This would indeed be comical if it wasn’t so tragic. It is only the first week of April and Trump has been back in power since January 20. Yet his approval ratings have nosedived. That would be strange enough on its face but for the fact that there’s seeminly no response to this from the White House. Trump’s equivalent of Baghdad Bob merely gets behind the podium and says how great it all is, how the economy is booming, how America is becoming greater by the nanosecond. We begin a week tomorrow which may find even this low water mark looking high, comparatively speaking, when the stock market is done convulsing. Do you think anybody will speak to this issue, or just more gaslighting?
What I believe is the 20% increase in the J.P. Morgan statistic, that a recession is now 60% more likely, rather than 40%. If that benchmark increases this week as well, then the Trump administration or the GOP is going to have to do something. We’ve gone off the economic cliff before under Republican rule but never to the tune of marching bands and harrahs, and that’s what is happening now with this Administration From Oblivion.
And this you’ll love. Trump literally wants to have a marching band and parade. Seriously. Turns out that his birthday, June 14th, coincides with the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army. So Trump has found a way to make that all about him.
Trump pushed for a grandiose military parade through the streets of D.C. during his first term but was forced to back down over the costs, but a D.C. source with knowledge of the plan said commandeered June 14, the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and his own 79th birthday for a four-mile parade, reported the Washington City Paper.
The plans are still being developed, and local officials are just now catching wind of it, but the source said the parade would depart from the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and proceed four miles to the White House in Washington.
“It’s not clear to me what the scope of a parade would be,” said Arlington County board chair Takis Karantonis. “But I would hope the federal government remains sensitive to the pain and concerns of numerous [military] veteran residents who have lost or might lose their jobs in recent federal decisions, as they reflect on how best to celebrate the Army’s anniversary.”
Karantonis said the White House provided a “heads up” to the county about the parade on Friday, but he said details are still being worked out.
D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but she publicly opposed Trump’s wishes for a parade seven years ago, when military leaders told him the show of force would cost nearly $100 million and local officials complained that heavy military equipment like tanks would damage pavement and cost them more than $20 million to provide security.
“The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it,” Trump posted on Twitter at the time. “When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up! I will instead …attend the big parade already scheduled at Andrews Air Force Base on a different date…”
Neither Bowser or military officials seem ready to challenge Trump on this plan, but local officials are daunted by the logistics of coordinating between the six branches of the U.S. military, along with local and regional officials and federal agencies, in just 10 weeks.
D.C. officials also say that rights of way and bridges into the district would need to be shut down, and possibly many of Metro’s rail and bus lines, to ensure public safety during the parade.
Ask yourself who’s going to be in the mood for pomp and circumstance and watching Donald peacock around, when they’re digging through old family recipe books from the Great Depression and making vinegar pie and the like? It could come to that. As the man on TV says, this is a first, this level of disillusionment this early in a presidential term.
But Trump still thinks he’s got a “mandate” due to his “landslide.” Will he ever wake up? Maybe the ostrich should be the GOP’s new symbol, rather than the elephant?
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Hopefully, DC’s mayor will demand a shift-ton of money to ensure the District’s (and, more pointedly, the City’s) infrastructure doesn’t suffer from all that hardware.
Or, to put a real damper on Drumpf’s plans, maybe she could pull a move worthy of Drumpf himself: A quid pro quo deal. He gets his little parade but DC is “liberated” from Congressional oversight once and for all.
He wants a birthday parade like Fearless Leader Kim? Then he can f’ing well pay for it, along with fireworks and hotels and food for every military participant.
How many words can you think of to describe this madman’s abnormal mental state? We all have quirks, maybe even some neurosis here and there. But this guy blew past quirks and neurotic behavior long ago.