Trump is having a sad tonight. Or maybe a rage fest. Or maybe bouncing rapidly back and forth between the two at increasing speed like the old Pong video game. (I think you have to be an old fart to remember those early ones)
It was shaping up to be THE most bigly YUGEST tee vee show ever, or so Donald Trump was thinking at one point. Having injected himself (of course) into the contest to see who would take over for deposed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy we had two declared candidates and a third who’d all but done so. Next week the plan was for the House Republicans to hold a closed-door pow-wow to settle on who would be put up for a vote. The plan, or rather fantasy was that by the end of the day Tuesday it would all be settled. They’d have a consensus candidate. Most importantly they’d be able to avoid the embarrassing spectacle we saw play out last January, where it took FIFTEEN rounds of voting to finally give Kevin McCarthy the gavel he craved. He craved it so much in fact that he gave away all the power that goes with the job, including and most importantly to keep a pissant like Bratty Matty Gaetz from engineering a quite spectacular fall from “glory.”
Anyway if neither Jordan or Scalise didn’t want the job back in January it’s clear both of them do now. That’s a problem. Having a third person (Oklahoma’s Kevin Hern) in the mix makes things even sticker, and not being entirely devoid of common sense House GOPers wanted to has things out in private. To at least try to avoid a public mess. Well, at Faux Nooz that simply wouldn’t do, and before you know it there was an announcement that Fox’s Brett Bair would be hosting a “discussion” with all three candidates Monday night. Only a few hours later, the whole thing was cancelled. Although he hasn’t formally entered the quest for the Speakership Hern said he wouldn’t take part in the planned Monday night “debate.”
“We need to make this decision as a conference, not on TV,” Hern wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “The Republican conference needs a family discussion.”
USA Today went on to report spokespersons of both Jordan and Scalise confirmed the whole thing had been scrapped. From what I’ve gathered as the day and evening has gone on there was more than a bit of backlash to the whole thing. I can see why many in the House GOP feared what the whole thing could turn into, with Jordan (backed by Trump) making like Trump and throwing flaming turd after flaming turd, each with a cherry bomb inside. That it got to the point of a planned event and being announced so quickly got me to thinking. How and/or why did Baeir/Fox come up with this in the first place? And for me at least the answer is simple:
Donald J. Trump.
I can just see him, once he made the decision to back Jordan (I still say he doesn’t want the job because he’s focused on staying out of jail so he can become President and pardon himself) he started having flashbacks to his days as a “Reality” TV “star.” Visions of “The Speaker, featuring Donald Trump!” were dancing in his head. Trump knows like the rest of us that with Scalise in the mix this won’t be over in one day or evening of voting! How many shows remains to be seen but he had to think he had a DC Politics version of The Apprentice, only with instead of whoever that gal was that did all the work on his NBC show Baeir would do all the work on this one. Trump could read the script provided to stoke drama, and of course as things went along get to tell candidates “You’re Fired.” Trust me, in this type of political theater it would result in the end of the loser’s political careers so yes he’d be firing them from politics. Which he would of course love because he loves screwing people over.
The winner would of course be pre-ordained just like his NBC show, or I figure most “reality” TV. Who will win is decided early on by the producers and the rest is just scripting drams that will bring in viewers. Trump was envisioning the end when as he said “You’re hired” to Jordan he’d hand over the actual Speaker’s gavel. I’m sure Trump thought this show would give him a powerful boost in fundraising, and Fox of course saw ratings gold.
There’s actually some good news in all this. It’s not much but it seems as soon as the Monday night “cage match” was announced there was grumbling in the GOP ranks. As I said it was a rare case of some of them having the common sense buried so deeply within them briefly re-emerge. Then Hern went on record saying no thanks, he didn’t want to be part of it all. And Jordan and Scalise followed suit and the whole “bigly tee vee event” fell apart. Kind of like McCarthy’s Speakership when you think about it which is kind of poetic don’t you think?
I’m increasingly convinced the whole thing came about at Trump’s urging. Fox/Baeir got out over their skis and crashed like that dude on the ski jump at the end of the opening of the old ABC show Wide World of Sports. And tonight? To paraphrase the opening line of a song from the musical Camelot “I wonder what the Trump, is doing tonight?” Are the walls dripping with ketchup? Is a dejected Trump ambling around in his bathrobe trying to come up with something for Truth Social? Both?
And what about Fox? If I’m right and Trump was at least partly responsible for the Monday night event and they cancelled it mere hours after it was announced you can bet that Trump will be out for some Fox blood. I wonder if Baeir’s and other’s resumes are up to date?
I happen to still think for all their efforts to avoid it House Republicans will put on a brand new shiite show of a contest for the Speaker’s gavel. But Trump’s got to be pissed that all he’ll get to do is chime in from the sidelines. It’s said he will attend the Tuesday meeting but if as I suspect Scalise won’t back down the day will end with no consensus candidate to bring to the House floor for a vote. At some point they will have to give it a try, and IF a bit more common sense breaks out and the so-called “problem solvers” on both sides come up with someone who a bunch of Republicans would vote for and just enough Democrats would (after extracting some promises) help over the line it will be quite the show.
But Trump can’t be on the floor during all that. That my friends will eat him up inside.
Stay tuned because this mess is just getting started.
The low point (so far) of this frightening and disheartening process was reached during and after Trump’s presidency. He literally embodied all of the most hateful, racist, selfish, and downright nasty impulses that afflict human beings — and his ascent to power quickly made it just fine (on the right, anyway) to be racist, hateful, uncooperative, and nasty.
He made it A-OK to be a self-centered, malevolent bully.
To me, that’s the bottom-line truth concerning what’s happening to Americans’ mental/emotional health — and our morality as well. Somehow, we have to free ourselves from the awful influence of Trumpism and find ways to restore vital traits like kindness, generosity, empathy, cooperation, and yes, love.
For if we continue much further down our current destructive path … well, that way lies total madness, ruin, and social collapse.
“To me, that’s the bottom-line truth concerning what’s happening to Americans’ mental/emotional health — and our morality as well. Somehow, we have to free ourselves from the awful influence of Trumpism and find ways to restore vital traits like kindness, generosity, empathy, cooperation, and yes, love.
For if we continue much further down our current destructive path … well, that way lies total madness, ruin, and social collapse.”
NAILED IT, Alex!!!