• Home
  • Blog
  • Contact
The Screaming Moderate

Things that make you go 'hmmmm'

12/14/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
As Arsenio Hall said, “little things that make you go hmmm.”

Our days, I know are filled with these kinds of things from President Trump, little and big in fact, but in the past few days he's had some beauties.

For example, never at a loss of a finger to point at someone else for a mistake, the President took credit for predicting Roy Moore’s stunning Senate loss the other day. How? Well, when he chose to back the incumbent, Luther Strange, in the GOP primary against Moore, he said Roy couldn’t win a general. Then he endorsed Roy. Roy lost. That President, he is never wrong! How lucky are we? Hmmmm.

Yesterday Omarosa Manigault was fired or resigned. She’s the former three-time loser on Trump’s “Apprentice” reality show. He named her an assistant to the President upon taking office and “director of communications “in the office of business liaison, which paid her more than $170,000. Not known in the past as one of the White House’s top jobs (in fact, when I served two presidents in the press office, I don’t recall the job existing).

Anyway, Omarosa supposedly had walk-in privileges to the White House, or said she did. Uh, until this morning when she said only when the President called. Anyway, Omarosa was fired yesterday by Chief of Staff John Kelly. Omarosa says she resigned. Among other questionable things, she brought her entire wedding party into the White House for wedding photos, supposedly telling no one beforehand. She was the senior African American on the White House staff by virtue of being the only one. No one really knew what she did, least of all the chief of staff.

She said this morning on ABC that she and Kelly met in the Situation Room in the White House where her departure was discussed. Now I don’t know how this White House operates (who does?) but the Situation Room, site of, for example, where President Obama and others watched the take-down of bin Laden live and where  Top Secret war talks are held, is not typically a place to discuss the employment future of a business liaison staffer. Hmmmm.

Trump did a speech from the White House yesterday pressing for passage of his “giant” tax cut legislation where the White House invited average folks to come and speak from the same podium as Trump, about how wonderful he was to do this for them. Introducing them, Trump cited precisely how much money each would save from his “Christmas gift of a giant tax cut.” Don’t ask me how he knew because as of that event, the Hill reportedly was still cutting deals. This is a double hmmmm because it was exactly the same scenario as that Cabinet meeting where his Cabinet secretaries, except for Defense’s Gen. Mattis, sang his praises for his enjoyment. Hmmmm Hmmmm.

I realize so far it’s been all Trump, but isn’t everything these days? Here’s one that isn’t. Well, not entirely.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former on-staff Chief Strategist and now apparently his Chief Strategist from Outside the White House, has been Mr. Big Shot, grabbing credit for Trump’s presidential win among other things. His latest was talking Trump into endorsing Roy Moore in Alabama. Trump did. Roy lost. Now, Cong. Peter King (R-N.Y.) says that Bannon looks like a “disheveled drunk” and reportedly White House aides are telling King to “keep it up.” Hmmmm.

Remember, of course you do, when Trump promised (repeatedly and ad nauseam) on the campaign to build that wall between us and Mexico “and Mexico will pay for it”? Well according to a report from the Democratic staff of the Senate Homeland Security committee, the budget office is “planning to offset the steep cost of a Mexico border wall by instructing the Department of Homeland Security to cut spending on surveillance technology and freeze the pay of federal officers in the 2019 fiscal year.”

That “offset” (transferring that money to the wall construction) is over a billion dollars.
I know this surprises no one that we are paying for the wall. But, seriously:  the president of Mexico has said Mexico isn’t paying for it, polls show that even those who voted for Trump never believed he’d build a wall and Trump was caught saying he never intended to build the wall.

So, uh, why he is taking money from important technology that actually is proven to help control illegal immigration for a wall that will take years to build – thus keeping a Trump promise no one expected him to keep. Hmmmm.


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

     
    Follow @bjaycooper

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013

    B. Jay Cooper

    B. Jay is a former deputy White House press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He also headed the communications offices at the Republican National Committee, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Yale University. He is a former reporter and is the retired deputy managing director of APCO Worldwide's Washington, D.C., office.
    He is the father of three daughters and grandfather of five boys and one girl. He lives in Marion, Mass.

powered by bjaycooper.com