Don't choke on your leftovers
What's our president thankful for?
That was the predictable question reporters asked President Donald Trump on Thursday at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
Without blinking, his response was about him. In fact, he was grateful for himself.
"For having a great family, and for having made a tremendous difference in this country. I've made a tremendous difference in the country. This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office People can't even believe it."
Not freedom. Not democracy. Not our military, or our diversity, our faith leaders, our founders, our giving spirit. Just him.
Whew.
Trump and his prince
Speaking of things Trump isn't thankful for, there's the Central Intelligence Agency.
Not only did the CIA (along with several other entities) conclude that Russia attempted to meddle in the 2016 elections, but its agents and analysts had the audacity recently to conclude that the murder of an American resident and Saudi columnist for The Washington Post, Jamal Khashoggi, was an act of cold collaboration ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The murder could not have happened without the prince's authorization, according to a CIA report.
But as with the Russia finding, Trump once again chose a foreign leader over U.S. intelligence workers.
"Maybe he did" and "maybe he didn't," Trump said of the prince known as MBS. And with a strange contradiction, he invoked "America First" while noting in a bizarre statement filled with exclamation points: "In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
He means his relationship, of course.
The Post has reported that Saudi royalty has been buying from Trump since 1995. Just last year Saudi lobbyists alone spent $270,000 to reserve rooms in Trump's hotel in Washington, and Trump hotels in New York and Chicago also saw increases in Saudi visits.
Our outgoing Republican senator from Tennessee, Bob Corker, said it well in a tweet: "I never thought I would see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia."
E. J. Dionne, of the Washington Post, put an exclamation point of his own in a recent column about the Trump proclivity to act like an autocrat and turn America's democracy into an autocracy with Trumpian absolute power.
"[A]ll the tax cuts and judges in the world won't compensate for the cost to the United States of abandoning any claim that it prefers democracy to dictatorship and human rights to barbarism," Dionne writes. "The syndrome we most need to worry about is denial - a blind refusal to face up to how much damage Trump is willing to inflict on our system of self-rule, and on our values."
Then there are judges
Trump lashed out against Jon Tigar, a U.S. district court judge in California, who issued a forceful ruling Monday that blocked the president's attempt to bar migrant entry to the U.S. illegally - even for asylum.
"This was an Obama judge," Trump told reporters. "And I'll tell you what, it's not going to happen like this anymore."
Trump also repeated his attacks on the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has dealt his administration a number of legal setbacks.
"The 9th Circuit is really something we have to take a look at because it's - because it's not fair," the president said.
Translation: Not fair is anything not to his liking.
In a rare break with typical Supreme Court practice, Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday delivered a mild rebuke of Trump for calling a federal judge an "Obama judge."
The U.S. doesn't have "Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," wrote Roberts - a George W. Bush appointed judge. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for."
That correction really wound up our president, and he's now moved his feud with our Constitution-created court system into its third day.
Note to Justice Roberts: Don't get into a you-know-what fight with a skunk.
Ivanka and her email
Speaking of old news, remember the adage: All that is old is new again.
Enter Ivanka Trump, first daughter and senior presidential adviser, and the revelation that she used a private email account hosted on a private email domain to conduct official U.S. government business in 2017.
Isn't that the exact same thing Trump and his campaign and supporters continue to say Hillary Clinton did, for which she should face criminal prosecution?
Isn't that what all of those chants of "Lock her up!" were about?
Of course, there also have been revelations that Trump himself continues to use a personal cellphone.
But wait, he's king - er a president.
So much lock-up potential, so little time.