2017 Feb 17^th

Kathleen Parker, a right leaning columnist, although not at all in the hysterical mold, says that we will have a new president in 2018. That column was published on the 13^th, just three days ago. She did have a caveat; she wrote, “If we make it that long.”  Ms. Parker assumes that the Democrats will win the 2018 election in a landslide and will very quickly move to impeach Trump. She assumes Democratic control of the house and the senate and so impeachment and subsequent conviction will be a near certainty.

Trump will not allow this to happen. He can’t stop the outcome of the election nor the impeachment that will follow, but he can stymie the process by resigning. It has been done before by another president who avoided impeachment just that way.

This assumes that Trump’s presidency will survive until the 2018 election. That is far from a given. His performance at his news conference yesterday was not promising. He insisted that his national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was fired for lying about his Russian contacts to Vice President Pence. If keeping Pence in the dark about this conference with the Russian Ambassador, why did no one in Trump’s inner circle, who also knew about the matter, tell Pence; why didn’t Trump tell Pence? How much longer will Pence be expected to clean up after this partially toilet-trained presidential cabal?

Then there was Trump crowing about his huge Electoral College win: He falsely claimed he had the biggest Electoral College win since former President Ronald Reagan.  "I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan," he said during a heated press conference at the White House. He won in the Electoral College by just 77 votes; Obama won by 126 votes; Clinton by 220 votes; more alt-facts from our presidential alt-fact generator.

Now even Fox News is beginning to slow its white washing of the Donald: Shepherd Smith, one of their premier news people, has come out very strongly against trump’s lies. I guess the man was finally fed up. The Trump fans who normally dominate this channel’s viewership are attacking him vigorously. They want Smith gone; they claim they might as well watch CNN. Fox has a long way to go before it reaches the relative neutrality of CNN but this is a move in the right direction. ( Bouncy, bouncy Limbaugh is the only major pundit who thought Trump’s curious TV performance was well done. Naturally, he got a shout out from Trump.)

Melania Trump’s decision to stay in New York at the Trump tower until their son finishes the school year costs the taxpayers 500 thousand dollar a day in police and Secret Service protection. Trump’s two grown sons are off to Dubai on “business.” Naturally, they must have Secret Service protection too. The Secret Service spent 97 million dollars to keep President Obama and his family safe over the four years of his administration. At the rate the Trump administration is using Secret Service and government travel assets the bill for this administration is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.