2017 Feb 25^th

Yesterday I pointed out that several news organizations were not invited to the latest press conference. I was wrong about that because that was not really a press conference; that, Sean Spicer tells us, was to an invitation only, “gaggle.” That’s right folks, a brand new word in our brand new White House press lexicon—it is “gaggle”. That’s very apt because a gaggle is defined as a disorganized or noisy group and that is certainly how this administration would like to portray the “dishonest” press. Hey, the press will be just fine and will certainly outlast both Spicer and Trump.

Trump is in a pout because the “dishonest” media has not reported the drop in the national debt that has occurred in the month since he took office. This is clearly more evidence of the bias against Trump by the press—or maybe not! First, and most obviously to anyone but Trump, the federal expenditures were already set well before Trump was elected and before he took office. It is nonsense to compare the federal expenditures when President Obama took office when we were losing 700+ thousand jobs a month and needed to spend money to stimulate the economy, to the situation Trump inherited when the unemployment rate was below 5 percent. To quote from the “Business Insider,” “… the economic circumstances during his and Obama’s first month in office are vastly different and make the comparison totally off base.” Never mind, Trump will whine about anything if he feels he “isn’t being treated fairly.”

We have two congressional committees investigating the possible connection between the Trump candidacy and the helpful Russian intelligence people. A story about the findings of these committees was leaked to the New York Times and the Trump people squealed at the unfairness of it all. They first complained to the FBI and when that got them nowhere they then appealed to the chairmen of the committees, Senator Richard Burr R-N.C.  and Rep. Devin Nunes R-Calif. to call the press and challenge this “fake news” story. These legislators are both fans of Trump so they had no problem taking instruction from the executive branch and quickly doing as they were told.

Oh dear! This is not how investigations of the White House are supposed to work. A conservative stalwart, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, has now decided that we do need, after all, an independent committee to do this investigation.

Here is a quote from Issa about Putin when Issa was interviewed on Bill Maher’s program:

“This is a bad guy who murders people. Who runs a gas station with an economy the size of Italy but is screwing up things all over the world that we have been quote ‘working with.’”

Darrel Issa also seems to have little confidence in Attorney General Jeff Sessions to conduct an unbiased investigation, or at least not interfere with an unbiased investigation. If that’s true Trump could be in a world of hurt. Some Republican legislators may have spines after all.

Now it seems that President Trump will boycott this year’s correspondent’s dinner. Many correspondents have now decided to attend after all…Alec Baldwin has been suggested as an appropriate stand in for the absent President Trump.