INSIDE TRUMP'S BRAIN FOR A TERRIFYING THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES
Have you ever actually listened to him speak?
HAVE YOU EVER LISTENED to President Trump?
I mean REALLY listened to him for an extended period of time. Not just heard some sound bites, watched a video clip or looked at a Tweeted quote.
I'm talking an eternity of Trump speaking. Thirty-five minutes, with no interruptions, no commercials, no intermissions, just straight up Trump.
Cat and I did just that today, and even though we listened to "only" 35 minutes out of the total hour-and-a-half cabinet meeting that he held yesterday to kick off the new year, it fried my brain, as if Trump's brain had infected mine, leaving it scrambled, unable to focus, with just fragments of thoughts running into one another and another.
The occasion was one of those times when Trump let the media into one of his official event-performances. This despite his frequent charges that the media is the enemy of the people. There they were, with cameras rolling, right in the White House, although I’m not sure that the phrase “cameras rolling” is appropriate these days, like it was when newsreel cameras recorded images and sound on actual film, in contrast to today's media equipment that's all-digital, not that I actually know the difference, since I’m just a dog who's not technically proficient.
I SUPPOSE THAT YOU want to know why it’s important to listen to Donald Trump speak for 35 minutes, nonstop.
First of all, you shouldn't hold me to the actual time that Cat and I watched and listened. It's a guess, okay? Maybe I read that he spoke for a total 90 minutes somewhere, maybe I heard that from someone else, who heard that on Fox News, which is something I don't do, although Cat and I - twice in the last two weeks - have seen an actual fox marching up the sidewalk in front of our house, in broad daylight with impunity, as if this fox thinks that he owns the sidewalk.
The actual length of the cabinet meeting isn’t as important as the act of actually of listening to the President for an extended period of time, because it’s important to know how the brain of the President works, because his brain often is the brain of the United States.
His words tumble from his usually scowling face, although it's hard not to get distracted, given that hi-def TV shows each of the individual strands of Presidential golden hair, which is woven into his signature swirling comb-over, forcing you to wonder how and who does that?
His sentences and sentence-fragments sometimes can seem to be steadily on course, like that confident fox marching up our sidewalk; other times, his words lurch sharply off- road, as if his GPS has suffered a catastrophic electronic failure, skipping, weaving, doubling-back, somersaulting, vaulting from one subject to another.
HOW DID WE get into this, you're asking? Maybe you're not asking, but I'll tell you anyway, because it's a great story, maybe the greatest you're going to hear today, at least on this blog:
This morning, the Grouchy One is reading the paper, and his eye catches a headline that describes the cabinet meeting as “rambling.” So Grouchy says he's going check this out for himself, and he finds a video on YouTube, which he plays, not just on his laptop, but somehow beams the sound part into our house's stereo system, which has speakers not just in the living room where Grouchy, Cat and I are, but in the kitchen, too.
As it happens, the Nice One is having her breakfast in that very same kitchen, and she comes into the living room, and, in a voice that actually isn't all that nice, she asks why “WE” are listening to "THAT."
Grouchy says he wants to hear how Trump’s brain works, and the Nice One says, “Oh.” A couple of minutes later, though, she's back, and she presses a button on the stereo that turns off the kitchen speakers. The Nice One says: “He really scares me.”
This morning, the Grouchy One is reading the paper, and his eye catches a headline that describes the cabinet meeting as “rambling.” So Grouchy says he's going check this out for himself, and he finds a video on YouTube, which he plays, not just on his laptop, but somehow beams the sound part into our house's stereo system, which has speakers not just in the living room where Grouchy, Cat and I are, but in the kitchen, too.
As it happens, the Nice One is having her breakfast in that very same kitchen, and she comes into the living room, and, in a voice that actually isn't all that nice, she asks why “WE” are listening to "THAT."
Grouchy says he wants to hear how Trump’s brain works, and the Nice One says, “Oh.” A couple of minutes later, though, she's back, and she presses a button on the stereo that turns off the kitchen speakers. The Nice One says: “He really scares me.”
ON THE VIDEO, Trump starts reading from a paper about how he thinks he can work with the Democrats now in charge of the House to end the shutdown of the government and how important a wall at the Mexican border is to national security, because a wall is the only effective way to stop people from coming into the country, because if illegal immigrants, including killers and drug couriers and children who get sick on the long trip to the border knew there was a wall, they wouldn’t dream of making the trip in the first place, coming from places like Honduras, which is why his administration has been reducing aid to Honduras.
Trump is saying that over the weekend, when a bunch of immigrants tried to rush the border, they were able to be stopped because at that particular place THERE IS A WALL, and he was talking with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, who told him how well Israel’s wall is working and that Netanyahu can't understand why our country doesn’t realize how effective a wall is, the answer is that it's 99.9 percent effective.
