Chaos.  Absolute chaos.  Just this week:

• Trump threatens porn star Stormy Daniels with $20 million in damage claims and petitions to move the local case to federal court.
• Trump fires Tillerson and will replace with loyalist Mike Pompeo, now infesting the CIA.
• Pompeo will be replaced by CIA black site torturer, Gina Haspel.
• McMaster is likely to be fired any day.
• Kelley is still on the chopping block.
• Larry Kudlow, Trump loyalist and CNBC loudmouth, is Trump’s new economic advisor.
• John Bolton, Fox News talker and little angry man with an angrier mustache, is said to be Trump’s new national security advisor.
• Out of the blue, Donald Trump, Jr. announced an uncontested divorce from wife of 12 years, Vanessa.
• Deputy FBI director, Andrew McCabe, is fired two days before his pension is to become vested.

So, in all this chaos, what in the hell is going on?  First, Trump thrives on chaos and loves the drama he stirs up in the press.  He loves to piss people off.  He’s maintaining his trashy reality show personality by continuously firing people or threatening to fire people or demanding someone be fired for something.  That’s clear.  But, what else is going on?  Who knows, but what’s apparent is that the Trumps are prepping for the coming trials.

His Orangeness is sweeping the administration of professionals who may not be absolute loyalists.  He’s installing people who possess the primary qualification of being Trumpist first, and actually qualified for the job second.  He’s preparing to stonewall Mueller’s probe at all costs, and will fill WH vacancies with those (like Kudlow) who won’t cooperate with anyone outside Trump’s inner circle.   He’s also working hard to discredit the FBI generally, Comey and McAbe specifically because they will both be witnesses against him.

Lastly, I believe that the Donald Jr. divorce is nothing but a dodge to help protect some of his assets when he’s charged, and likely convicted of any number of offenses like colluding with the Russians to lying to investigators.  Nothing else makes any sense.

The Reality Television Show administration continues.

Paying off a porn star to silence her less than two weeks before a presidential election; colluding with foreign powers to swing the election; starting a war with the US Justice Department; using the presidential seal in a crass commercial operation; running a hotel in a federal building, pocketing millions of dollars in foreign money; putting family members who can’t pass a background check in charge of top secret operations; having a family member on the White House staff who uses his government position to reward (and punish) countries to advantage his private real estate projects; using government influence for foreign trade licensing of the family business; cheating contractors, banks, and investors; filing bankruptcy numerous times; having 5 children by 3 wives, 2 of which were made US residents by shady means; staffing the White House with a rogue’s gallery of white supremacists, unregistered foreign agents, criminals, and weirdos; playing 100 rounds of golf in his first year as president spending one-third of the time at his own resorts; starting trade wars; threatening nuclear war; pissing off every US ally; lying in a continuous stream.  It goes on and on, but that’s enough for now.

The question is, what does it take to wake the Congress from its coma?  Can you imagine the 24/7 howling if even ONE of these transgression was committed by anyone else?  Especially a Democrat who made the mistake of being president while black?

You know how the propaganda machine pumps out books during election years peddling bullshit as fact to rile up the base.  In past years, it was manure shoveled by the likes of Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly where they wove fantastical fairy tales claiming that up is down, left is right, and the sun rises in the west.  One magnificent piece of work is by Dinesh D’Souza, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left, where he does mental gymnastics to assert the case that American progressives were connected to Hitler and Nazi Germany.  It’s idiotic, especially to anyone who has even fleeting familiarity with high school world history, but a huge hit among the drooling class who slurp it up while filling D’Souza’s pockets with millions of dollars.

One new piece of work, written by David Brody, a reporter with the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Scott Lamb, a Baptist minister and biographer of Mike Huckabee and the baseball player, Albert Pujols is a new low in right wing manure.  It’s called The Faith of Donald J. Trump, A Spiritual Biography.  Wrongly classified as a biography rather than fiction, it spends 375 pages trying to convince the reader that Donald Trump, owner of casinos and topless bars, swindler, and world class philanderer, is actually a devout Christian.  You read that correctly – this work of fiction actually asserts Trump is a man of God.

There is one good thing, however, that has come from this book, and that is the review of it in the LA Times by Lawrence Downes, titled “Holy Crap – The ‘Godly Side of Donald Trump’ which contains some very meaningful insights about the book.  A few of his better quotes:

and this little tidbit,

“Decency, honesty, charity, humility: Who cares if the president does not manifest these things in what he says or does? Never mind the Lord’s commandments, like the ones forbidding idolatry, bearing false witness and moving on thy neighbor’s wife like a bitch.”

Unlike the actual book, this review is a great read, highly recommended.  I’m dubbing it Best Book Review Ever.

ProPublica has caught the Trump Organization ordering dozens of Presidential Seals to be used as…wait for it…tee markers for his golf courses.  Eagle Sign company (which makes tee markers) had posted a photo on Facebook showing the dozens markers in production. It has since been deleted.  And, yes, using the presidential seal for a commercial purpose is against federal law, exactly like you think it would be.  There’s simply no limit to Trump’s rude, crude, and crass use of the US government and the trappings of the presidency to make a buck.  Here’s the photo captured by ProPublica.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney, has now admitted that he indeed paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000.  He’s just not saying for what, except that he paid it out of his own pocket and was not reimbursed.  Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, had previously claimed to have had an affair with Trump, then denied it, and now refuses to answer any direct questions about it.  Cohen has also denied the affair and now won’t answer questions about it.  So…

1. We can assume the obvious which is right in front of us where Trump had an affair with a porn star; when she threatened to go public during the campaign, Trump had his lawyer do the dirty work to shut her up.  Or…
2. Cohen just decided to give the porn star $130,000 just because she has a nice pair….uh, never mind; he was just being nice to her.
3. They’re all lying and you just have to make your own assumptions.

One has to ask – Why in the world would a New York lawyer with a celebrity client who’s famous for sexual escapades just give $130,000 to a porn star, who just happened to claim she had an affair with said celebrity client?  Oh, and why would he pay that out of his own pocket without reimbursement?  The answer is obvious, and Cohen’s explanation of the whole sordid episode doesn’t pass the straight-faced test.  He claims the “transaction” was legal and had nothing to do with Trump’s campaign.  I wish him luck with that argument in court over the complaint filed with the FEC that the $130,000 was not an in-kind donation to the Trump campaign.  I can’t wait to hear the reason he paid a porn start that kind of cash if it wasn’t for the obvious reason.

Next, Cohen must think his audience is stupid.  He paid for the bribe legal transaction out of his own pocket? Right.  Money is fungible.  Here’s the definition of fungible:

Colbert was on a roll last night, mocking His Orangeness for his latest idiocy of demanding a huge military parade to honor himself.  Calling him the “Usain Bolt of stupid,” Colbert said that Trump was his own competition for idiotic ideas.  He also advised Trump to ignore his attorneys and take on Robert Mueller.  It’s was pretty entertaining.  Have look: