Cheers and Jeers: Thursday

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Mutiny on the Bounty
His acting Navy Secretary
His vote-by-mail hypocrisy
Chris Wallace of Fox News
His lunar strip-mining plans
His idiot job-killing daughter
CNN’S April 13 presser chyron
His stupid hackable border wall
His aides trying to get rid of him
His deleted “Noble Prize” tweets
His claim of “absolute authority”
The Denver Post’s Editorial Board
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board
His cadet-endangering West Point stunt

Oh, yes…there’s more. This guy’s a bottomless pit of bullshit, and the rest of April’s pile is at the bottom of today’s feature presentation…

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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, April 30, 2020

Note: A quick heads-up that C&J will not appear here Monday, as we’ll be making the inaugural run of our exciting new non-profit organization Bleach Injections On Wheels, financed with $2.7 billion in PPP money. (Sorry, Mom & Pop businesses that got denied funding because of me. Next time try using little hearts to dot the i’s on your application like I did. It works!) Back Tuesday with a neck weighted down in hundreds of Noble prizes for saving humanity. I guarantee it. —Mgt.

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By the Numbers:

Days ’til Star Wars Day: 4

Percent of U.S. adults who say they watch Trump’s daily press briefings or coverage of them, according to Morning Consult polling: 64%

Rank of “frustrating,” “misleading” and “counterproductive” among the top terms that are used to describe them: #1, #2, #3

Percent of Minnesotans polled by PPP who approve of the job Governor Tim Walz and President Trump, respectively, are doing to control the coronavirus pandemic: 74%, 39%

Number of people employed by the U.S. Postal Service: 600,000

Length of summer on Uranus: 21 months

Months worth of new Days of Our Lives episodes that are in the can: 8

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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:

If ever there was a man who understood hard work, it is our President. He was fully prepared for it by his time as governor of Texas. His former chief of staff, Clay Johnson, stated that in those days, Bush’s workweek consisted of “two hard half-days” broken only by his two-hour midday break. We can tell that Bush still misses being governor because he said: “One of the most meaningful things that’s happened to me since I’ve been the President, governor—the governor—President. Oops. Ex-governor.”

Now on home video.

On general strategery, the President said, “The best way to find these terrorists who hide in holes is to get people coming forward to describe the location of the holes, is to give clues and data.” And he uttered these profound words of wisdom: “Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.”

He added, curiously, “Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.”

—May 2005

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Puppy Pic of the Day: In a world gone mad…

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CHEERS to number crunching—as in, numbers crunching Trump’s chance of reelection into the dust. A quick twirl around the world of polling reveals that it’s not looking good for Cadet Bone Spurs and his administration that couldn’t shoot straight. Here’s a glimpse at how fed up We The People are with these anti-democracy lunatics:

USA Today-Suffolk poll: Biden overcomes a 3-point December deficit and now leads Trump by 10 points, 50%-40%.

Public Policy Polling: Biden leads Trump by a point. In Texas.

PolitiFact rates this claim: TRUE.

Real Clear Politics: An average of recent polls shows Biden leading Trump by 6 points, 48%-42%. Biden also leads in swing states Wisconsin, Florida, and Arizona. Trump’s handling of the pandemic dropped five points in April to 45%.

FiveThirtyEight aggregate of all polls: The gap between approval (42%) and disapproval (52%) widened in April from 4 points to 10.

Civiqs tracking poll: A 13-point gap between Trump’s approval (42%) and disapproval (55%)

MSN tracking poll: Trump approval = 39%. Disapproval = 58%

All this during a crisis of the kind that normally produces a natural rally-around-the-president effect. Gee, who could’ve guessed that having an incompetent bankruptcy king at the helm who ignores his PDBs, lies like a rug, and promotes fatal quack remedies would prove to be unpopular? Real head-scratcher. Why, political scientists may have to spend up to several seconds mulling that one over.

JEERS to the fox in the hen house ordering an investigation of the other foxes in the hen house. The Trump administration is siccing its intelligence advisers on the dastardly and deceptive World Health Organization and China for allegedly sitting on critical warnings about the coronavirus outbreak. Shame on them! Bad WHO, bad! Bad, China, bad! Focus all your attention on those two, people. Pay no attention to the blockquote I’m accidentally posting below because I tripped and fell over my own shoelaces, it means nothing, nothing I tell you. Do not read this!

Critics see the White House focus on China and the WHO as an effort to distract attention from the open question of what warnings Trump got in January and February from his own health and intelligence advisers during a time when he was downplaying the severity of the virus. […]

He can distract all he wants, but this ain’t going away.

