Paul Ryan to Mike Pence "I give him a month. Then it's you and me, baby."
When the current president was inaugurated, the world was treated
to spectacular verbosity from him, with follow-up clean-up operations
from Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway, and the occasional back-up from Mike
Pence and Paul Ryan. It was double-down and treble-down overload on the news, the legitimate media, talk shows, panel discussions and Twitter.
Kept afloat by the
ballast of his own bombast, the president threw his weight around all over the
place. China, N. Korea, NATO, Mexico, Russia—no, not that one. The
majority of the American people who didn't vote for him, the press...
I have the best
people, this administration is running perfectly, like a well oiled machine. I
have the best ideas, even God stopped it raining during my inauguration. Can
you believe it, Arnold Schwarzenegger's a loser, Sad! You're gonna love it,
we're gonna get the bad dudes out. I tell you, I have the best ideas, the best
people, the press, they're the enemy of the people. The American people they
love me, I have the best.
So many words. Thank God some of them were leaks. There were occasional moments of
stark humor. Like when Sean Spicer gathered all his staff and commandeered
their phones to check if any of them were the leak. Which pleasant occasion was
leaked.
And the leak about the president roaming the corridors of the WH
in a dressing gown, not knowing what to do.
That was fun. There haven't been many of those moments. Mostly
it's been one dark day after another as the gigantic tidal wave of alternative facts threatened to wipe truth off the face of the planet. And the flood of stinking tweeting words
just kept oozing. The oozer-in-chief on a high. Nothing's gonna stop me now.
Unaccountably things started going wrong. The momentum against the
bigot that had started with Hillary Clinton was a counter-tidal wave that
didn't stop at the inauguration. You can lie about the truth but you can't make
it go away.
Messy noisy town hall meetings affecting Republicans, Mike Flynn
caught lying red-handed, push back from Democrats, investigations up the kazoo,
Republicans breaking ranks, Kellyanne Conway advertising for Ivanka Trump on
national TV and sitting on the WH couch without her shoes. Sean Spicer in the
dog house for wearing the wrong color suit and plugging his cheeks with too
much gum. SNL - damn that SNL, the losers! And Putin very silent on the
mutual-admiration society.
Then Jeff Sessions. Full-blown catastrophe for the president. The
runaway train of his garbled mind that we thought was already in full bolt,
really bolted. Or, to use another metaphor, the pressure-cooker exploded. What
had been silly tweets, annoying tweets, weird tweets, clownish, childish, suddenly became actionable lies.
And the whole well-oiled verbiage-spewing machine shut down.
Silence. Sweet silence. No presidential tweets, no Sean Spicer, no Kellyanne
Conway, no Mike Pence or Paul Ryan. Odd, that. But the New York Times reports
that behind the scenes, various (unnamed) staff called each other and the White
House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, in a panic. Others told the Times that the
president was on a high at first, but then sounded unsure of how wiretaps were
actually executed, and asked "aides and associates" if an independent
source could substantiate his claims.
This would be the president who lambasted the press for using
anonymous sources and whose government refuses to insist on an independent
investigation into Russian interference in the elections and possible
connections between Russia and Trump and/or his staff during his campaign.
On Monday at an off-camera gaggle, Sean Spicer, clearly off his
game, chose to speak about the president's complaints at CPAC that the
press used anonymous sources. Spicer was of course quizzed on the wiretap
accusations made by the president without evidence. He referred vaguely to
"numerous reports out there". Nobody could pin him down. Not quite business
as usual.
Then yesterday Mike Pence was interviewed on Fox News Radio's
Kilmeade & Friends and broke his silence in a way that spoke volumes.
“I think the president’s tweet speaks for itself. He’s expressed
himself on it. And we’re very pleased that the congressional committees have
made it clear that they will look into that matter, just as they’re looking
into every aspect of it.”
Double-speak for, "This is too hot to touch. He made his bed.
And, when congressional committees look into the matter, I'll be pleased with
whatever the outcome is." Which is double speak for "Hallelujah!
We're finally going be rid of this jerk so I can be president as God has
ordained." Does Mike Pence want to be President? The Indy Star reported
in 2016 that as Governor, he did think of it and even "stoked talk of
it". He refrained from making a commitment until the April 2015 session
ended.
Indiana law prohibits anybody running for state and local office
on one ballot. So a bill was put forward by Sen. Mike Delph to change the law,
but it was iced, and Democratic Party Chairman John Zody said
that Pence "Appears willing
to let others do his dirty work for him and refuses to get his hands dirty when
it comes to his presidential ambitions or running state government."
The man doing the dirty work, Mike Delph, lost his press secretary, his title as ranking
member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and his
leadership role of Senate assistant majority floor leader of communications.
His seat was also moved into the minority, with Democrats, and across the aisle
from Republican leadership. Punished by his own party.
The reason for such severe punishment? Delph violated
GOP caucus protocol that prohibits public discussion of caucus affairs. He tweeted
about a same-sex marriage amendment.
