We are poor little lambs that have lost our way. Baa. Baaaa. Baaaa. And like other lost lambs we are going to end up getting slaughtered or suffer other interesting fates or so Gavin Newsom sees it. The governor of California did a recent interview wherein he spoke of Donald Trump’s announcement that he “would love a third term,” and bragged about “methods” by which this could be accomplished. The legal method is to repeal the 22nd Amendment on term limits, which was enacted in 1947. That said, who knows what Trump talks to Steve Bannon or anybody else about at four a.m. before he starts tweeting medical advice about Tylenol? Daily Beast:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom used a profane metaphor to accuse President Donald Trump of toying with America and “testing” the limits of an unconstitutional third or even fourth term.
In an interview with ABC News, Newsom recounted how Trump gestured for him to look at a White House painting to hint at a “fourth” term, to which Newsom said he replied, “‘We’re perfect little sheep, aren’t we?’”
Continuing his story, Newsom said, “He’s laughing because we are. He knows exactly what we’re gonna do,” adding: “There’s a French… poem that loosely says, ‘He p—es on the grasshoppers to hear them sing.’ And that’s Donald Trump.”
Asked if he takes Trump’s musings of a third and fourth term seriously, Newsom, 58, says the former president “iterates,” throwing out ideas to normalize them. “Once a mind is stretched, it never goes back to its original form.”
It is not clear which poem Newsom was referring to, but he may be mixing up his literary references.
French author Pierre-Marie Quitard, in her 19th-century Dictionary of Proverbs, wrote, “The more we beat the drum, the more noise it makes. The Provençals express the same idea with this witty comparison: Do like the cicadas (grasshoppers), which sing when we rub them.”
In terms of Trump, Newsom may mean the president provokes the electorate, or grasshoppers, to manufacture noise, measure compliance, and move the line—using the reaction itself as a governing tool.
The mashed-up proverb fits, as the swirl of third-term talk has come lately from Trump ally Steve Bannon, 71, who boasted last week there’s “a plan” for Trump to be “the president in ’28,” leading the world to talk about it.
Although legal experts say the 22nd Amendment is a roadblock, the president told NBC News in March that he’s “not joking” about seeking a third term and that there are “methods” to get around the Constitution. He said Monday he would “love” a third term.
Repeal and replace doesn’t seem to be Trump’s strong suit, at least if we are to look at the endless two-week extensions of time that were continually promised to unveil a new healthcare plan, one better than Obamacare, that never materializes.
And right now we have a situation where Trump has a unified government — and it’s shut down for 28 days now. ACA subsidies are the tripping point and the swearing in of the 218th vote to unlock the Epstein files is the high drama. All Mike Johnson can do is keep the House locked up tight like a drum and that cannot continue forever.
Yet Trump believes that this consummate dysfunction is so desirable that it will get him a third, nay a fourth term, even. What a fool believes, he sees.
A third term?
He hasn’t served the first two in prison yet.
One thing at a time.
One idea which was bruited was that he could run for Vice President with some one who promised to resign just before inauguration – until someone actually read the Constitution, which states that you can’t run for VP unless you are eligible to run for President. I suppose a Cabinet appointment might work, but the farther down the chain of succession, the more people to bribe.