For avid Trump/US watchers . . .

Trumpisms

• I don’t need or want guardrails around my immigration activities. We are a free enterprise people. [So, thank-god we’ve got his personal morality as the real constraint].
• [On the throwing of a liquid on Democrat politician, Ihlen Omar,] She’s a fraud. She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.
• Climate scientists are ecology insurrectionists.

Quotes of the Day

• For some bizarre reason, the US is insisting ICE agents attend the winter Olympics in Italy, which isn’t going over very well there.
• It is within the realm of possibility that Trump could trigger a military coup.
• Trump is a prisoner of his deeply flawed character. Like the scorpion in the fable of the scorpion and the frog, it’s in his nature to keep pressing for what he thinks is a win, no matter how much evidence accumulates that he is rapidly making his situation worse.
• The term Christian Nationalist is an oxymoron.
• ICE agents all carry belts and vests with 9,000 pieces of equipment on them and the best they can do is shoot a guy in the back?
• Noem’s defence of ‘I was just following orders’ is known as the Nuremberg Defence.
• The best hope for the Dems is Trump’s remarkable gift for self-sabotage.
• Someone once remarked that Trump’s incompetence outruns his malevolence.
• A competent wannabe autocrat would be covering his actions in the patina of legality, pitching scholars against scholars. Trump, by contrast, is uniting scholars and ignoramuses against him.
• Stephen Miller bears a marked resemblance to Reinhard Heydrich.

Non-comedic Commentary

• Is this the darkest period of Donald Trump’s second term? The tone might be softening but there’s no reason to expect a policy shift.
• Trump signals a shift on his immigration crackdown as the ICE backlash intensifies.
• For the truly interested . . . Trump’s soft TACO – a gambit or a real climbdown? Long but insightful. Good Comments.
• Stephen Miller v. ICE Barbie is a distraction. Also long and insightful.

Comedic Commentaries

• Jimmy Kimmel
• Seth Myers
• Stephen Colbert

Questions of the Day

• Will Kristi Noem survive?
• Has there ever been a nastier US president?
• Has there ever been a national leader with such an obvious and shameless lust for money, power, women and approbation?
• Why did a majority of US voters not see what he was like after his first presidential term?
• If they did but still put him back in power, what does this say about US society?
• Does Trump ever experience shame or guilt? [Presumably not, as a malignant narcissist]
• We knew Trump knew nothing about the Declaration of Independence but it seems he also knows nothing about the Constitution, specifically Article 2, on the right to bear arms?
• Will there ever be an ‘honourable investigation’ of ICE killings?
• Does the Pope regard Vance and Leavitt as real Catholics?