Jon Stewart was right a few years ago when he described Trump’s behavior as, “Gleeful Cruelty and Dickishness”.  At the time, Stewart was talking about Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” immigration plan that separated thousands of children from their parents at the border, and then purposely lost track of them, but his characterization most certainly applied to his intentional slow walking of funding relief to Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017.  There was absolutely no reason to do so except to make American citizens’ lives more miserable as if that was even possible.  As evidence that his cruelty was intentional.  He then obstructed investigations into his cruelty just because.  Trump is an asshole, just to be an asshole.  He relished wielding the power of the presidency to not serve Americans, but too harass those he didn’t like, and I don’t have to describe who it is who he didn’t like.

Disappointingly, but not surprising, the obstruction of oversight was led by Ben Carson, the comatose Secretary of Housing and Urban development.  His staff aided in the corruption, even as Carson feigned concern about delays in approvals by OMB of funding while refusing to cooperate with the IG trying to get to the bottom of the delays.  It was classic Trump…assuaging his own need for adoration while urinating on people who desperately needed help.

It boggles the mind that a human being can be such a shitbag, but we are talking about Trump, so that’s no surprise.

John Cornyn this week:

“The president is not doing cable news interviews,” Cornyn said on Twitter. “Tweets from his account are limited and, when they come, unimaginably conventional.”

That’s right – Cornyn’s not happy that Biden isn’t acting like a narcissistic screwball Trump.  I know that sounds stupid, but that criticism has gained serious traction along with the usual “Biden is feeble” and “who’s in charge?” insults.  This one, though, plays to only one demographic – Trumpists.  Trump is still the hijacker, holding the entire GOP hostage, even though his primary weapon, Twitter, has been taken away from him since January, and there are few chinks in his armor against challengers.

Also this week, the Washington Post published a report that Biden is doing exactly what he said he would do during the campaign, to not be continuously top of mind for Americans.  His calm demeanor and low key political style has calmed the waters in American political life. As measured by studies of Google searches, Trump is fading in the American consciousness and Biden has not replaced him.  Since the inauguration, the number of searches using the terms Trump and Biden have declined.

But even as the attention of the American people on the presidency has diminished, attitudes towards it are much different.  By a large margin, Trumpists and Trump leaners believe that Biden has made communication to the American people MORE negative than when Trump infested the WH.  They actually liked Trump’s loud, abusive, and confrontational style, and now criticize, like Ccornyn, that Biden is too normal and not bombastic enough.  A lot of that is the constant torrent of vitriol that they are fed by rightwing media and Republican politicians trying to keep the spotlight on themselves.  The other is that much of Trump’s base is actually attracted to over the top rhetoric along with the childish bullying and insults.  In short, Biden’s not a big enough asshole to suit them, and probably could never be.

The GOP is so subverted that just being normal is now viewed as weakness.  The Crazy Train to 2024 is already full and pulling out of the station.  It promises to be a weird trip.

This is a good one…Rick Scott who’s chairing the NRSC this cycle attempted to gain favor with Trump by inventing a new award, the Champion of Freedom.  He had it engraved on a tiny cheap bowl and rushed over to Mar a Lago to give it to him.  THEN, he stupidly tweeted out the picture.  Yes, the Twitterverse responded as you would expect, and it is glorious.

This party is so fucking pathetic that they have to bestow golden offerings (with names like "FrEeDoM aWaRd") to stay in the good graces of their one-term president.

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) April 12, 2021

Last night at a major GOP donor conference, Trump was in fine form (for him), unleashing attacks on everyone who have not continued to give him full-throated support.  He attacked, by name, everyone who supported the Constitution by certifying the election for Biden.  He attacked all of his nemeses including Nancy Pelosi, “Barack Hussein Obama”, Anthony Fauci, and Brian Kemp of Georgia, the governor who refused to buckle to Trump’s demands that he throw his career out the window by illegally throwing the election to him.  But he saved his juiciest insults for Mitch McConnell calling him a “dumb son of a bitch” and a “stone cold loser.”  He also repeated all the same lies he’s told countless times, even attacking Mark Zuckerberg directly claiming that he spent $500 million on a “lockbox” that delivered every vote for “Saintly Joe Biden.”  He did praise a few, like Jim Jordan and the January 6 protestors, while lamely trying to distance himself from those who sacked the Capitol (even though he incited them to do so).

