He hadn’t been in office for two months when the spoiled brat in chief threw his first temper tantrum. It was a Saturday morning, and Donald Trump was spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, when he woke up and, without consulting political advisers or lawyers, tweeted this at 6:35 a.m.: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” What precipitated this petulant little burst of pique? Well, two days earlier, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had just recused himself from any investigation into whether the Russians had meddled in the 2016 election, and Trump was mad as hell about it.
In order to follow our spoiled brat in chief down this particular rabbit hole, let’s go back and recall what we knew on March 4, 2017. Did we know there was a formal FBI investigation into ties between Russians and the campaign of Donald Trump on that date? No, we didn’t. Did we know about all of the meetings Attorney General Sessions had had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak? No, we didn’t. Sessions would “remember” his meetings with Kislyak later, and he still hasn’t “remembered” that he discussed the Trump campaign with the Russian Ambassador, as the Washington Post reported last year. Did we know that there had been other contacts between Trump’s people and Russians during the campaign and transition? Did we know, for example, about the meeting between Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and four Russians at Trump Tower back in June of 2016? No we didn’t. Did we know that Kushner had had no fewer than two meetings with Russian Ambassador Kislyak in Trump Tower during the transition before Trump took office? No, we didn’t. Did we know that Kushner had met with Sergey Gorkov, buddy of Vladimir Putin and head of the Vnesheconombank, the Russian state owned bank currently sanctioned from doing business in the United States? No, we didn’t know that, either.
Then who did know all of this stuff way back on Saturday morning, March 4, at Mar-a-Lago? Oh, that’s right. The spoiled brat in chief knew, which is probably why he threw his little tantrum with his thumbs and tweeted himself down a rabbit hole that would lead to FBI Director James Comey appearing before the House Intelligence Committee about two weeks later and testifying that he knew of no evidence whatsoever that President Obama had had Trump’s “wires tapped,” but, oh, by the way, just in case you’re wondering, the FBI had had a criminal and foreign intelligence investigation of the Trump campaign going for over nine months.
This little jewel of information led eventually to Trump firing FBI Director Comey, and after that, to the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Prosecutor, in charge of the investigation into ties between Trump and his campaign and Russians who sought to influence our elections in 2016. This is the nightmare confronting the spoiled brat in chief today, as he wakes up every morning and hears that another of his top people has been questioned by Special Prosecutor Mueller and his team.
See, that’s the problem with being a spoiled brat. Something happens that you don’t like — say, you find out that your attorney general has recused himself from the investigation into Russian meddling — and you’re all pissed off, so you decide to throw up a smoke screen to call attention away from your problems and put them magically on your predecessor, and then whamo! The whole goddamn thing blows up in your face! The next thing you know, the FBI is running around Washington questioning everyone who had anything to do with your campaign, and they’re indicting them for crimes and getting them to plead guilty and cooperate with the investigation, and they’re even calling in the Attorney General of the United States and questioning him in the Russia investigation, because while Sessions might have recused himself from overseeing the investigation, he couldn’t recuse himself from being either one of its subjects or targets.
And now comes word that Special Prosecutor Mueller’s investigators have questioned former FBI Director Comey, as well. See what happens with spoiled brats? They think everyone should bow down before them and do their bidding, and so spoiled brats do stuff like take FBI Directors aside and ask them to go easy on people like Michael Flynn, and spoiled brats have FBI Directors over to the White House for private dinners and ask them to pledge their “loyalty,” and then when spoiled brats aren’t happy with the way that people like FBI Directors act, they fire them, using people like attorneys general to do the firing. And what do you know, but attorney generals and FBI directors end up being questioned by investigators working for the Special Prosecutor about stuff like obstruction of justice. Man, it’s hard for spoiled brats when they stop being the sole rulers of their private companies and start being subject to the exigencies of running a government under stuff like the rule of law.
That whole rule of law thing is a pain in the ass, isn’t it? Look what happens to spoiled brats when they up and decide they’re going to do something typically uninformed and impulsive. Let’s say the spoiled brat in chief wakes up one morning and he doesn’t consult with his lawyers or the Pentagon or anybody, and he and reaches for his phone and gets on Twitter and tweets, “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” What happens? Federal court judges strike down the ban imposed by the spoiled brat in chief, and then appeals courts refuse to overturn the ruling of the original judges, and before you know it, it’s January 1, 2018, and transgender Americans can enlist to serve in the military, and transgender troops already serving can continue their service without having to hide their identity from their fellow troops.
The other thing spoiled brats in chief do is appoint their spoiled brat offspring and spoiled brat in laws to important positions they have absolutely no qualifications for. So we’re treated to delightful little surprises like spoiled brat daughter Ivanka sitting in for the spoiled brat in chief at the G-20 summit, sitting right next to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was caught on camera with a what-the-hell-is-this look on her face. And then there was the spoiled brat son-in-law meeting with important foreign officials in the White House and having access to the president’s top secret security briefings, even though he has never qualified for a top secret security clearance. The New Yorker reported this week that U.S. intelligence officials back in December briefed “a wider circle of officials” in the government that “a member of the president’s family” was the target of a Chinese intelligence operation intended to influence American policy. “It was not clear if that family member was Kushner or someone else,” said the New Yorker report, which is titled “Soft Target” and features a cartoon drawing of the spoiled brat son-in-law.
Now why would the Chinese figure they might be able to influence someone so prominently placed in the White House? Could it be because the spoiled brat son-in-law is such a know-it-all that he failed to take the advice of senior officials from the Department of State and have foreign policy experts and note-takers on hand when he conducted meetings with people like the Russian Ambassador and Russian bankers in Trump Tower, and the Chinese Ambassador at his office in the White House?
Why, yes! That might be it!
So is it surprising that, according to the New Yorker, national security wiretaps on Chinese and Russian communications have picked up reports from their ambassadors back to their bosses in Beijing and Moscow, and those reports include stuff about the spoiled brat son-in-law talking to these foreign officials not just about important business that Russia or China might have with the United States, but business that his own company has with both countries?
Are you kidding? We’re talking about government by spoiled brats here! Spoiled brats do what they want, when they want to do it, and they don’t care what the experts say, or what the lawyers say, or what the eventual ramifications of their actions might be, because they want to get their way, no questions asked! They’re spoiled brats, damnit!
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