Today, the big big news is that at 1:30 am in Washington, Vietnam war hero John McCain, who lost to Barack Obama in the heated presidential race in 2008, has saved the Affordable Care Act by voting against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “Skinny” “Repeal and Replace” proposal.
McCain had traveled 2000 miles from Arizona to the Nation’s Capital at great personal risk to his health after being diagnosed with brain cancer, to vote in the Senate initially favor of debating McConnell’s Skinnycare bill. Ahead of the vote on the merits, he was lobbied intensely by all the GOP heavyweights, including the current occupant of the White House, who, it must be remembered, tried to humiliate McCain during his tumultuous presidential campaign last year, by deriding the former Vietnam prisoner of war for having been captured by the North Vietnamese. Donald Trump has never served in the military.
Trump's number two, former Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, had come to the Capitol expecting to cast the deciding vote in favor of Skinnycare, since it was well known that Republican senators Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) would vote no. Pence made a personal appeal to McCain to vote yes. See a full factual report on all this at http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/28/how-mccain-upended-obamacare-repeal-241070.
But now here at AP we need to bring our readers up to speed on how Trump is getting along with his military brass.
Exactly one day after Trump, in a typically outrageous tweet, announced that no transgendered persons would be allowed to serve in the military, Joint Chiefs of Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford immediately pushed back, saying that under his watch, the military will continue to “treat all of our personnel with respect” (http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/27/trump-transgender-military-ban-no-modification-241029).
Sensibly, Trump’s military and naval subordinates, following Dunford’s lead, insisted on following established rule making procedures prescribed by law. A Trump tweet is nothing but a rant. If Trump wants to do something lawfully, he has to issue an executive order and let the courts toss it out, as they did to his Islamophobic travel ban until the travel ban was partially rescued by Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues.
With associate solitary reporter Matthew Mullaney (who covers the military for us) by his side, Dunford called House Speaker Paul Ryan and said, “Mr. Speaker, it is the consensus of my colleagues and me that our country is in serious danger because of the impetuous and totally uncontrollable nature of our current leader.”
“We strongly recommend,” Dunford continued, "in confidence of course, that the House promptly initiate impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump.”
Always one to respond favorably to the military, Ryan immediately called Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and conveyed General Dunford's message.
“I’ll get on it right away,” Thornberry told Ryan.
“Thanks, Mac,” Ryan said. “It’s clear to all of us in leadership that whenever that bozo Trump is in big trouble with some major issue, like Russia, he just sends out a hateful tweet as a diversionary tactic.”
“We’ve all had enough. I can’t be sure how many Republicans in the House we can bring in, but all the Dems are sure bets.”
“I’m a devout Catholic,” Ryan continued, “and Mike Pence used to be a Catholic and now he’s a flaming evangelical, and Trump is a completely fake Christian. I can work with Pence. After all, we’re both from the upper Midwest, which means Pence and I are righteous men, unlike a lot of others in our party.”
Thornberry immediately called House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlate (R-Virginia), who promptly agreed, and scheduled an impeachment hearing for Monday, just before the House had planned to leave for its August recess — only Ryan, in his wisdom, cancelled the August recess to get rid of Trump all the faster.