. Sasse in the Republican camp. And with each Trumpian alienation comes a more willing Senate to bounce the idiot right out of office.

 

A proctological exam, AFTER seeing the gastroenterologist

The last photo I posted, from Portland, Ore., leaned downward-right. Now this, in compensation — Chicago.

After being enlightened about all things bacterial by my new gastro guy, at Northwestern Hospital in Lake Forest, my daughter and I set out to acquire a same-day passport renewal for her. She had been offered a helluva travel deal through her university — only $250 for an all-expenses-paid, round trip to Israel (10 days). She promptly applied and was accepted. We were thrilled. Then we discovered that her passport would expire within six months of the trip, and neither the State Department nor U.S. airlines will permit overseas travel under that condition. Thus her need for a same-day passport renewal, which cost twice as much as the trip — and still there's no guarantee that her new passport will arrive before her departure date (Dec. 31st). A "same-day" passport doesn't actually mean you'll have a new passport the same day you shell out the money, while whimpering, in my case, in the most unmanly way.

 

After three weeks away from homebase I had several errands to run today, and Thursday I'm off to Chicago, where a gastroenterology "interventionist" will solve all my idiosyncratic problems. I'm sure. So I'll see you Friday.