Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse



Over the past year, as our political culture has grown more coarse and corrupt, I’ve felt different things: sometimes, anger; often, bitter resignation; and occasionally, a bemused sense of pure absurdity. But the past two nights I have actually wept. Why now? Why in response to these particular prompts? A confused and https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-media-fury-follows-video-of-dazed-woman-put-out-in-cold-by-baltimore-hospital/2018/01/11/b8a7866c-f70d-11e7-b34a-b85626af34ef_story.html?hpid=hp_local-news_baltimorepatient746pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.4b5a931e8a56 (ailing woman)in a thin medical gown was tossed to the roadside in freezing weather by security guards from the University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus in Baltimore. Who orders such a thing, and why would anyone carry out that order? Then, the president of the United States calls Haiti, El Salvador and African nations “shithole” countries. Who says that kind of thing? Who thinks it? Who listens to it without reflexive outrage?

According to a few of the president’s defenders, this is what we all really think. “This is how the forgotten men and women of America talk at the bar,” said a Fox News host, imputing to ordinary Americans sentiments they wouldn’t suffer to be said at their own dinner tables. There was the usual talk about “tough” language, as if using racist language was merely candor or an admirable impatience with euphemism.

His defenders seemed to say that if the president says things that we would be ashamed even to think, he is somehow speaking a kind of truth. But while there may be countries that are poor and suffer from civil discord, there are no “shithole” countries, not one, anywhere on Earth. The very idea of “shithole” countries is designed to short-circuit our capacity for empathy on a global scale.

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Remarks like these from the president are still shocking but hardly surprising, given the frequency with which they occur. What I want to know is how the men in the room with him reacted. This is the dinner table test: When you are sitting and socializing with a bigot, what do you do when he reveals his bigotry? I’ve seen it happen, once, when I was a young man, and I learned an invaluable lesson. An older guest at a formal dinner said something blatantly anti-Semitic. I was shocked and laughed nervously. Another friend stared at his plate silently. Another excused himself and fled to the bathroom. And then there was the professor, an accomplished and erudite man, who paused for a moment, then slammed his fist on the table and said, “I will never listen to that kind of language, so either you will leave, or I will leave.” The offender looked around the table, found no allies and left the gathering. I don’t know if he felt any shame upon expulsion.

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And now, we must ask a few simple questions of the men who sat in the room with a president denigrating predominantly black and brown countries as “shitholes”: What did you say back to the man? And why didn’t you leave? Their answers are fundamental to what we need to know about their character and fitness for office.
 
STORMY SHITHOLE
https://claytoonz.com/2018/01/13/stormy-shithole/

The new normal reasserted itself on Friday when news broke that the president of the United States of America had an affair…with a porn star…named “Stormy”…who was paid off to keep quiet….and hardly anyone batted an eye. The only way this scandal would have stopped the presses is if the Stormy affair was with Mike Pence.

Donald Trump in a brouhahaha with a porn star, not surprising. Mike Pence having an impure thought, jaw-dropping. That guy won’t peel his own bananas.

Once upon a time there was a president who received oral sex in the Oval Office and all government business stopped for over a year. It just halted. It was like the invasion of Iraq except the invasion was of an intern’s mouth.

Granted, there are some differences between the Trump sex thing (just typing that got an “ew” out of me) and Bill Clinton’s dalliance.

Clinton’s peccadillo occurred while he was president and Trump’s happened over a decade ago before he even knew there were three branches of government (he knows now, right?). But, Clinton’s Oval Office oral sexcapade was huge news before he testified to a grand jury, before Congress impeached him for it, and before the Senate held a trial. But, Clinton is a Democrat, and he’s Bill Clinton. We knew he was horny when we first elected him in 1992. Before the affair became public most of believed it was only a matter of time before he got caught doing something improper with his wiener. Hell, the Republicans wanted it so bad they spent nearly $40 million of taxpayer money digging for it, and all they got for all that time and money was a blue dress with a stain.

Say what you will about Robert Mueller, but he hasn’t run a DNA test on a semen stain.

