By Beau Elliot
I don’t really care about arm deals for the most part. Yeah, I know: the U.S. and some other canny nations sell tons of weapons to people you don’t want to meet in the proverbial dark alley (or, for that matter, in a clean, well-lighted place), and then those people use the weapons to kill people. What? You thought they were going to use the weapons to peel potatoes?
Frankly, mashed yeast interests me far more.
And yes, I have tasted mashed yeast. (For a girlfriend, of course; what else could possibly tempt one to eat mashed yeast?) Somehow, I lived to report that the taste of mashed yeast does not live up to its name.
That’s the polite way to put it. As in, the polite way to report on the Trumpster’s much ballyhooed Saudi arms deal is probably to say a farewell to arms.
Not to mention a farewell to truth. But that’s not news these days.
In May, if you remember, the Trumpster announced he had a $110 arms deal with the Saudis. Yazza, yazza, cheers all around. Except, as the Brookings Institute reports, there was no such deal.
“There are,” Brookings reports, “a bunch of letters of interest or intent, but not contracts.” In other words, someday, maybe, the Saudis will buy those weapons. Depending on the price of oil. None of those so-called “deals” are new, by the way; negotiations began during the Obama administration.
Nice work, fake news.
Lately, the Fake-News-in-Chief has taken to bashing the news media because, well, why not? The news media are about as popular as Congress, perhaps a shade more popular, but that’s like having better approval ratings than Genghis Khan.
Which is not to compare Congress with Genghis Khan, exactly, because Khan was seemingly quite efficient at conquering large swaths of territory. Congress seems quite efficient at ordering lunch.
And yes, it’s no big news that the Trumpster enjoys bashing the news media; he regularly clubs the news media like Aaron Judge clubs baseballs. Except that Judge hits home runs.
But it did seem a bit over the top when the Trumpster launched some broadsides against Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who, reliable sources tell me, host a morning news show. I guess that’s why it’s called “Morning Joe.”
“Crazy Joe Scarborough,” the Trumpster labeled the former and “low IQ Crazy Mika” who was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” when she visited Mar-a-Lago a while back.
That was too much for even some Republicans. Apparently, Republicans wanted to concentrate on the all-important process of botching the GOP’s health-uncare bill.
But as bad as the Trumpster’s week was, it didn’t compare with that of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The governor and the Legislature had been engaged in a budget standoff, or a budget morass, or a budget dank, sinking, swampy feeling. And that resulted in a New Jersey government shutdown.
Naturally, the shutdown meant all the state’s beaches were closed, zip, locked, and pull down the shutters. This in the middle of a holiday weekend, when Jerseyites like to go “Down the Shore,” as they reportedly say.
Except that nobody apparently told the governor that the state beaches were closed. There Christie was, this past weekend, with family and friends, frolicking on an otherwise deserted state beach. It was, of course, a genius PR move for a man with a 15 percent approval rating.
But Christie didn’t get any sun; he was wearing a baseball cap, an aide explained with a straight face.
The aide deserves an Oscar for that straight face. He could probably sell us some fake arms sales.