What’s more, illegal immigration costs the United States billions of dollars, and the savings that would come from having the complete wall at work keeping immigrants out will pay for the wall in just a couple of months.
Trump is disappointed that Mitt Romney criticized him in a newspaper op-ed earlier in the week, since Romney seemed grateful for Trump’s support when he was running for the U.S. Senate from Utah, where he says that he (Trump, not Romney) is extremely popular, and he certainly had expected that Romney might have waited longer to say what he said in the paper, but that he expects Romney will be a team player, although if he isn't, it won’t matter, because look what happened to Republican Senators who had criticized him in the last two years, like Jeff Flake, who not only didn’t even dare to run for reelection, he's now doing something like selling real estate. I'm thinking that's kind of a weird insult for Trump to make, given that real estate is what did before he won the election (and maybe is still doing, we'll see) and it's how he earned a fortune, although just how much money Trump has is hard to figure, since he won’t make public his income tax returns.
Speaking of team players, there are plenty of those at the cabinet meeting, including the acting Attorney General, Matt Whitaker, who tells Trump and the rest of the cabinet how much he appreciates that Trump remained in the White House over the holiday weekend during the government shutdown, in contrast to some members of Congress - who left town “on vacation.”
Trump is saying that he’s in no rush to pull all American troops out of Syria, but that they will be pulled out eventually, and he’s disappointed that American generals haven’t solved the problems in Afghanistan, even though he's given the generals all the money that they wanted, and that he (Trump) knows “more about drones than anyone.”
Trump is saying that over the weekend, when a bunch of immigrants tried to rush the border, they were able to be stopped because at that particular place THERE IS A WALL, and he was talking with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, who told him how well Israel’s wall is working and that Netanyahu can't understand why our country doesn’t realize how effective a wall is, the answer is that it's 99.9 percent effective.
What’s more, illegal immigration costs the United States billions of dollars, and the savings that would come from having the complete wall at work keeping immigrants out will pay for the wall in just a couple of months.
Trump is disappointed that Mitt Romney criticized him in a newspaper op-ed earlier in the week, since Romney seemed grateful for Trump’s support when he was running for the U.S. Senate from Utah, where he says that he (Trump, not Romney) is extremely popular, and he certainly had expected that Romney might have waited longer to say what he said in the paper, but that he expects Romney will be a team player, although if he isn't, it won’t matter, because look what happened to Republican Senators who had criticized him in the last two years, like Jeff Flake, who not only didn’t even dare to run for reelection, he's now doing something like selling real estate. I'm thinking that's kind of a weird insult for Trump to make, given that real estate is what did before he won the election (and maybe is still doing, we'll see) and it's how he earned a fortune, although just how much money Trump has is hard to figure, since he won’t make public his income tax returns.
Speaking of team players, there are plenty of those at the cabinet meeting, including the acting Attorney General, Matt Whitaker, who tells Trump and the rest of the cabinet how much he appreciates that Trump remained in the White House over the holiday weekend during the government shutdown, in contrast to some members of Congress - who left town “on vacation.”
Trump is saying that he’s in no rush to pull all American troops out of Syria, but that they will be pulled out eventually, and he’s disappointed that American generals haven’t solved the problems in Afghanistan, even though he's given the generals all the money that they wanted, and that he (Trump) knows “more about drones than anyone.”
YOU CAN LISTEN and watch this yourself. Here’s the link to the YouTube video. And good luck. Hopefully, your brain WILL recover, like I'm hoping mine may be doing.
Here's something to consider, as I was saying to Cat:
At least during the 90 minutes Trump is talking at his cabinet meeting, he isn't exercising his Presidential powers, like summoning the aide who always hovers nearby with “The Football,” the nickname for the case that has the codes and devices that allows any President of the United States to launch some or all of the nation’s arsenal of nuclear missiles anytime he pleases, and there’s nobody who can say to him: "Please, don’t.”
Every 90 minutes the President’s brain isn't thinking abut the Football, is another 90 minutes the Planet doesn't have to worry about being blown to bits.
Cat doesn't disagree.
Here's something to consider, as I was saying to Cat:
At least during the 90 minutes Trump is talking at his cabinet meeting, he isn't exercising his Presidential powers, like summoning the aide who always hovers nearby with “The Football,” the nickname for the case that has the codes and devices that allows any President of the United States to launch some or all of the nation’s arsenal of nuclear missiles anytime he pleases, and there’s nobody who can say to him: "Please, don’t.”
Every 90 minutes the President’s brain isn't thinking abut the Football, is another 90 minutes the Planet doesn't have to worry about being blown to bits.
Cat doesn't disagree.
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