* Unless something apocalyptic happens under Trump, his tenure as president could very well be best summarized by his “Wall” and all that it represented in the spurious names of “crisis” and “emergency.” As in a narcissistic, inhumane, anti-immigrant, diversionary, media-demonizing agenda that appeases his cult-follower base and displeases virtually everybody else–from resurgent Democrats to gutless Republicans to constitutional scholars. Alas, climate change, a malignant gun culture, overtaxed infrastructure, Russian bots and the insidious threat to separation of powers don’t require crisis intervention in this Whitewashed House.
And how utterly Trumpian that the demander-in-chief undercut his own sense of “emergency” when he noted in a vintage press briefing that “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster. I just want to get it done faster, that’s all.” What a palpable sense of, uh, urgency. And how dare a power-grabbing, Fox-appeasing, face-saving gambit become a constitution-threatening gamble?
* As outlandish and wink-and-nodish as Ted Cruz’s proposal to make El Chapo pay for the border wall is, it still has more credibility than having Mexico ante up. Trump knows that, even if his populist cult followers don’t. BTW, can you imagine how much Cruz-staff time went into acronyming the Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order (EL CHAPO) Act?
* The Trump Administration, as we’ve seen, has not been an uber staunch, democracy-encouraging, human-rights advocating player in Europe. But it does, interestingly, have a soft spot for Slovakia. It has everything to do with the fact that last year Slovakia bought more than a dozen F-16 fighter jets from the U.S.
* Imagine the Trump vitriol and Sean Hannity commentary if James Comey, Robert Mueller, Andrew McCabe and Rod Rosenstein had all been card-carrying Democrats.
* The Trump Administration now has its White House science adviser on board. It had gone 19 months without one. It’s Kelvin Droegemeier, a meteorologist and former research vice president at the University of Oklahoma. He made his debut at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he underscored the value of private initiative and downplayed the importance of the government’s investment in science. So much for any federal initiative that would have the government taking a leadership role in addressing the most compelling, existentially-threatening issue we all face: climate change. Even if your science adviser’s name is Kelvin.
* “My concern is our government wasn’t designed to operate by national emergency.”–No, that wasn’t Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It was Texas Republican Congressman Will Hurd, Beto O’Rourke’s bipartisan buddy, speaking up and out.
* We know that a Trump concern is being challenged in a primary next year. Now it’s official; a candidate has announced. It’s former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, a moderate Republican who ran for vice president last time on the Libertarian ticket. No, it’s not the same as Utah Sen. Mitt Romney or former Ohio Gov. John Kasich or current Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announcing, but somebody had to formally initiate the “Party of Lincoln” pushback.
* To be sure, Trump is not nickname challenged. From “Adolph Twitler” and “Boss Tweet” to “King Leer” and “Benedict Donald.” But “Benedict Donald” is not as funny as it should be.
* Trump doesn’t like how he’s portrayed in the media by the practitioners of partisan “fake news.” He threatens “retribution,” especially to CNN and NBC. Too bad he no longer has access to John Barron, who could at least set the record straight with the tabloids.
* Snark Tank: Has Mark Cuban ever looked so presidential?