How Nancy Stole Christmas
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
Under stress caused by his impeachment Trump took another big step into his alternate reality of ludicrous imaginations. After earlier having given us his deep insights into toilets and dishwashers, at a Florida rally this week he revisited one of his favorite topics, windmills. Although, in his own words, the president never understood wind, he studied windmills better than anybody he knows: ‘They’re noisy. They kill the birds. You want to see a bird graveyard? Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen in your life.’ Also, according to Trump, enormous amounts of fumes are blown from the ‘world we have,’ which is tiny compared to the universe. That promising thought was never finished, and the president didn’t revisit an earlier statement that windmills cause cancer either, probably protecting us from too much depressing information at once, as a responsible leader should. After thus having enlightened the general public Trump withdrew to Mar-a-Lago, where he didn’t immediately play golf but first conferred with Rudy Giuliani, who probably showed up with his fly open, drooling and bouncing against the walls.
The president’s concern about the impeachment process is understandable because Nancy Pelosi has him by the proverbial balls. As long as she refuses to send the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate Trump is in limbo and it’s eating at him. He and his enforcer Mitch McConnell imagined that they could stage a quick bogus trial without witnesses and with immediate exoneration, but the Speaker wants to have rules established that prevent a whitewashing of the president’s high crimes and misdemeanors. It drives Trump nuts and it also creates a conflict between him and the Senate Majority Leader, who is in no hurry to have a trial and wouldn’t mind if Pelosi sat on the Articles until kingdom come. In his anger over this predicament the president is lashing out on all cylinders, claiming that the Democrats are demanding privileges that he was denied during the impeachment inquiry, namely witnesses and legal representation. Conveniently or because of age-related amnesia Trump forgets that he prohibited key witnesses, who could conceivably have cleared him, from testifying, and that his lawyers refused to participate in the hearings in the House.
A term that’s being thrown around by both parties is ‘due process,’ and it’s obvious that they mean different things. The Constitution contains two due process clauses, in the 5th and the 14th Amendments. In general the term refers to fair treatment through the normal judicial system, but like everything else in that system, what is ‘fair’ is open to interpretation, and even more complicated because the impeachment trial will take place in the US Senate, which according to Stuart Chase commonly presents a spectacle of bad language and can become the last refuge of scoundrels.
Looking forward at year’s end one has to worry about the mess Trump will leave behind even if he’s voted out of office next year. It’s impossible to rank its elements by importance: political pollution of the American legal system for decennia to come, environmental destruction that may not be redeemable, irreparable mental damage to children of asylum seekers, and a modern fascist segment of the population that will remain a cult as long as Trump is fanning the flames of racism and discontent.
Responding to a question about a present Kim Jong-un promised to give him for Christmas, possibly the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile, the president speculated that Little Rocket Man might send him a beautiful vase. When asked on Christmas Day about the present he gave Melania Trump said it was ‘a difficult question’ and mentioned a card and lots of love, while he was still ‘working on a gift.’
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