As he rails against all of his enemies, the GOP continues to struggle for its own identity and direction.  Even this weekend when donors gathered at the nearby Four Seasons, Trump was holding a competing “investor” conference at Mar a Lago for his big donors.  And to get face to face with him, the donors attending the Four Seasons conference had to trek to Trump’s property and pay his club for the privilege.  This weekend was symbolic of the turmoil that is tearing the GOP apart.  Even as his former staffers, including Mark Meadows and career grave robber, Stephen Miller form their own PACs and political operations.  While they all want the enthusiasm for Trump among the faithful, they don’t want Trump himself.  He’s insulted and pissed off all of the establishment Republicans, and has frozen dozens of 2022 and 2024 campaigns, especially for the GOP nomination for president next time around.

As Trump continues his multi-hundred million dollar grift, he’s unforgiving of what he perceives as disloyalty, and future candidates are lined up at the gates of Mar a Lago seeking the blessing of His Orangeness.  Not doing so will draw his wrath and most certainly a primary opponent.  He is desperately clinging to his control of the GOP, even as many maneuver to wrest that control from his iron grip.  In his wake he leaves nothing but toxic waste and destruction.

Matt Gaetz is spinning so fast he’s going to fall down.  After deny, deny, deny didn’t work, he’s now saying that the DOJ investigation into sex trafficking and crossing state lines with a minor for sex is all a Democratic plot to take him down.  The little detail he left out?  The investigation was begun last year when Trump and Bill Barr were still in office.  Oops.  Oh, and it gets worse.  While Gaetz continues to dig a deeper hole for himself, the NY Times is reporting that he had petitioned the Trump WH for a blanket preemptive pardon for himself a some unnamed associates for crimes they may have committed during his term in office.  Mercifully, WH counsel determined that request to be a non-starter.  Apparently, he did not disclose to the WH that he was under federal investigation at the time of the pardon request.  Oops, again.

Trump is a crook – we all know that (at least normal people do); he played his supporters from chumps and they fell for it.  A television game show host who wears heavy makeup, a weird hair weave, and has 5 kids from 3 wives, is accused of 2 dozen incidents of sexual assault, has 4,000 lawsuits against him and who’s being investigated by the NY AG, NYC DA, and the feds for everything from financial fraud, to tax fraud, to cooperating with foreign powers, and even inciting insurrection is not the ideal guy to lead the free world.  His followers, though, were actual chumps and we all paid for it with economic disaster, half a million pandemic deaths, and being labeled a pariah on the world stage.

As bad as all that is, it actually hit Trump’s supporters directly in the wallet, and I’m not talking about just the economy. During the 2020 campaign, Trump’s fundraising actually grifted his most loyal followers.  Trailing far behind the Dems in fundraising, Trump’s campaigned CHANGED the giving option on its website to default to recurring rather than one time.  What that meant was that if a donor wasn’t paying attention, whatever donation they made to Trump, the same amount was charged each week until the election, draining thousands of people’s bank accounts and running up credit card bills.  The only way to opt out was to wade through all the fine print and then check the box for one time donation.  That’s right, folks, Trump actually drained the bank accounts of supporters, using the money to pay for his campaign.

AND, if it’s even possible, it got worse.  Late in the campaign, the opt out box was made more opaque, and even buried another pre-checked box that DOUBLED the contribution. This scheme snagged scores of people including retirees, military veterans, and people couldn’t afford to donate thousands of dollars to anything, much less Trump.  One veteran donated $900, only to have his account drained by $8,000.

The effort was clearly intentional.  Trump grifted money from loyalists in the waning days of the campaign to prop up his spending.  Even worse, after his election loss, Trump’s disinformation campaign where he falsely claimed massive election fraud raised tens of millions of dollars that he then used to refund the money to donors he had defrauded before the election.  The total he had to refund?  Over $122 million.

As if anyone needed more evidence of Trump’s criminality and utter disregard for anyone but himself, this is it.  By deception, Trump shook down his unwitting loyalists for over $122 million to fund his own charade to cling to the presidency.  I’m just thankful the effort ultimately failed.