AREA CON MAN WILL TELL YOU WHAT THE REAL CRIME IS.
Donald Trump tweets FBI to tell them about Fox News story
Donald Trump has apparently used Twitter to alert the FBI to allegations of "electronic surveillance" against him.
The President cited reports by Fox News suggesting he and "people close to" him had been monitored before his nomination as Republican candidate, and tagged @FBI...
Mr Trump said: "Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. 'Spied on before nomination.' The real story
".@FoxNews from multiple sources: 'There was electronic surveillance of Trump, and people close to Trump. This is unprecedented.' @FBI".
On the one hand, in my experience this is very much what crazy people do -- "ah, good, the police are here, now you can arrest the real criminals!" It's Dale Gribble territory.
On the other hand, it's also the stuff of conspiracy thrillers, so maybe that's his play: To convince fans that he's like Will Smith in Enemy of the State, only (bonus!) white.
In a similar vein, I think they'll try to spin Ivanka's and Jared's White House takeover, which looks to sane people like Trump handing off the boring gummint stuff to the kids so he has more time to grift the living shit out of his office, as a mashup of Legally Blonde and Dave. Negotiating with North Koreans is a snap when you have confidence in yourself!
Meanwhile top-shelf conservatives seem to be fretting that, if America is still standing when Trump escapes in a Cessna full of bullion, its people may not think kindly of their movement, which the President has been using the way General Mapache used a gatling gun -- that is, as the weapon of mass destruction his foreign enablers meant it to be, but with less discipline and more collateral damage than they had hoped -- and may not want to hear their shit anymore.
Take Ross Douthat, who announces that he sees the administration's "incompetence and chaos," but will continue "coming up with constructive advice for the Trump White House" as "a useful way of avoiding the depressing subject of the Trump administration’s first 100 days." He's full of shit. His plea for a Trump "think tank" is clearly floated in hopes that one of the drooling loons in the White House will awaken from his cocaine dog-dish inspired to hire him. But Douthat feels he must play it cagey, so instead of proposing himself he suggests some even less plausible bigbrains -- like Mickey Kaus. I'm almost sorry it can't happen:
TRUMP: So you're Kaus, huh? I thought you wore that fedora everyplace. That was your signature, wasn't it? Like Charlie Chaplin with that bowler, or The Situation with those glasses that hung off his chin. You should stick with it. I gotta say, I didn't recognize you. I was gonna tell these Secret Service guys to mess you up good.
KAUS: Now, Mr. President, I'm suppose to give you advice. I brought a plan for an infrastructure initiative that--
TRUMP: I saw you a couple years back with that Ann Coulter. Always respected her because she never got fat. Some of them, their career goes down the drain and they start packing on the pounds. You banging her?
KAUS: Ha, that's very flattering. Now, I had these notes put in a lovely leather binder --
TRUMP: Feels like a pillow. What'm I supposed to do with this? Let me see: "Infrastructure for America: Bridges and Tunnels to the 21st Century." What is this, an insult, this bridge and tunnel thing? Trying to say something? Fuck you.
KAUS: No, Mr. President, it's about bridges and tunnels, you said you --
TRUMP: [to Secret Service] OK, boys, take care of this guy. [Secret Service, nervous but having been shown a film on war crimes, do not move] Ugh, same shit I get from the Joint Chiefs. Alright, get out of here, Kaus. And hey, I don't want to see you in Maxwell's Plum for the next two years, capisce?