Merry Christmas! I’m not sure what Santa Claus brought everyone, but it sure is obvious what some of us want.
President-elect Donald Trump wants Mexico, Canada, the Panama Canal and Greenland in his stocking this Christmas season. There’s no truth to the rumor, however, that he wants Mexico to return the $10 million we paid for the Gadsden purchase. Though he’d take that money and use it to buy another golden toilet at Mar-a-Lago.
Perhaps taking over Canada and Mexico is just Trump’s way of solving the so-called immigration crisis. Taking back the Panama Canal would enable him to charge exorbitant fees for retail traffic through the canal zone (so he could pay his personal legal bills) – and taking over Greenland will give him plenty of room for his new gulags he wishes to build to house Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and scores of others on his enemies list. Maybe he can even let the largest private prison companies run the new gulags at a well-negotiated price and for massive profits (of which he’ll take a personal cut).
Santa Claus is shaking his head at Trump — who is acting like Father Christmas to everyone who supported him. Mark Burnett, the television producer suspected of hiding damning outtakes of Trump from “The Apprentice,” was named special envoy to the UK. Herschel Walker was named ambassador to the Bahamas and Kimberly Guilfoyle was named envoy to Greece. Trump’s personal lawyers, his friends at Fox News and all of those who’ve sufficiently bowed before him are enjoying a wonderful holiday season before Trump marches back into Washington D.C. to claim his throne – I mean bully pulpit.
Santa Claus probably didn’t put a lump of coal in Trump’s stocking; Trump would try to stamp it with a Trump logo and sell it along with his coffee mugs, MAGA hats and the golden sneakers that don’t exist.
Incoming Vice President JD Vance wants to be taken seriously this Christmas season, but I doubt Santa Claus has Vance’s manhood in his bag of goodies. Vance emerged from obscurity this week after being overwhelmed by the presence of Trump’s favorite puppeteer, Elon Musk. Vance was seen on Capitol Hill helping to negotiate a budget deal that would keep the government running until March. After the deal was done, Vance disappeared back into the night ether from which he came. Rumor is he’ll stay in his coffin until he’s needed.
Santa Claus is rumored to have given him a year’s worth of eyeliner for Christmas.
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It's obvious that Elon Musk wants the world for Christmas — and wants it shrouded in a white supremacist cloak that will make the Nazi regime look like a PTA meeting circle jerk. His international reach continues to grow as this week he (surprisingly?) endorsed a German conservative party that looks like MAGA on steroids. How is it that an immigrant from South Africa who is afforded all the freedoms of the world’s greatest nation would try to undermine the nation that allowed him to succeed beyond his wildest dreams? He doesn’t care. He wants it all and he wants it now. The man who bought and sold the world looks to be on Santa’s naughty list — so I doubt things in the new year will play out the way Husky Musky dreams. After all, his dream is a nightmare to millions of people worldwide. I certainly find it funny that man who could easily dip into his pocket and donate $100 billion to ease student loan debt and help solve homelessness in this country — and still be worth hundreds of billions of dollars — is trying so hard to fit into a high school cheerleading outfit (complete with pom poms) for Donald Trump.
It would be justice if Musk got a sequin-lined cheerleading outfit for Christmas — complete with autographed copies of Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy”.
Meanwhile, it’s apparent President Joe Biden just wants to be left alone for Christmas. He has so thoroughly disappeared from the world stage that sightings of him have made him the political equivalent of BigFoot. Biden entered centerstage with a bang; taking over the presidency during the height of the COVID pandemic. He moved quickly to help quell it, and he moved nearly as fast to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that guaranteed the country would not slip into a recession. He leaves center stage with a whimper. Millions think the infrastructure bill amounted to just six EV platforms in California. He was kicked to the curb by his own party after he slipped badly on stage during a debate with Donald Trump. His hubris, which extends to everyone in his administration, guaranteed his downfall and slip into obsequiousness.
He emerged from his self-imposed exile this week to commute the sentences of 37 federal prisoners sentenced to death. He did it, we were told on “moral” and “Christian” grounds. He said he doesn’t approve of the death penalty, but he didn’t commute the sentences of all 40 prisoners on federal death row. Robert Gregory Bowers, who killed 11 at Pittsburgh Synagogue in 2018, Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers behind the Boston Marathon bombing, and white supremacist Dylann Roof, who was behind the Charleston church shooting in 2015, were not spared from execution.
Otherwise, Biden has apparently dropped the mic and was content to let Congress fight it out with Trump during the recent budget crisis. It is rumored he might re-emerge before the inauguration to dump another load of pre-emptive commutations and pardons. But otherwise, he appears done.
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Santa Claus would probably drop a lump of coal in Biden’s stocking, but it is questionable as to whether or not he could find it. There is no doubt, though, that Kris Kringle gave him a dose of relative obscurity for Christmas.
Vice President Kamala Harris wants to re-emerge as a player in Democratic Party politics this Christmas and Santa Claus is going to have a hard time filling that order. Hey, if you can’t beat a convicted felon who’s been impeached twice and declared bankruptcy six times, who can you beat?
Then there’s Matt Gaetz. The former Congressman wants a girlfriend this Christmas that he doesn’t have to pay for (though he denies it is an underage female elf), but Santa Claus delivered a damning congressional ethics report instead. Of course, Matt tried to sue to prevent the report from being publicly released, but since he was the most disliked member of Congress after felon George Santos was expelled, even the Republican Party cheered when Gaetz’s peccadillos were exposed (along with several body parts). If Matt reads this, I must remind him to look in the dictionary (that’s the book with a list and definition of words) to understand what a peccadillo is.
Of course, Marjorie Taylor Greene would love Santa Claus to deliver her a brain this Christmas. But Santa isn’t the Wizard of Oz and he also can’t fulfill Greene’s wish to be Trump’s concubine — another gift she appears to desperately desire. Rumor has it Santa Claus will give her a drone this Christmas season — and a Webster Dictionary to look up what the word “drone” means. (Words are those portions of speech, dear Marjorie, constructed with letters of the alphabet that represent persons, places and things and are used to communicate thoughts and ideas to those who are literate.)
Of course, the Republican Party would love Santa Claus to deliver a larger majority in Congress this Christmas season – but that isn’t going to happen. The Republicans who tell you privately they dislike Trump, want to cut defense spending and believe the only way Matt Gaetz could ever have sex is to pay for it, don’t seem to understand Santa Claus and the American people don’t work well with “off the record”. They want open communication and honesty. The Republicans are dishonest and can’t legislate. They may have a slim majority over the Democrats in the House and Senate, but the recent budget battle shows they can’t do anything without the Democrats whom they continually mock and deride.
Speaking of dishonesty, the Democratic Party wants legitimacy this Christmas but even Santa Claus can’t deliver that to a political party that thinks it is morally superior to the other major political party and most people, while also wanting to represent the people with whom they refuse to engage.
If Jolly Old Saint Nick or Kanakaloka is singing Mele Kalikimaka with the Andrew Sisters and Bing Crosby this wonderful Christmas season, perhaps some humility will be in both the Republican and Democratic Party stockings this year. It sure would be nice if commonsense and communication were in the offing.
Finally, there’s speaker Mike Johnson. He just wants to keep his House speakership this Christmas, but there are those like Rand Paul who would rather see a billionaire manipulative cheerleader like Elon Musk doing the job.
Does anyone just want peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind this Christmas?
Check the malls for the day after Christmas sales, ask people that very question as they are returning those cheese balls, cheap robot vacuums, and fruitcakes they didn’t want and get back to us.
Santa’s already made his run.
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