Trump’s scandal should still be a big deal. He is the president, and he had an affair with a porn star, and then she was paid to keep quiet about it. He was married to his current wife, which is wife number three. He’s a Republican and his voters are supposedly the people who care so much about family and Christian values. Trump is the guy who promised to bring “Merry Christmas” back (since it never actually went anywhere, it’s a lot easier to bring back than coal mining jobs).

So why was this pushed back by the media? Because we’re still freaking out over “shithole countries.” This president has lied on a daily basis about assorted bullshit. He’s attacked women and minorities. He has boasted about assaulting women and been accused of it by over 20 women. He endorsed a pedophile and defended Nazis. He says stupid stuff and then he double downs on the comments. He’s committed treason. We’ve avoided nuclear war so far despite Trump. After all that shit the porn star news is a little refreshing. The biggest surprise about the porn star is that it was consensual. What if we throw in a second porn star?

For the record, the porn star, Stormy Daniels, has denied the affair and having been paid off. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen has denied it too. He denied it while using the porn star’s working name and not her real one, which was kinda weird. But, of course they denied it because that’s how hush money works.

While they have denied it, a deposit of $130,000 was given by Mr. Cohen to Miss Winter’s Los Angeles bank account. Where did that money come from? Did it come from Cohen, Trump, or Trump’s charity?

It seems Miss Stormy was trying to pitch her story to news outlets shortly before the election, and then she stopped returning reporters’ phone calls. A former Playboy playmate was also shopping a story to news outlets (which real news outlets do not pay for), when she finally got a buyer. The National Enquirer bought her story for $150,000 (how are we evaluating the worth of these porn stars?), and then they buried it. No, not on the back page. They never ran it. They bought her story, shut her up, and sat on the story so it wouldn’t hurt Trump’s chances of being elected president.

David Pecker is the head of the National Enquirer. He’s a good friend of Trump. Trump has said the Enquirer deserves a Pulitzer Prize and that Pecker should be publishing The New York Times. Perhaps the weirdest part of this story is that the character named “Pecker” is not in porno. But, wouldn’t it be awesome if Stormy married Mr. Pecker and became Stormy Pecker? I love a good fairy tale.

Another interesting side note to all of this is that Stormy once considered running for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana. Weirder things have happened. She ultimately chose not to seek the seat, and a weirder thing happened. The sitting Senator, Republican David Vitter, won despite a scandal with prostitutes. Seriously, Republicans. You’re the Christian and family values party. C’mon!

This new normal thing is affecting me too. I was working on my last cartoon when I saw a headline about it on Facebook. I just kept scrolling. I had my TV on cable news and there wasn’t anything being said about Trump, porn stars, hush money, or peckers, and I wasn’t watching Fox. After a few hours I thought about it and went looking for the story. I wanted to see if maybe it wasn’t a big deal.

The Wall Street Journal broke the story, so I went there. They had a paywall. I already have three newspaper subscriptions and I’m not about to buy a fourth, but one of those other should help me out. I went to The Washington Post and I couldn’t find anything on it. I went to The New York Times and finally found a story, which took some scrolling. “President, porn, pecker man” was not the top story. I guess after all the other Trump fuckery we’re lucky the Stormy porn scandal doesn’t involve a pee tape….or does it?

I’m just saddened that Miss Stormy won’t talk about it. I have so many questions. Did the president’s thingy work? Why would she sleep with Donald Trump? Was cocaine involved (we are talking about a porn star and Los Angeles. There had to be coke). How gross and disgusting was it? How long did it last? Did she laugh at it? Was it everything Rubio said it wasn’t? Is there a tape? Was pee involved? Can you mix Viagra with Tic Tacs?

The Trump era will not be complete until Donald Trump tweets about porn. For that to happen we all have to talk about it. For my own amusement, I need to hear Trump sycophants and Christians defend pornography and Donald Trump putting “porn” and shithole” in the news in the same week. I need to hear Tomi Lahren justify this.

Who would have guessed “porn” and “shithole” in the same week Trump got a finger up his ass would be all be unrelated?

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