June 17, 2019

Right-wing television performers, a.k.a. news people (the real fake news) are wrong with regularity and most often annoyingly so, but now and again their nonsense provides comic relief.

Rush Limbaugh compared D Day to the “invasion” of illegal immigrants at the southern border.  The analogy would put the border patrol in the shoes of the Nazi defenders and the immigrants would be the liberating troops.  That probably wasn’t the image he had in mind, but nonstop bloviating is bound to confuse.

When Nancy Pelosi said she wanted to see Trump in jail, Sean Hannity responded in baffled horror: she "wants a political opponent locked up in prison? That happens in banana republics -- beyond despicable behavior."  Apparently that became despicable only recently; Hannity parroted “lock her up” over and over about Hillary Clinton’s alleged crimes.  Speaking of banana republics, has Sean noticed the trend of our nation’s character under Colonel Trump?

Ainsley Earhardt of Fox and Friends contributed this: “you can say whatever you want about the president, but his negotiation tactics are amazing.”  His skills are so formidable that he is conned by Putin and Kim, and this is her notion of his negotiating tactics: “he's sitting down with this delegation, he's got folks in D.C. right now that have been sitting down with these Mexican delegates that have come up to try to work out a deal.”  Sitting down! Impressive.

Her first phrase seems to admit that there is much on the debit side to say about Trump, again probably not the intended message.

Meanwhile, two things we can say about the President were confirmed: he isn’t bright, and he thinks that election-related collusion with foreign sources is just fine.  He has denied continuously  any collusion with Russia and twisted the Mueller Report to mean that there was none.  However, his and his campaign’s eager reception of ammunition against Hillary Clinton showed collusion, and now he’s underscored his willingness to repeat that pattern.  Asked whether he would accept politically damaging information from a foreign source, he said "I think you might want to listen, there isn't anything wrong with listening,"  As an example, "If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent' -- oh, I think I'd want to hear it."  We might guess that the source would be a bit more sinister than Norway.        

In a tweeted attempt at damage control, Trump likened election interference to his conversations with such dignitaries as the Prince of Whales.