Tag Archives: Trump

Trump’s Paul Blarts

US Capitol riots - In Pictures

I used to work the cop beat at The Washington Post. I covered the overnight shift of the Metro Washington Police Department, and the day shift of the sheriff’s department of neighboring Montgomery County. But when you cover law enforcement in that area, you cover countless police beats: Secret Service, FBI, CIA, etc.

But when I tried to get a “ride along” with The Capitol Police when I joined the paper in the early 90’s, my editors told me not to waste my time: the CP, they said, was so bureaucratic I would spend more time getting government clearance than I would covering real news. Besides, the lead cop reporter told me, they were mall cops anyway.

And true enough, I rarely came across them in crime scenes, though I bumped into them more than a few when I took my motorcycle though the picturesque city at night. In the early 90’s, you could park only a couple blocks from the Capitol, and ascend the stairs leading to a sweeping vista of the city.

They may have been mall cops, but they had the authority of any other cop in their jurisdiction: They carried guns, drove patrol bikes and cars, and ran traffic checkpoints if there was any disturbance of note in Northwest DC, where lawmakers live.

In other words, these weren’t Paul Blart wannabes. If anything, they were Secret Service washouts: capable, if not superlative.

And they handle their share of real crime. Because they’re responsible for lawmakers’ safety, they have to patrol NW DC just like Metro police, and the crime there is real. They have seen their share of terrorism, from gunmen seeking lawmakers in the Capitol to a shooting at The Holocaust Museum.

So how were they so ill-prepared for Wednesday’s attempted overthrow?

I suggest they weren’t.

All it took was five minutes of TV viewing Wednesday to see that the CP were in no mood to enforce law during the riot. Social media provide countless pictures and videos of insurrectionists and the CP posing for selfies, and the CP ushering in seditionists as if they were leading a White House tour.

Officer appears to pose for selfie with rioter - CNN Video

Which they may have been trying to do. Because the CP know how to secure a perimeter when it is instructed to do so.

Perhaps it never received instructions. Remember: The chief of police, Steven A. Sund, took office in 2019. He resigned in disgrace a day after the riot, having only described his department’s response as “valiant” on his way out.

How Trumpian. And would it surprise anyone if Trump left a Capitol Police force understaffed and overwhelmed in the face of a rally he promised to be “wild?”

After all, the president needed security to be weak to deliver the chaos he wanted unleashed on lawmakers counting electoral ballots. Perhaps he found his own Watergate burglars.

U.S. Flag v. U.S. Constitution

It’s not often you get to forecast history, regardless of what news outlets would have you believe. But mark January 6th on your calendar, because the showdown will not only be epic; it will be historic.

Technically, Wednesday will see the U.S. Congress gather to validate the Electoral College’s election of Joe Biden.

But in truth, Jan. 6 will mark a Scopes-Monkey-Trial-level battle between faith and reason, in this case embodied by the U.S. flag and the U.S. Constitution.

The American flag has come to represent nothing if not our toxic addiction to identity politics. We turn ’em into t-shirts, bumper stickers, tank tops, toilet paper, you name it.

The American Constitution has yet to become a t-shirt craze, though many of the lawmakers who gather in congressional halls will certainly wipe their asses with it Wednesday.

And we should note everyone who does, and remember them, by name. Because those will be the elected officials who formally declare that they consider claims valid even when when they are unaccompanied by facts.

Wednesday’s ringmaster, of course, will be Donald Trump, the P.T. Barnum who has already signaled some elephants in the GOP to prepare to stand on their chairs when he sounds the whistle. He already sounded another whistle, of the dog variety, over the holidays to supporters, Proud Boys, QAnoners, and other slackwits for what he promises will be a “wild” rally Wednesday.

Make note of them, too.

Because the Dunce Confederacy that will gather in marble halls and outside them pose an existential threat to this world, country, and you individually.

These are the people who refuse to believe the globe is heating up, round, or overseen by primates. These are the people who believe that voting is a privilege, not a right (a white, male privilege, to be precise). These are the people who believe if you’ve been saddled with a vagina, melanin or uppity attitude, you don’t deserve a seat at the table.

