White House Wall weirdness
Hey, do you think the government will run out of money before Christmas? I know, this seems to come up every year.
But until the Trump era, it was generally something vague about Congress passing continuing resolutions. Certainly nothing you could start a fight over during Thanksgiving dinner.
But now we’ve got The Wall! Good old Wall. Really, even in your seriously crazy countries, you don’t have the government teetering over the question of whether the border should be decorated with a 30-foothigh mound of concrete. Our president did suggest that
Spain might want to wall off the Sahara. But everybody sort of coughed nervously and changed the subject.
President Donald Trump seems to once again be threatening to veto any spending package that doesn’t include his Wall.
It’s hardly the only scary thing bouncing around the White House these days. We’ve got the Big Guy going into a snit over the weather in France, while his wife is making announcements about which members of the national security team aren’t worthy of remaining on the job.
Well, OK, just one. So far. Melania Trump’s office issued a sudden, out-of-nowhere statement that it was the opinion of, um, Melania Trump’s office that deputy national security adviser Mira Ricardel “no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House.”
Ricardel is a scary right-wing hawk who’s a protégé of the deeply scary national security adviser, John Bolton. It’s hard to say what’s more upsetting — the idea that a team like Bolton-ricardel is supposed to be keeping the nation safe or the suggestion that Melania is starting to dictate national security hiring decisions. But if you happen to run into the first lady on an international trip, just remember to let her have the best seats.
Also, are we supposed to be worried about Donald Trump’s health? He looked a little bedraggled in France, where he was apparently subject to wild mood swings, unwilling to go for a drive in the rain to honor veterans of World War I, and then taking a limo to another ceremony while other world leaders marched together in a downpour.
Not sure this is a sign of new slippage. Perhaps you remember that during his first year in office our president attended a Group of 7 summit in Sicily in which the other six leaders walked 700 yards to the site of a group photo.