The GOP is Literally a Train Wreck

     If you want an iconic photo from Donald Trump's first and last State of the Union Address, then look at this lead image. It seems when the GOP feels the need to pretend to champion the little guy, they just pull some Joe Blow out of Ohio. In 2008, it was Joe the Plumber. This time, Donald Trump felt the need to diversify. So, instead of a white, bald-headed, right wing racist and fraud, they plucked out of obscurity Corey Adams, a black welder from Dayton.
     Because Adams is supposed to be proof that Donald Trump really does love people descended from shithole countries. In fact, Trump was perilously close to saying, "Look at my African American!" The problem was, Adams was forced to sit on the steps because no one had thought to give him or reserve for him a seat.
     That's right. Donald Trump invited a black man to listen to the State of the Union but couldn't be bothered to get the man a seat, a fact that went totally ignored by CBS and the other networks.
     Trump's speech before Congress and the nation was like his joint address to Congress last year and his inauguration speech- Spoken in a measured, reasonable-sounding tone of voice that promised little if anything and nothing extraordinary until you actually began parsing the words and using the racist dog whistle decoder.
     Because even as Trump was talking about the Dreamers and how he'd like to help them, he cleverly kept them as the subject while also inveighing against the dark-skinned people being the reason for the opioid epidemic (not the white executives of Big Pharma that actually started and maintained it) and MS-13, the street gang with which Trump has become irrationally obsessed. In short, he presented himself as a magnanimous statesman calling for the end to partisanship (In other words. "Do things our way, Democrats.") who really, really wanted to help the Dreamers.
     This was the guy, incidentally, who shut down the government by demanding a bipartisan solution to DACA and when Congress uncharacteristically gave him such a spending bill (of which DACA should not have been a part any more than CHIP should have been), Trump vetoed it without any reason before jetting off again to Mar-a-Lago to watch videos of himself ragging on Obama for the last GOP-engineered government shutdown.
     Not mentioned was the Mueller investigation, the charges of Obstruction of Justice and mentioned the name Russia only once while abstractly talking about competition from them and China. Completely glossed over was Trump asking Rod Rosenstein for a loyalty oath (sound familiar? It should) and even suggesting to the same Congress he was addressing what questions to ask Rosenstein before the Deputy AG overseeing the Mueller investigation testified before the House Judiciary Committee on December 13th.
     Also not mentioned is the hottest topic, perhaps, in the nation: The Nunes memo, which the FBI had publicly criticized yesterday as being incomplete and carefully edited of facts (sort of like a James O'Keefe video). In fact, after the 80 minute-long State of the Union, Trump was overheard telling a Republican lawmaker that he was "100% releasing the memo." Of course, Trump has no interest whatsoever in transparency as he's more interested in releasing this tightly-sealed memo showing the FBI had "illegally" requested a FISA extension for Trump stooge Carter Page after he flew to Russia in July 2016.
     Trump also didn't mention the clash with the FBI Director, Christopher Wray, for not only releasing that press release discrediting the Nunes memo but for also, after Andrew McCabe resigned yesterday, naming as FBI Deputy Director David Bowditch who is, in one Twitter user's words, "Trump's worst nightmare... a mini Mueller."
     What was mentioned was Trump taking credit for the significantly lower unemployment rate among African Americans, which has gone down just 1% under a year of Trump. Of course, the lion's share of that credit goes to President Obama. But Trump cannot bring himself to credit the black guy for anything. Instead, he's devoted the entirety of his so-called Presidency to three things: Profiting off the government, reversing everything Obama had done and trying to stay one step ahead of the Mueller investigation.
     So, in a way, it's only fitting or at least highly symbolic that late this morning, a train load of Republicans heading to a retreat in West Virginia would hit a garbage truck, scattering trash all over the landscape. The truck may have gotten the worst of it (one person on the truck was killed), but it's almost perfectly symbolic of the Trump Train about to get derailed.