Let’s consider what makes Donald Trump happy.
From his pleasure palace at Mar-a-Lago, with associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones at his side, he just tweeted that he has never been happier. Why? Because 89-year old Mike Gravel, former US Senator from Alaska, has ended his presidential campaign (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/02/mike-gravel-end-presidential-campaign-1445250).
“Now i can concentrate all my fury on both Biden and Harris,” he tweeted. “Booker’s a total loser, I don’t have to say a damn thing about him."
While discussing all this in a physically very intimate fashion with 25-year old ASR Jones (a former Miss Universe contestant), Trump announced that he’s pulled his nomination of Texas GOP Congressman John Ratcliffe to be his Director of National Intelligence (https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/politics/trump-ratcliffe-dni/index.html) — not because, in Trump’s mind, Ratcliffe is unqualified (which he is) but because his close personal Republican friends in the Senate have not been nice enough to Ratcliffe.
Next, ASR Jones watched as Trump tweeted that he wants Ratcliffe to help House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) clean out his rat-infested home in Baltimore, after Rep. Cummings’ home was broken into early this morning while Trump was causing havoc in Cincinnati (cf. https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/politics/trump-cummings-baltimore-home-burglary/index.html).
Then Trump told Jones that as soon as Vladimir Putin sends his intermediate-range nukes to all NATO countries, he will immediately pull out of the NATO treaty as a favor to Putin, just because some members of NATO won’t give Trump money for a new resort in the Falkland Islands (cf. https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/politics/nuclear-treaty-inf-us-withdraws-russia/index.html).
Trump’s current Secretary of State, former Tea Party Congressman from Wichita Mike Pompeo, blamed Russia for forcing Trump to pull out of the intermediate range nuclear treaty.
And Putin’s blaming Trump — just when we thought they were still Helsinki-style buddies.
All Members of the U S House of Representatives, especially the few remaining Republicans, are home campaigning for re-election, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) intentionally kept the Senate in session until they passed a budget bill that kicks the can until after next year’s presidential and Congressional elections (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/01/budget-deal-senate-vote-1444084), which will oust Trump from power and flip the US Senate from red to blue.
As ace political reporter Lisa Goddard Desjardins said yesterday on the PBS Newhour With Judy Woodruff, the budget passed yesterday by McConnell & Co. deals only with discretionary spending, because military spending and Social Security are mandatory spending matters.
McConnell, the Grim Reaper, he’s the dude who won’t allow election security legislation to be voted on in the Senate, but he sure as hell should (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/01/schumer-mcconnell-election-security-1444541).
On Wednesday, in Detroit, at the Democratic presidential candidates debate, Colorado’s Senior Senator, boyish Michael Bennet (who was born in New Delhi when his father, the late Doug Bennet, served in our Embassy there), was a standout, bravely arguing against the so-called progressives on the stage, such as Kamala Harris, that a health care plan that takes away the ability of voters to keep their private health care plans, should be considered to be DOA.
Amidst all this, the UK’s new PM, Boris Johnson, has only one vote to spare on his stupid-ass Brexit deal, and Trump is extremely worried about that (cf. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/29/business/boris-johnson-brexit-pound/index.html).