President Trump had a busy Friday before heading off to Camp David and a reported golf trip on Sunday. Not only did he sign his transgender military ban and pardon Joe Arpaio, he also said farewell to deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka and sent his best wishes to the people facing down Hurricane Harvey in Texas. It wasn’t the wildest day of his week, but it was enough of a news dump to both infuriate people and make others question why any of this was happening. That pendulum effect seems to be what Trump is aiming for and for Bill Maher, it could be the best we all have to look forward to.
During a discussion on the controversial pardon for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maher asks his panel if Trump acting sane half the time is the best we can do going forward. The moments where Trump seems to be lucid and “presidential” in the words of CNN’s Van Jones, possibly being his version of FDR’s “fear itself” speech or Ronald Reagan telling the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin wall. It doesn’t mean those moments are equal to anything we’ve seen from the Trump administration, but they do count as the Trump version of those events so far.
Everything else is the blood, fire, and brimstone that we’ve heard in his inauguration speech, his various rallies, his tweets, his interviews with reporters, his comments while walking across the White House lawn, and sometimes his official press briefings. It’s bad enough to have to try and decipher what normal people are doing on Twitter, it is horrible to have to analyze the president’s Twitter for possible policy decisions.
And that’s not even addressing the real implications of what Trump has done by pardoning Arpaio and enacting his transgender military ban. While they are both troubling just within face value, the pardon represents a new wrinkle that might show up again with the ongoing Russia investigation.
(Via Real Time)