Oddly, or perhaps fittingly, the person at the center of the showdown is not Trump, but Mike Pence. For it’s Pence who will be tasked with calling the Electoral College’s results legit, and to admit political heresy by conceding there is no god, er, Trump, er Higher Power. It’s hard to tell them apart beneath the patriotic cloak of faith.

It’s worth noting that should reason win out, it will be a profound affirmation of the Founders and the power of their thesis paper. They could not have been more prescient: They may have pictured King George when they penned independence, but they painted Donald Trump in their cautionary tale of governance gone mad. What a layered, measured prescription they wrote for the body politic! It remains prophecy on parchment.

If faith wins out, god help us all.

Because faith requires conviction, not evidence. Reason requires evidence, not conviction. When the former holds sway, what chance, the voice of the muted? What armor, the threadbare?

It’s not often that fools and traitors put their names in a registry. When they do, let’s go Memento on their asses. Let this be OUR tattoo to jog the memory:

Lincoln may have been a Republican, but he was killed by conservatives.

Donald Trump: COVID-19 Embodied and Metastatic

Iran-Linked Group Caught Spreading COVID-19 'Disinformation' On Facebook And Instagram

There was much consternation and confusion over Donald Trump’s apparent refusal to sign a COVID relief bill this weekend, which strikes me as odd. For one, there’s plenty of congressional support that will make some iteration of “relief” inevitable. Secondly, the timing feels off; the infection has already set.

After all, Donald Trump is the novel coronavirus incarnate. Consider the parallels:

  • Tremendous infection rate.
Initial COVID-19 Infection Rate in U.S. May Be 80 Times Greater Than Originally Reported

There have been more than 19 million people with COVID in America. More than 75 million people voted for Donald Trump. While not all of those infected were hospitalized, all were clinically ill.

  • Loss of basic brain impulses.
Coronavirus: Sense of smell and taste 'improve for most' - BBC News

COVID patients reported side effects that include loss of taste and smell, and doctors say some complications could be permanent. Trump infectees exhibit a resistance to science, reason and factual information. Some of those most afflicted even lose the ability to count, according to state election officials nationwide.

  • High fatality rate.
COVID-19 outbreak: MERS & SARS had higher fatality rates - The Economic Times

More than 330,000 Americans have died of COVID, or about 1 out of 1,000 of U.S. residents. Roughly 46% of American voters self-reported cases of Trump Deficiency Syndrome (TDS) on Nov. 4, 2020. In addition, Trump held dozens of super-spreader events leading up to the mass diagnosis. While the exact casualty rate is uncertain, COVID undoubtedly peeled off a key percentage of Trumpeteers, including Howard Cain.

  • Strain on existing management systems.
Could Coronavirus Cause The Collapse Of Our Health Care Financing System? | Health Affairs

COVID has stagered the nation’s health care system, leaving some counties in America without an available Intensive Care Unit bed. TDS, meanwhile, has put a terrific strain on America’s political, a similar duress that tests the nation’s tensile strength.

  • Difficulty eradicating from the host body.
Trump Floated Not Leaving White House on January 20

Once COVID enters the bloodstream, it is a bitch to eradicate, often requiring months of therapy and treatment. Kind of like a president bunkering inside a White House, fighting eviction.

What a Human Covid Looks Like

Now imagine for a moment that coronavirus is a thinking, calculating human killer (which it may be). If you were COVID, and needed a human being to act as double agent, insurgent and propagator, who would you create?

Probably an influential leader of the species, willing to cast doubt on the invaders’ very existence, let alone its danger to hosts. Like a Remora convincing a shark that it’s not siphoning its food and hitching a ride on its pectoral fins.

Remora Fish, Those Suckers of the Sea, Are Inspiring New Adhesives

Fortunately, there’s a vaccine for both growths, delivered through hypodermics and elections.

And we’ve delivered both. Now we’re just waiting for the invaders to stop struggling and die off.