Normal people have gone from laughter to shock to anger to abject fear of the Trump presidency as his reality television drama has torn at the very fabric of our society for almost 2 years since he was inflicted upon us by voters who are idiots.  I worked in New York during the eighties when Trump was a punch line, the target of derision and anger over his trashy gold plated branding and real estate failures.  Many New Yorkers called him Donald Chump.

How did he go from laughingstock to the most powerful job in the world?  In one word, television.  Were it not for The Apprentice, Trump would still be relegated to the pages of tabloids like the Enquirer and the Daily Post.  The Apprentice used trumped up drama (no pun intended), manufactured qualifications, fake controversies, and personal destruction of contestants as a formula to transform Trump from widely known failure to a successful businessman.

Who accomplished this seemingly impossible feat?  His name is Mark Burnett, who invented the first major reality television series, Survivor, in 2000 and then The Apprentice a couple of years later.  After meeting Trump Burnett identified him as the perfect character around which to build a fake “successful” businessman who ruled over contestants each week.  Burnett called it the “Urban Survivor”.  The formula worked, and the rest is our nightmare today.  The New Yorker has just profiled Burnett, and the article reads like a…wait for it…reality television show.

So, if you want to blame someone for the train wreck that is now our daily reality, here’s the guy.

It’s happening right before our eyes.  When His Orangeness was elected by the slimmest of electoral margins in 2016, normal people cringed, understanding that this chapter in our history was going to be a complete disaster.  Trump has certainly met that expectation; his erratic reality television show behavior has destroyed everything from 100 year-old international alliances to entire industries.  His tariff war has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in economic value; his withdrawal from the TPP handed international trade dominance to China and Australia; his idiotic rantings on twitter have roiled the markets and destabilized politics in the US.  The entire world is either laughing at us, or worse, preparing for the lunatic in the White House to declare World War III over some fabricated crisis.

Up until now, the markets have shrugged off Trump’s insanity, primarily because they’ve enjoyed the trillion dollars he’s pumped into the economy with unneeded tax cuts causing skyrocketing deficits.  The result was overheating the economy which caused inflation to raise its ugly head, forcing the Fed to act by raising bank rates.  His shutdown of the federal government over his idiotic wall is the last nail in the coffin of the 2018 economy.  The Dow has plummeted 4,000 points from its highs; this is the worst December since the Great Depression.  The market the last 2 years has now returned only 4% per year, barely beating inflation.

Instead of trying to understand what the hell he’s doing, Trump bumbles around, attacking everything that moves; he spent Christmas Eve savaging the Fed for the inflation HE PERSONALLY CAUSED.  Even worse, the Fed is now the only agency standing in the way of this hair-weaved moron from pushing the entire country into the abyss.  He has never grasped that the POTUS is supposed to CALM the markets, not burn them down; this narcissist is playing with matches while standing knee-deep in gasoline, complaining that he doesn’t have a blow torch.  On top of that, of course, the invertebrates in Congress have fled DC to celebrate the holidays in hiding while the economy burns down around our ears and almost a million federal employees go without paychecks at Christmastime.

This is the worst disaster I’ve witnessed, including the last disaster started by GWB ten years ago.  The difference?  GWB was just a dumbass who surrounded himself with evil neocons and Darth Cheney, but at least he wasn’t nuts.  Trump, a loose cannon, is singularly the most corrupt, narcissistic, and insane POTUS in the modern era, including Nixon.  He’s run off all the adults who tried to restrain his worst instincts.  And, as Mueller gets closer, he gets more dangerous and erratic; finally, after almost 2 years of complete chaos, the markets are now destabilized and plummeting.  This one won’t end well.

Merry Christmas.

Yes, I’m weary with it.  Most people are numb to it because it doesn’t affect them directly.  Government workers hate it, and business persons should be marching in the streets to demand that it stop being used as a political weapon.  I’m talking about the now frequent use of the government shutdown as a bludgeon to override democracy.  It started in the 70s after passage of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 in response to Nixon impounding funds (refusing to spend) funds appropriated by Congress.  The Congress reasserted its control over federal spending after Nixon (and other presidents) had sought greater autonomy over federal spending.  What this set up, though, was budget showdowns that pitted the Congress against the White House.

