Today in Trumpistan, Valentines Day Edition

Well- three weeks and two vacations.  Glad Donald is taking his job seriously.


And our President, on the job as usual:

"Donald Trump greeted Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe to the White House on Friday – but it didn’t go exactly to plan.

It appears Trump wasn’t wearing his earpiece – which translated Abe’s address for the room. 

Yet, people noted Trump nodding in agreement to Abe. Trump is NOT wearing a translator earpiece. This means he is PRETENDING to understand Japanese."

Well, he is only pretending to do all of his other Presidential duties, so no surprise there.  And how did his time with the Japanese Prime Minister go?

"Richard DeAgazio was already seated for dinner, on the Mar-a-Lago Club’s terrace, when President Trump entered with the prime minister of Japan on Saturday night. The crowd — mostly paying members of Trump’s private oceanfront club in Palm Beach, Fla. — stood to applaud. The president’s party sat about six tables away.

Then, DeAgazio — a retired investor who joined Mar-a-Lago three months ago — got a text from a friend. North Korea had just test-fired a ballistic missile, which it claimed could carry a nuclear warhead. DeAgazio looked over at the president’s table.

What was happening — as first reported by CNN — was an extraordinary moment, as Trump and Abe turned their dinner table into an open-air situation room. Aides and translators surrounded the two leaders as other diners chatted and gawked around them, with staffers using the flashlights on their cellphones to illuminate documents on the darkened outdoor terrace."

But it's all okay with Trump's people:

"DeAgazio said he’d been impressed with how the president had handled the situation. 

“There wasn’t any panicked look. Most of the people [on the terrace] didn’t even realize what was happening,” DeAgazio said. “I thought he handled it very calmly, and very presidentially.”

He didn't look panicked, because he didn't realize what a monstrous thing he had just done, discussing top secret intelligence in front of a restaurant full of strangers.

Now, of course, we learn how we are to behave under the Trump administration:

"Stephen Miller’s authoritarian declaration: Trump’s national security actions ‘will not be questioned. 

"The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned."

Shut up and do what you are told.  That's Trump's America.

And another hint of the competence with which the great businessman is doing his job:

"while Mr. Obama liked policy option papers that were three to six single-spaced pages, council staff members are now being told to keep papers to a single page, with lots of graphics and maps.

“The president likes maps,” one official said."

He probably likes cartoons too.  And chocolate milk before naptime.

And here comes the Trump administration response to the unbelievable incompetence they have displayed.  First, find a victim:

"Trump friend says Priebus is ‘in way over his head’

One of President Trump’s longtime friends made a striking move on Sunday: After talking privately with the president over drinks late Friday, Christopher Ruddy publicly argued that Trump should replace his White House chief of staff.

“A lot of people have been saying, ‘Look, Donald has some problems,’ and I think he realizes that he’s got to make some changes going forward,” Ruddy said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Ruddy went on to detail his critique of White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus: “It’s my view that Reince is the problem."

As big a jackass as Reince Preibus is, he is the only high level Trump staffer with any experience whatsoever at running a large political bureaucracy.  But he isn't one of Trump's buddies, so when things have predictably gone horribly wrong, he is going to be the victim, making them even less capable of dealing with things.

And of course, the other part of the two pronged strategy to quell disquiet over Trump's behavior:

"In an effort to shield Donald Trump from a potentially impeachable scenario, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) are rejecting growing calls for a wide-ranging special congressional panel to investigate Russian’s interference with the 2016 elections, and were instead simply endorsing their narrower and meaningless oversight work being performed by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, reported Politico...

According to Politico, McConnell told reporters on Monday evening the Senate Intelligence Committee “is more than capable of conducting a complete review of this matter,” and made it clear that he will not support any kind of formal review aimed at producing a final report — like the one that resulted in the committee’s 2014 investigation of the Benghazi attacks."

God in heaven above, this country is fucked seven ways from Sunday.