Escape from London
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
When Donald Trump runs out of town without giving a scheduled press conference you know something bad has happened. His appearance at the 70 years of NATO celebration was littered with his foul-ups and barely hidden insults by the parties he was meeting. He started by attacking Emmanuel Macron, who had called NATO ‘braindead,’ something Trump apparently took as a personal insult because he considers himself the brain of NATO, in spite of having called the alliance ‘obsolete’ a couple of years ago. Then he broke a cardinal rule of US political protocol by calling Adam Schiff ‘a maniac’ and ‘a deranged human being’ and extending the honor to Nancy Pelosi. Asked whether the US supports Iranian protesters the president said ‘no,’ without an explanation, and to top it off he claimed that if he were impeached future presidents might undergo the same treatment for picking an orange out of a fridge. Trump’s babbling like the village idiot caused Macron, Justin Trudeau, Boris Johnson, Dutch Prime Minister Rutte and Princes Anne to joke about him while being video-taped, which resulted in images being shown all over the world.
The president did hardly any better with the Royals. He denied knowing Prince Andrew, in spite of pictures showing them together last June and once calling him ‘a lot of fun.’ During a reception by the Queen Princess Anne ostensibly refused to come over and greet the Trumps, while Price Charles quite noticeably flipped them off by lifting his middle finger next to his nose. After all those signs of disrespect Trump left in a hurry, calling Trudeau ‘two-faced’ on the way to the airport. Back home meanwhile Lisa Page, a formerg FBI attorney involved in the early stages of the Mueller probe and often ridiculed by the president, had decided to break her silence, triggered by Trump’s faking an orgasm at one of his rallies when talking about Page and her former lover, Peter Strzok. In light of the fact that the president and Melania sleep on different floors of the White House and that Trump had a lock installed on his bedroom door it is safe to assume that this is the only sex he’s getting these days. More damaging to the president was the news that the Inspector General of the Justice Department had found no irregularities in the start of the probe.
Before the House Intelligence Committee could hand over its report on the impeachment inquiry to the Judiciary Committee the Republican members released their own report, exonerating the president and stating that all the witnesses were Trump haters. White House lawyers are still pondering if they will participate in the hearings of the Judiciary Committee, with a deadline that expires today, and if they decide to stay away they’ll undoubtedly come up with something to complain about. The phone logs linking Rudy Giuliani to the Office of Management & Budget were the shocker of the report.
During the first day of the hearings by the Judiciary Committee three constitutional scholars from Harvard, Stanford and the University of North Carolina testified, as did Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, the latter as the witness of the Republican minority. The three were in agreement that Trump deserved to be impeached for abuse of his office, bribery and obstruction of justice and Congress, while Turley saw no grounds for impeachment yet and wanted the investigation to be extended
On Monday the Inspector General’s report is due, unless Attorney General Barr, who disagrees with its findings even though it exonerates ‘his’ FBI, succeeds in blocking the release. Meanwhile Hizzoner is in Ukraine, hanging out with a rats’ nest of corrupt former prosecutors like himself, still hoping to find proof of meddling in the 2016 elections that never took place. That man won’t learn until he’s in the slammer.
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