The shutdown-as-weapon started in 1976 under Ford when he vetoed a funding bill for the departments of education and labor that had just been established by splitting the old department.  It didn’t last long when Democrats overrode the veto.  The next 4 out of 5 shutdowns were over abortion funding under Carter.  Reagan was the one who started playing brinksmanship with the shutdown, furloughing hundreds of thousands of federal employees, mostly demanding deep spending cuts.  He shut down the government eight times, an average of once a year during his terms.  HW Bush shut down the government once in 1990 over deficit spending.

Then came Newt.  After taking the house and becoming speaker, Gingrich used the shutdown to assert control over the entire government.  His shutdowns in November of 1995 and again from December to January of 1996 shattered Americans’ confidence in government and the Republicans.  Clinton’s popularity soared, and he cruised to reelection that year.  Gingrich was hounded out of the speaker’s office not long after.

Gingrich’s stupidity weighed on the Republicans so heavily that they didn’t dare to shut the government down again until 2013, when Ted Cruz used the shutdown in an attempt to strip healthcare from over 20 million Americans who were finally getting it as a result of the Affordable Care Act.  That shutdown lasted 16 days after the Republicans finally caved, but not before costing the US economy an estimated $24 billion dollars.  In between these shutdown attempts, Republicans started playing brinksmanship with the debt limit until finally S&P downgraded the US federal debt rating citing the instability of congressional Republicans and their brinksmanship.

Immune to learning anything from history, Trump has stupidly used the government shutdown to please his base of mouth-breathers, who hate everyone not white and every program that might help them.  This is the third shutdown in a YEAR, and this time during Christmas because Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh demanded their stupid border wall that won’t work.  This one won’t end well for Trump and his merry band of cronies.  The Dems take the House on January 3, and will make Trump’s life a living hell, especially after he has blundered into what is likely his largest mistake (among a legion of mistakes) he’s made since infesting the White House in 2017.  Pelosi and Schumer are going to use this move to their greatest advantage, and will be happy to just sit there and stare at him until the pressure on him becomes so great that either his head explodes or he caves.

If this shutdown wasn’t so destructive it would be entertaining, but Trump’s stupidity will will cost tens of billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and will wreck the holidays for millions of Americans.  I just hope it hurts more Trumpists than it does normal people.

It’s just getting worse for Trump.  As his Trumpist base calcifies into fact-free paralysis, normal Americans have grown weary of the reality show that has played 24/7 since His Orangeness rode down the escalator at Individual 1 Tower alongside his third wife, the nude model from Slovenia.  Are we finally reaching the point where America has had enough of this train wreck?  Perhaps.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 62% of respondents believe that Trump is not telling the truth about Russian interference in the 2016 elections.  Additionally, they also want congressional Dems to take control to correct the course our country is taking.  Only 10% believe Trump got the message in the 2018 election, and 56% believe the US is on the wrong track.

We’re finally seeing cracks in Trump’s big beautiful wall of bullshit.  While his base remains sycophantic, normal people are turning against him.  This presidency will end badly, and insiders acknowledge that, besides all of Trump’s bloviating and bluster, he now fears impeachment.

Good.

CNN is reporting that unknown attorneys argued yesterday in a locked courtroom before a three judge federal appeals court panel over a challenged subpoena to Mueller’s grand jury.  This is the third such hearing, but this time, the entire fifth floor of the courthouse was cleared of all press and observers but for a few judiciary clerks.  The lawyers, who remain unidentified, arrived and left the courthouse under cover.  About 10 minutes after the hubbub on the fifth floor ceased, a black car carrying two of the Mueller team were seen entering the building where Mueller’s team resides.

Very interesting.  With all the secrecy, this witness is clearly highly placed.  My guess it’s a Trump family member; Jr.? Ivanka? Kushner?  This will make a great study in governance after this is all over.