The decades-long peace vigil across from the White House that Trump ordered dismantled.

By Bob Gaydos

“Maybe it’s just me, but: If I’m going to keep doing this, I think I’m going to have to come up with a rating system on the absurdity (an all-inclusive, non-profane word for all the negatives imaginable) of news stories emanating from the White House.”

I wrote that sentence a few weeks back at the end of a column that included stories about Trump firing the commissioner in charge of providing monthly labor statistics because he didn’t like the numbers she reported and appointing Fox News personality and legal nut job Jeanine Pirro as prosecutor for the District of Columbia. On a scale of one to five, I gave them both a five.

I have to readjust my rating system, or just scrap it. I should have known better with Trump. He never misses an opportunity to do the more outrageous, stupid, harmful, arrogant, selfish, petty, cruel, illegal and ultimately absurd thing when given the opportunity. And the Supreme Court, one of his primary enablers, has given him that opportunity carte blanche with its conveyance of immunity for acts committed in accordance with his duties as president.

Last week, Trump ordered the killing by U.S. military of 11 Venezuelan citizens on a boat in the southern Caribbean, justifying it as a blow in the war against illegal drugs. He said the U.S. military had identified the crew as members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which the U.S. designated a terrorist group in February and that the gang, not known for illegal drug activity, is controlled by Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.

No warning was given. The boat was attacked, the occupants killed. No drugs were found. Even if there were, proper legal procedure is for proper authorities to arrest the people involved and let the legal system judge them. Not assassinate them with the military. That’s illegal. Some call it a war crime.

The rest is in no particular order since the outrageous keeps coming on a daily basis as Trump, who is clearly sliding to dementia, is also obviously panicked about the growing demand that the Epstein client list be made public.

This has resulted in him threatening war on a United States City — Chicago — not only threatening to send in National Guard troops, but posting a social media fantasy of himself in “Apocalypse Now” declaring, “I love the smell of deportation in the morning.” This also emphasizes the fact that he has given the Department of Defense a new (unofficial) nickname, Department of War. Which would also jibe with that war crime against Venezuela.

He has also tilted his javelin against windmills, stepping up his Don Quixote crusade against safe, clean, inexpensive alternative energy by shutting down a huge, nearly completed clean air project off the coast of Rhode Island, which is designed to serve hundreds of thousands of residents.

Then, after threatening Republican members of Congress who dared to demand full release of the Epstein files by calling them “traitors,” he turned his attention to upstate New York. He showed his absolute pettiness by celebrating the West Point Alumni Group’s decision to cancel the awards ceremony at which Tom Hanks was to receive the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer Award. It is given annually to “an outstanding citizen of the United States whose service and accomplishments in the national interest exemplify personal devotion to the ideals expressed in West Point‘s motto: ‘Duty, Honor, Country.’” Things about which Trump is completely clueless.

Hanks, who has appeared in several notable films portraying members of the armed services as well as the American space program, is also an outspoken critic of Trump. Trump called him “woke.” Horrors! Earlier this year, the Academy eliminated more than a dozen student clubs and organizations for women and minority students, bowing to Trump pressure to eliminate DEI programs. The alumni said Hanks will still get the award, but without the public pomp and ceremony. Maybe the press should show up.

And just to wrap up this mess, the fearless leader apparently looked out the window and didn’t like what he saw in a park across the street — a simple peace vigil that has been there for more than 40 years. Trump ordered Park Police to tear it down as part of his campaign to clear the nation’s capital of homeless people. Unfortunately, the people who maintain it are not homeless. They simply show up every day to sit under the blue tarp. Trump took that blue canvas as a sign it was a homeless encampment. There’s a war on against that, too.

The day after the blue awning, erected to defend against rain, was taken down and signs promoting peace thrown away, one of the founders of the vigil showed up in the usual place to continue the vigil. Without the blue tent awning. Determined to remain. The group found their signs, too.

It may be too much to expect, but it would be nice if one of Trump’s trusted aides could point out to their fearless leader that murdering foreign civilians without providing any evidence or cause, depriving thousands of your own citizens of an inexpensive source of energy, threatening war on an American city, bullying the military into a cowardly retreat on honoring a citizen who had honored them and then (really?) tearing down a simple vigil for peace in the world because some phony MAGA “journalist” called it to his attention are not the kinds of acts that are going to get him that Nobel peace prize he desperately wants.

They’re not likely to get him into heaven either.

By Bob Gaydos

The unmistakable Trump signature.

 “I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it.”

   That was Donald Trump last Friday on the South Lawn of the White House as he left for another weekend of golfing.

   The “it” that he denied signing was a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act to round up and swiftly deport 261 migrants, men and women, his administration says are members of a violent gang from Venezuela. No warrants, no charges, no evidence, no hearings … off to a brutal prison in El Salvador.

    Trump had been asked about the proclamation because a federal judge had ordered the government to hold off on the deportation and provide some legal justification before proceeding, all of which had been ignored.

   District Judge James E. Boasberg asked why the proclamation was “essentially signed in the dark” so that flights could begin immediately. The judge was furious at being stonewalled in court by lawyers for the White House on when they received his orders and why they didn’t turn the planes around. Also, why this ancient law was resurrected as justification.

     So, a rare reporter doing his job asked the person who signed the proclamation when he signed it.

     Not me, said Trump, who holds the title of president and would customarily be the person to sign such an order.

   “Other people handled it,” Trump said. “But Marco Rubio’s done a great job. And he wanted them out, and we go along with that. We want to get criminals out of our country.”

     Interestingly, Trump’s well-known signature does appear on the digital image of the proclamation available for viewing with the Federal Register. More directly to the point, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said Trump did actually, personally sign the proclamation.

     Cheung tried to deflect from his discrepancy with his boss by saying Trump meant he didn’t sign the actual proclamation, which was declared in 1798. No one was buying that baloney.

      So what’s going on here? There are several options. 

      Whether Trump actually signed the proclamation or not, at this point there is no satisfactory answer to that question.

      — Trump signed it and forgot. Hardly reassuring for someone occupying the Oval Office. Invoking a wartimes act to deport a couple of hundred people with no legal justification being presented is lawlessness personified. If he forgot, then there are legitimate questions about his mental capabilities. It’s the kind of thing he always accused Joe Biden of. Given Trump’s ramblings on other occasions, his mental capacity seems more than suspect. Someone in Congress should ask for a competency test.

  — He signed it and lied about it because of all the negative publicity arising from the judge’s growing anger over White House lawyers refusing to comply with his order. Trump passed the buck to Marco Rubio, just like he always passed the buck to Rudy Giuliani. Closest person always gets tossed under the bus. Trump never takes responsibility for unpopular actions. This is not good news for Rubio, who apparently agreed to trade his genitals and backbone for the title of secretary of state.

  — Cheung lied. An autopen was used to provide Trump’s signature, because staff members thought either he wouldn’t understand the ramifications, or would confuse the issue, or they just didn’t want to waste time to try to track Trump down to get a signature when the planes were on the runway. Or, they didn’t feel it was necessary to get his actual signature, just chalk the whole thing up, like all the other stuff, to the campaign. Page whatever. Getting rid of bad immigrants. He’ll be fine with that. Get the autopen! This is the one I suspect is true.

    —  Who’s in charge here?

                                        ***

PS: No bullet ever touched his ear.