Bay State Dems can’t bridge divide with Trump
Let’s see if I’ve got this right.
First you accuse President Trump of treason.
Then you vote to impeach him in the House for high crimes and misdemeanors.
Next you vote to convict him in the Senate so that you can throw him out of the White House.
After insulting him to no end during a Senate trial, you fail to convict him. So, then you turn around and shamelessly ask him for $1 billion to build two Cape Cod bridges so you can get re-elected and impeach him again.
That’s what Sen. Eddie Markey, along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Reps. William Keating and Joe Kennedy and the rest of the Massachusetts delegation to Congress did. All, of course, are Democrats.
Trump no doubt will be so happy to grant them the money that he will do it in a dramatic and celebratory Air Force One Cape Cod Canal flyover, the way he did last weekend at the Daytona 500.
He might even land at Logan and lead a presidential motorcade in the Beast, the armored presidential limo he rode in at Daytona, across the Sagamore and Bourne bridges and then take the ferry over to Martha’s Vineyard. There he could spend the weekend as Barack Obama’s guest at Obama’s $14 million, 29-acre waterfront estate. Or is it Obama’s $29 million, 14-acre waterfront estate? Yeah. Right.
There is a reason why Trump, acquitted by the Senate, tweeted out the old Machiavellian adage: “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” If you don’t you face retribution. And if nothing else, Donald Trump is a New York get-even kind of guy.
The skinny to all of this is the letter Markey, Warren and Keating, who represents Cape Cod, sent to the White House and the Pentagon last week “demanding” to know why funds for the replacement of the two bridges were omitted from Trump’s fiscal year 2021 budget.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains the two bridges that were built 84 years ago, has recommended that they be replaced at a cost of $1 billion, which apparently is more cost effective than rehabilitating the two passageways to the Cape.
The money to pay for the project was expected to be in Trump’s fiscal 2021 budget request — until it suddenly wasn’t.
Markey, Warren and Keating, in a signed letter to Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget — and Trump’s acting chief of staff— and Assistant Army Secretary Rickey James, said they were “really disturbed” by the elimination of the funds.
The two bridges, they said, which have outlived their usefulness, “are not only vital links to the beating heart of the Massachusetts tourism economy, but critical evacuation routes in the event of an emergency.”
They called on the Trump officials to “reverse your misguided budgetary decisions.”
What are the chances of the money coming through? Slim.
All nine Massachusetts members of the U.S. House voted to impeach the president on two highly dubious articles of impeachment — abuse of power and obstruction of justice.
And the state’s two senators, Markey and Warren, voted to convict the president and remove him from office during the failed impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate.
That was bad enough. But the insults they hurled at Trump along with the phony accusations of quid pro quo, extortion, treason, duplicity and cover-up are no doubt still ringing in his ears.
Warren, for instance, who has feuded with Trump for a long time and who is running for his job, called Trump “corrupt,” among other things, and said he should be removed from office.
Markey told his colleagues in the Senate that Trump was a “dictator” and a “danger to our democracy,” and a man “who has no shame.”
While this was going on, Reps. Seth Moulton of Salem and Lori Trahan of Westford, both of whom voted for impeachment, were seeking a $500 million appropriation for sewage treatment in the Merrimack River.
While Trahan has been critical of Trump, she did not join Moulton when Moulton compared Trump to Hitler.
So, you can understand why Massachusetts, where Republican Gov. Charlie Baker boasts about not voting for Trump, is not on the president’s most favored states list. And Baker wants bridge money, too.
These politicians are proud of their vote to destroy Trump. Unfortunately, it is the people who will pay for their pride.
Not only is this a bridge too far, it is two bridges plus a river too far.