President Trump Baits the Hook ...

[PsychoBabble]

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39673-president-trump-baits-the-hook

Scary. Truth. So even scarier.

Donald Trump is all bait. It is the essence of his existence, his governing principle. Herds of stray cats follow him around because he smells like a bag of musty tuna. He is one of those creepy deep-sea monster fish, all eyes and teeth and dangled glowing lure. Every tweet is a ladle of chum tossed into the water. It takes a special kind of self-control to lay off, but you have to if you want to keep everyone's eyes fixed on what matters, and not on whatever is scrolling across the careening Times Square ticker-tape screen that passes for his mind.

President Trump delivered maybe the performance of his political life before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, and the entire thing was positively surreal. You had Mike Pence and Paul Ryan standing together in their positions of honor above the president's podium wearing exactly, precisely the same suit, shirt and blue ties. They looked for all the world like Thing 1 and Thing 2 from The Cat in the Hat. Beyond that was the breathtaking finality of the theatrics: The Sargent-at-Arms bellowed, "Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States," and out came Trump. It wasn't a mistake; he didn't wander through the wrong door. Here was the president, resplendent in his orangeness, and hats over the windmill. Now it's real.

... and in the end ...

Not one of the items on the right's wish list sees the light of legal day without Donald Trump's signature, and there's the bait. Give me my infrastructure bill, he can say, and you can go have a ball turning the country into A Handmaid's Tale at your pleasure. It's pretty safe to say the GOP hard-liners in Congress will go along for the ride if it gets them even half of what they want.

But hey, who knows? It was just one speech. For all we know, the president and his administration will revert back to full clown status again before the daylight fades … but there was a rumble for a minute there on Tuesday night that should not be ignored. If these people actually get organized enough to collaborate, we'll be on a highway to Hell, eight lanes wide and no potholes. Ryan, McConnell and the far right will be able to accomplish every nightmare priority on their list while Trump can point to a couple of big bills and strut his way toward the authoritarian Islamophobic regime Steve Bannon has been dreaming of.