NBC News has reported that U.S. intelligence agencies saw early warning signs of a health crisis in Wuhan as far back as November and that the National Center for Medical Intelligence predicted that the coronavirus would cause a global pandemic in February, well before the WHO declared one.

You didn’t read that, did you? Oh shaaaaaame.

CHEERS to Great Moments in Real Estate. On April 30, 1803, Robert Livingston and James Monroe concluded a deal with France that increased the size of the United states by 828,000 square miles. Price tag: $23,000,000. We know it as The Louisiana Purchase. Century 21 agents know it as “The holy grail of commission checks.”

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to future events such as these that will affect you…in the future. Clinton-era Democratic strategist James Carville is still strategizing at 75. And although he’s more of a novelty act now, he does manage to fire off an entertaining zinger or, in this case, column every now and then. In this op-ed over at NBC News, the Rajun Cajun predicts a blue wave, offers some odd advice to Joe Biden’s campaign (something about hiring pirates to steal Trump’s gold, I think), and ends with a preview of November 3^rdthat’s darn near poetry, especially the line about Susan Collins:

[A]s I’m writing this, I’m leaping through time to read a historical footnote of a different moment, not too far ahead in the future.

Meanwhile, on January 21, 2021.

It’s election night 2020, and on MSNBC the chyrons flash: Texas is on the line, Arizona is blue, Sen. Susan Collins is a boiled lobster in Maine, and Trump is being routed in North Carolina. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy cannot be reached for comment, and neither can Rep. Devin Nunes or Rep. Louie Gohmert. (Nancy Pelosi’s roaring laughter is echoing from the speaker’s office.)

The camera flips to Moscow Mitch McConnell,offering up dour remarks as he waits out the longest night of his life—the tallies are coming in from the suburbs around Cincinnati and it’s looking grim for Kentucky’s “Grim Reaper.” Host Brian Williams cues me in and I say: “Brian, Mitch always looks like he sucked a couple lemons—tonight, looks like he’s tasted 20.”

The sweetest taste it will be.

Almost as sweet as watching Trump get led out of the Oval Office in a straitjacket. But that’s a story for another day.

CHEERS to “#1.” 231 years ago today, on April 30, 1789, sports bars were packed as millions watched George Washington take the oath of office as the first President of the United States. This scene from HBO’s John Adams perfectly captures firsthand accounts of the awkwardness (How do we do this?), solemnity (Shut up, you guys, we’re doing this), and euphoria (We did this!) that hung in the air that day:

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Time to haul out the ol’ confetti cannon. Light ’em if ya got ’em.

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Ten years ago in C&J: April 30, 2010

JEERS to crude moves. As if we needed yet another reminder that anything Republicans advocate will inevitably turn to shit. Here’s a quick update on the oil slick from C&J’s exclusive source at the Crawfish Shack and Oyster Bar:

“It’s the size of Rhode Island! No, wait—now it’s the size of Maryland! No, wait—now it’s the size of Connecticut! No, wait—now it’s the size of New Jersey! No, wait—now it’s the size of New Hampshire! No, wait—Now it’s the size of South Carolina!”

On the bright side, at least we’re not comparing it to the size of major countries. Yet.

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And just one more…

JEERS to more of the Mr. Maniac’s manure. As promised, here’s the bottom half of this month’s record-breaking list of people and things that made Trump look like an even bigger jackass in April:

His Tide Pod & UV Light miracle cure

His Mayo Clinic-infecting vice president

His lying-to-America’s-face vice president

His big lie about using masks versus scarves

His call for open rebellion against blue states

Funneling emergency equipment to his buddies

His big lie about train & plane passenger testing

The countless Covid-19 PDB warnings he ignored

Their budget-busting demands on the Secret Service

His vicious daughter’s COVID travel guideline shirking

His COVID press conference joke about banging models

That toxic brew of dementia and malignant narcissism

The UFO frat party that invaded the federal government

The “obsolete, broken test” he didn’t inherit from Obama

The labradoodle breeder in charge of the Covid-19 response

Say this for the guy: he’s really good at selling one thing: Bullshit Mountain franchises.

Have a nice Thursday. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?

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Today’s Shameless C&J Testimonial

A relaxed-looking Bill in Portland Maine lounges in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool. His eyes are half-closed, and he has a serene expression on his face. But Bill’s calm demeanor is surprising. Why? Well, there’s a long, black-and-white eel dangling from his right nostril.

—The Washington Post