Return to Bizarro World In popular culture "Bizarro World" has come to mean a situation or setting which is weirdly inverted or opposite to expectations. (Wikipedia) I believe I’ve written about Trump and Bizarro World before but the last few days have been too rich to not return to Superman’s alternate world. Let’s start with the James Comey firing, shall we? We (the public) were originally told, by the administration, that James Comey was dismissed because of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email “scandal” during the 2016 presidential campaign. Here is what Sarah Chucklehead Sanders told the Today show: Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells TODAY that President Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey “has nothing to do with any investigation into Russia.” She says “the erosion of confidence had been taking place over a long period of time.” NBC News Doubling down on Chucklehead’s comment, the White House released a statement claiming, “the former director had lost the confidence of rank and file within the bureau." (dw.com) The President himself told Lester Holt: “The FBI is in turmoil, you know that, I know that, everyone knows that . . . he’s a showboat . . . a grandstander.” Well, aside from the obvious “it takes one (showboat/grandstander) to know one” nature of that comment, we see Bizarro Trump relying on “everyone” without ever citing a specific source as well as claiming something that is totally untrue. When Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testified before a Senate Committee on Thursday, he stated: "Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day. The vast majority of FBI staff enjoyed a deep, positive connection to director Comey." As if to prove the whole Trump Team is living on the cubed Bizarro planet, lapdog and Vice President, Mike Pence stated: As has been stated repeatedly and the President has been told, he’s not under investigation. There is no evidence of collusion between our campaign and any Russian officials … Let me be very clear that the President’s decision to accept the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general to remove Director Comey as the head of the FBI was based solely and exclusively on his commitment to the best interests of the American people and to ensuring that the FBI has the trust and confidence of the people this nation. (Salon, May 12th) Kellyanne Conway, on Anderson Cooper, put her Bizarro passport on display, claiming, “This has nothing do with Russia. It has everything to do with whether the current FBI director has the president’s confidence and can faithfully and capably execute his duties.” Are we seeing a pattern here? All the White House people seem to be well-schooled on two talking points: “nothing to do with Russia” and “Comey lost support in the Bureau.” Sean Spicer was on board Tuesday evening before leaving for his Navy Reserve training (think he’ll be back?). Here’s what he said. Press secretary Sean Spicer told the media on Tuesday night that the firing originated entirely in the Department of Justice and when a reporter asked if that meant Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein he said, “it was all him.” The next day the deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and backed up that claim: It’s real simple. The deputy attorney general . . . made a very strong recommendation. The president followed it, and he made a quick and decisive action to fire James Comey. (Salon May 12th) So, it was all the Department of Justice’s and Rod Rosenstein’s idea? Interestingly, of course, the supposedly “recused” Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Foghorn Leghorn Sessions signed the letter recommending the removal of the man leading the Russian investigation! But in Bizarro World, all this makes perfect sense. Of course, all of this totally blew up when an unscripted Chief Executive Loose Cannon told Lester Holt “Oh, I was gonna fire regardless of recommendation” and " in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won'." All the statements released by Spicer, Huckabee, Pence, and Conway are totally contradicted by the Ego in Chief in one fell swoop. I won’t even go into Trump’s fantasy account of his dinner with Comey in January, which Trump claimed Comey asked for (“Hello, White House, I’d like to invite myself to dinner with the President. . . “ --- really?). It was one of the three times, by the Calculator in Chief’s account, Comey informed him that he was not under investigation. Doth he protest too much? According to today’s NY Times, two people who spoke to Comey after that dinner reported the following: As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trump’s rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him. Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not “reliable” in the conventional political sense. So, was the dinner: 1) initiated by Comey or arranged by Trump (as the NY Times claims)? 2) About Comey asking to keep his job or about the President asking for a fealty oath from the FBI Director? In Bizarro World, we never know! The final evidence of just how far the wheels have fallen off the wagon and spun down in Bizarro World is the Tax Evader in Chief’s interview with The Economist this past week. Shockingly, the Mensa Maestro seems to believe he invented the phrase “prime the pump,” regarding economic stimulus. In an interview with The Economist published Thursday (May 11), the President was asked about his tax plan's potential to increase the deficit. In response, Trump used the phrase "prime the pump," and asked if his interviewer knew what it meant. "Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven't heard it. I mean, I just... I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good," Trump said in the interview. Do we need more evidence of the man’s staggering ignorance (“I haven’t heard it. . . I came up with it”)? Do we need more proof that we are watching a totally alternate world at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days? As a kid I thought Bizarro World was simply a place dreamed up by comic book artists. Little did I know that it was an actual place I would live to see on a daily basis.
2 Comments
Steven Askinas
5/12/2017 08:53:39 pm
I ask myself if the country would be better served by Mike Pence and I shudder at the thought of a true far right wing Republican with a Congressional majority. Think of the Hindenburg, " oh the humanity."
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5/13/2017 08:57:24 am
I agree......Pence, the "Christian first, Conservative second, and Republican third" is a frightening automaton....and Happy B'day, btw
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