Oh, ha ha! What a slow news day to cap off a slow news week here in sleepy DC! The White House Press Office must be fighting off the urge for a late-morning power nap - they need to get things ready for this afternoon's big "White House Press Holiday Party", which won't include not-invited woman-of-color WH correspondent April Ryan, and CNN (natch).
And it might not include the President and First Lady. Customarily, the POTUS and FLOTUS attend this event, helping to hand out punch and cookies to the Fourth Estate while posing for smile-time pictures with WH correspondents. But something happened earlier this morning which might have created a change in their scheduling...
So, let's see here. Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos and now former National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn. MAGA: Many Are Getting Arrested. POTUS lawyer, Ty Cobb, describes Flynn as a "former Obama official". Yep, he was, until he got fired for incompetence, insubordination and recklessness! Then Obama told Trump to not hire Flynn because of the deep doo-doo he was up to with Russia and Turkey. But did Trump listen? Well, no... because he was in deep doo-doo himself! So, so deep is this Deep State of Treason we witness. Also, have a laugh, courtesy of snarky prankster "Frederick Douglass":
https://twitter.com/gettinnoticedmo/status/936650190169059328
Anyway, nearly all legal experts now point to Jared Kushner as the next domino to fall, according to the really good investigative reporter, Natasha Bertrand:
http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-flynn-mueller-trump-russia-jared-kushner-2017-12
And because Flynn was thisclose to Mike Pence during the campaign/transition/early days of the administration, it's being presumed that the Vice President is going to receive more attention from Special Counsel Mueller. And let us not forget that Pence was brought into the Trump fold by his old friend, recently-indicted Paul Manafort. It's all a giant hot mess. There is even scuttlebutt that Flynn is going to implicate President Trump himself:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/abc-flynn-to-testify-trump-ordered-him-to-talk-to-russians
Why is this all happening? Money. Big Massive Money. Russia wanted to have its economic sanctions lifted. Trump was in hock to Russian "loans". Also, Flynn was poised to make millions off of a hare-brained scheme to kidnap a Pennsylvania-residing Turkish cleric and deliver him to Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Erdogan! Ya can't make this stuff up! It was going to be a major payday for everyone... and it still might, for Putin, because Trump is not implementing the additional sanctions that the Republican Congress passed this summer!!
But hold your horses here! The Daily Kibitz is determined to not go down the rabbit hole any further with this. Nope. Nopitty-nope. Instead, let's take a fun look at some of the other High Ridiculousness that has happened over the last few days...
The President suggested that a Fake News Trophy be awarded to a deserving media outlet, suggesting CNN as a favorite. He also tweeted that Fox News should not be considered, because they are the best, very fair and beautiful to him. This all lead to some funny stuff:
http://mashable.com/2017/11/27/donald-trump-fake-news-trophy-jokes/#08RkUTJcdgqR
In previous tweets, the President has indicated his media preferences for sycophants like Fox, Breitbart News and some really strange outfits such as:
InfoWars. "The single most important voice in the alternative conservative media," says Roger Stone, the Nixon-era political trickster who orchestrated Trump's appearance on it... It promoted the insane Hillary Clinton Comet Pizza child sex slave traffic story. On a related note, it has pushed one about NASA having a child labor colony on Mars.
MAGApill. Yes, it is certifiably BatShit Crazy. That's why our President reads it, I guess.
The Gateway Pundit. Called "the stupidest man on the Internet", Jim Hoft somehow managed to get a White House Correspondent status through the Trump Administration. Incredibly dumb and deranged.
Oh, for some brain bleach. Take a quick break for a One Minute Mic Drop Special, here is the amazing Sarah Kendzior rebutting a Breitbart editor back in January on the real-world dangers of crazy political rhetoric. It's only 1 minute, but I guarantee you will wish it were longer:
OK, back to nuttiness! Our President's mental rampage this week included a few real head-scratchers. Speaking in St. Louis, he confessed that he had no idea that the Lewis and Clark expedition had begun there. Maybe he didn't know who they were?
He suggested that former Member of Congress and morning network TV news host Joe Scarborough had murdered an intern.
He sent a series of retweets of really vile anti-Muslim videos from a tiny far-fringe extremist right wing group from the United Kingdom called "Britain First". Naturally, these have been debunked and earned Trump a stern rebuke from British Prime Minister Theresa May. Of course that set off our President, who fired off a nasty tweet reply... except he sent it to the wrong Theresa May. His angry words were received by Theresa May Scrivener, who has six Twitter followers. She was kinda flabbergasted and didn't know what to do (sounds like an Onion story).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/11/30/donald-trump-blasted-theresa-may-on-twitter-unfortunately-he-got-the-wrong-woman/?utm_term=.1bcf36f46497
Once he figured things out, Trump sent the same Tweet to the Prime Minister, saying basically "mind your own beeswax, and your country sucks and we are great again!" No mention of the eight deaths from the Terror Truck in New York City, because we are doing just fine!
While leaders in Britain and Europe took great umbrage to Trump's tweets, his hard-core base of Deplorables here did not. Foremost among them was the response by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, fresh from his appearance at the Charlottesville, Virginia nazi rally:
"Thanks God for Trump! That's why we love him!"
Oy vey iz mir! Again, let it be said, Thank Goodness For The Onion:
https://politics.theonion.com/trump-retweets-video-from-anti-muslim-hate-group-1820885422
Yes, the White House Ceremonial Lighting of the Cross is the new traditional start of the Christmas season.
We could go on, but we won't. But yesterday's appointment of the Trump Administration's version of the Third Reich's Leni Riefenstahl, Kelly Ann Conway, to become the Opioid Crisis Czar is really too much. Displaying her usual lack of empathy and warmth, Conway suggested that the problem of those millions who are addicted is that they lack the will power to rehab themselves. So she is going to instill a Triumph of the Will into them. This position was once designed for Boy Wonder Jared Kushner, but apparently he's going to be too busy solving his own problems.
That's it for now. Next time, better fun! In the meantime, check out the short video from a couple of weeks ago when The Daily Kibitz family traveled to Baltimore for a performance by Rodrigo y Gabriela. Here it is! We were standing about six feet from this videographer:
The amount of sound they generate from two acoustic guitars is simply amazing! Truly World-Class!!
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