A Day In The Life

Morning came early in Billings, Montana last Friday, September 7. It was going to be an unusually busy day for Donald Trump. The President had arrived there the previous afternoon, and had delivered a raucous and rambling Make America Great Again rally speech at the Rimrock Auto Arena. Later on Friday, he was scheduled to appear at two fundraisers nearby, so The World's Most Powerful Man and retinue had spent the night at the local Double Tree.

The next 12+ hours would mark an excellent opportunity for the Commander In Chief to add onto his already impressive record of compiling over 4700 falsehoods in less than 600 days.

It had been a late night, or early morning for The President. At 2:56am, he tweeted, "What was Nike thinking?" as an observation of that company using Colin Kaepernick in an advertisement.

This was followed by a 3:11am tweet endorsing the Republican candidate for Senate from Montana. Then at 3:32am he vented a tweet about Bob Woodward, author of the forthcoming expose, "Fear".

Sometime between 3:40am and 5:30am, he slept.

But Trump was up and at 'em for an appearance on the early morning State TV show, Fox and Friends. Regarding the New York Times 'Anonymous' op-ed, he said, "... really, what they've done is virtually, you know, treason." Earlier the evening before, he encountered some speech problems in pronouncing the word "anonymous":

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1037883056252694528

He also appeared on a local Billings TV station. Reading the transcript is a wild ride, in that it reveals the ongoing animus towards his "enemies". He is quite the political hatchet man. Among the crazy rhetoric, this one stood out regarding his ability to win deals for the USA:

We're going to win against everybody, and ultimately it's going to be a win for them too, I assume, because there's got to be a two-way street. But, we have all the cards. Our country has all the cards. We've never had a president that wanted to play the cards. They were willing to accept a bad NAFTA deal.

Things settled down for a while until 8:30am, as he prepared to leave the fabled Double Tree for the Billings airport. The press was still reacting to much of his statements from the rally. In it, the President stressed that he had not lost his mind, that - like Lincoln - his reputation will increase after his death, that his speeches will be remembered like The Gettysburg Address, that the Department of Justice should investigate the New York Times, and something weird about Space Force. (For more on this amazing speech, please check out this hilarious minute-by-minute thread by Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1037815501802692609.html It is chock full of Trump's lies and wild claims and You're Welcome!)

Already there were reactions to Trump comparing himself to Lincoln, and his claim to have memorized The Gettysburg Address. Here is his famous I Don't Know The Lyrics So I'll Hum Along moment singing the National Anthem from earlier this year. Thanks, Bad Lip Reading:

At 8:35am, he tweeted about "our horrible immigration laws." And then he hopped aboard a flight to Fargo, North Dakota. No time for the usual golf rounds. But he did tell reporters on Air Force One, regarding taking criminal action against the NY Times, "We're going to see. I'm looking at that right now." When asked about "Fear" and the 'Anonymous' claim that he was mentally and morally unfit for office, Trump said:

Meanwhile, in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, President Obama was delivering a speech designed to increase voter registration and push back on many Trump policies and claims. And OH was it ever good! It all served to remind what a real leader is like:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/7/17832024/obama-speech-trump-illinois-transcript

While Air Force One flew on, and the President engaged with reporters, a certain dichotomy could not be avoided: "Quite a split-screen moment here -- Obama talking about American democracy on edge just as Trump tells reporters aboard AF1 that he wants DOJ to investigate anonymous op-ed."

https://twitter.com/PhilipRucker/status/1038099821205307393

The President arrived at Fargo, North Dakota at 12:40pm. and headed off to host a roundtable of donors.  Later, when Trump was asked about Obama's speech, he suggested he had listened for a couple of minutes and then fell asleep. Ha ha. Others across the country had watched Obama's speech with the split-screen of Trump gamboling around Fargo, North Dakota. Said one tweet to Obama, "Please come back. The substitute teacher is stupid, racist and paints himself the colors of 1970s appliances."

The President spoke to his Fargo supporters around 2:00pm. His fact-and-evidence-free remarks included his plans to send Canada into "ruination" with tariffs on cars. "They've taken advantage of us for many decades. We can't let this happen anymore." He went on to claim Democrats will destroy Social Security, that NAFTA was the worst trade deal of all time, and that the World Trade Organization was even worse. More great stuff from Daniel Dale:  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1038134023263019008.html

Reactions to this speech came quickly. On Trump's claim that his performance on Jobs is better than Obama's, NBC's Andrea Mitchell says No:
https://twitter.com/mitchellreports/status/1038177912732745730

On his continued claim that people break down and cry in his presence, WaPo's Josh Dawsey says What? https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/1038187959688806400 and so does our old friend Daniel Dale: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1038423460475756544.html. Of course, it's a repeated lie.

By 3:00pm, the President had departed from Fargo and within an hour arrived at Sioux Falls, South Dakota for - you guessed it - more meetings with donors and a 5:30pm rally speech.

Right before the rally began, the President sent out a tweet, stating "14 days for $28 MILLION - $2 million a day, No Collusion. A great day for America!" Apparently, this was a reaction to the sentencing of George Papadopolous, the "covfefe" guy that Trump claimed to not know or care about, except when it came time to react to his sentencing. Even here, the Mueller investigation price tag indicated is false.

Meanwhile, folks were catching up on the previous night's rally that featured a rather expressive young man seated directly behind the President. His "inappropriate" expressions and lack of enthused reactions to Trumpian statements caused his real-time removal from the stands, replaced by a smiling staff member. Thus, a pop culture icon was born:

https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1038228434978332678

By 6:25pm Air Force One departed Sioux Falls. The Government By Mood Ring Express flew towards DC after a full day and a half of campaigning.

At 8:45pm Trump was at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, and by 9:05pm he had arrived at the White House via Presidential helicopter, back into the loving arms of his adoring wife. What a whirlwind trip! What an extended case of vertigo!

If you're interested, here are a couple of websites that archive and comment on the President's tweets and retweets, including probabilities whether he or his staff wrote specific ones:

http://didtrumptweetit.com/2018/09/07/

https://factba.se/topic/twitter

All that is well and good, but for a more comprehensive perspective on how Trump's ongoing and blatant falsehoods affect our country, we need to hear from that most respected source of news, The Onion:

https://politics.theonion.com/trump-disapproval-rating-reaches-all-time-none-of-this-1828751716

"At press time, a new poll had found that President Trump’s disapproval rating was now at, Jesus Christ, a sizable portion of the country supports and has always supported an openly white supremacist president and the party he leads, and a bunch of goddamn numerical ratings aren’t going to do a fucking thing to change that."

Thank you, Onion. Finally, after wading through the swampy muck of the President's pronouncements over a 24 hour period, The Daily Kibitz can confidently declare its contention that our President is Not Mentally Fit:

Okay, it is not right to leave you on this note. So let's Get Positive! Watching Trump mumble through the National Anthem suggests that we can always change it - the Anthem and the President. So... what could be the new Anthem?

My vote is firmly with the late, great Allen Toussaint composition, "Yes, We Can Can". It's irresistible and deeply moving. Give it a listen and imagine a sports stadium filled with folks standing for the new anthem, shaking what they've got, singing "great gosh almighty I know we can yes we  can can!" If there is a Blue Wave in November, this should get immediate attention for action: