And so it was that Later, as Milley Told His Tale
I had planned to write about Donald Trump’s weird beef with George W. Bush; but that, as they say, has been overtaken by events. I’ll simply say that I won’t stand for our greatest living president and national treasure being besmirched by the worst president at least since Buchanan, possibly ever.
But speaking of the worst president in at least the last century and a half, Bob Woodward has a new book coming out about the waning days of the Trump administration and hooo boy is it bananas. But as with Woodward’s previous book about the Trump administration, it doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know, per se. It’s just pretty crazy to have it all on the record and transcribed like that. (To the extent that I’m surprised people still agree to do book interviews with Bob Woodward, but that’s really neither here nor there.)
The biggest bombshell story to leak from the book (thus far, anyway) involves Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley. The short version is, Milley was so concerned with then-president Trump’s mental state toward the end of the administration that he worried that Trump may initiate armed conflict with China; and thus Milley contacted his counterpart in the Chinese military to reassure them that no such attack was forthcoming.
We now have one of those rare instances in Washington where two sides agree on an issue but for totally different reasons. Those more inclined to support Donald Trump believe that Milley should resign or be fired because he undermined the president by circumventing the chain of command; while those who oppose Trump believe that Milley chose the wrong venue to air his concerns. In what should come as no surprise, I identify more with the latter.
Now, I’m wholly sympathetic to the idea that Donald Trump, particularly in the lead up to the 2020 election and the several weeks after, was mentally or emotionally qualified to be Commander in Chief of the United States military. (Granted, I never thought Trump was mentally or emotionally qualified for such, but he somehow managed to get worse.)
The problem I have is that if Milley genuinely believed that Trump’s mental state was such a national security risk that it warranted breaking the chain of command, the proper response is to alert Congress and publicly testify so that Congress can take up impeachment and removal proceedings. The proper response is not to break the chain of command and then tell Bob friggin’ Woodward about it so that he can put it in his book that comes out eight months later. The president being crazy isn’t a reason to break the chain of command, it’s a reason he should no longer be president. But as long as he is president, he has the authority of the president. We can’t just leave such decisions to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
This is just the latest example of how Donald Trump escapes genuine consequences due to a collective action problem (and in some cases cowardice) on behalf of those who oppose him. Be it his opponents in the Republican primary who bickered with each other like crabs trying to climb out of a bucket while Trump racked up plurality victories, or the RNC refusing to exert institutional will over the primary process, or the national media providing Trump with billions of dollars worth of free media, or Republican members of Congress relegating their responsibilities to the electorate, or the Chairman of the by-God Joint Chiefs of Staff sitting down for a book interview instead of Congressional testimony, Donald Trump has found himself in closer proximity to power than he ever had any business being.
If things play out the way it looks like they will, the responsibility for keeping Donald Trump far away from the levers of power will once again fall to We the People; and I’d be lying if I said I’m confident we’ll make the right choice. After all, we’re only hitting .500 on that score.
Pour One Out for a Real One
In an alternate universe, I might have tried my hand at stand up comedy. I enjoy performing, making people laugh seems to be the most effective dopamine supplier to my brain, and I enjoy the sound of my own voice. It was apparently not to be, however, because — the success of Drew Lynch notwithstanding — comedy is primarily about timing; and I have precious little control over the timing of my speech.
I suppose I was destined to be instead a stand up comedy obsessive. I’ve been watching stand up since I was a kid, when I was expressly instructed by my parents not to.
When I was 11 or 12, I was staying up later than I was allowed — I was such a rebel — to watch Saturday Night Live. I saw Norm MacDonald do Weekend Update for the first time, and it blew my mind. He was delivering brutal jokes with his trademark “aw shucks” deadpan delivery; and something about the distance between the bite of the jokes and the put-on earnestness of the delivery just tickled something deep inside my brain. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen.
So when I heard that he’d passed away yesterday after a lengthy battle with cancer he apparently told few people about, I was pretty upset. I’ve been reading a lot lately about “parasocial relationships” where people feel a totally unrequited closeness to celebrities, and I guess I’m guilty of that.
But rather than blather on about how much I liked Norm MacDonald, I’ll just post a bunch of my favorite clips of his so you can enjoy him, hopefully as much as I did. And it might give some insight into how my sense of humor came to be the way it is.
First, probably my all-time favorite, his set at the Roast of Bob Saget:
These Friggin’ People
The annual Met Gala was held on Monday in New York, and representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attended while wearing an evening gown that said “Tax the Rich”:
Now, I don’t have much use for Ocasio-Cortez. She’s dead wrong on nearly every political issue, sure. But what’s more annoying to me is that she comes from the same vein of performative punditry-masquerading-as-legislating as, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Madison Cawthorn. Now don’t misunderstand — she’s not a crank conspiracy theorist (that I’m aware of) and she doesn’t dabble in political violence, so points to her for that. But nor is she a serious legislator.
She’s 31, she interned for one of the most powerful senators in American history, she graduated from a prestigious college, she got a six-figure job at 29, she lives in a million-dollar apartment in a swanky — gentrified! — area of D.C., she drives a Tesla, and she holds herself out as some tribune of the working-class populist left. She attends $30,000-a-plate fundraisers with a dress that says “Tax the Rich” as if she, by any reasonable definition, is not “the rich.”
But she took exception to people noticing this obvious contradiction:
Yes well. That’s another thing — any time she gets criticized, she nearly dislocates her shoulder playing the “young woman of color” card. It’s just so tedious, and prevents any serious discussion on the topics she claims she wants to address. Which suits her just fine, because again, she’s not a serious legislator.
Trient-Weekly Trivia
Wednesday’s answer:
Category: U.S. State Capitols
Clue: This capital city lies just east of Lake Tahoe.
Carson City, Nevada
Today’s clue:
Category: Medicine
Clue: A person with this blood type is considered a universal donor.
Dispatches from the Homefront
Tonight at sundown begins the Day of Atonement/Yom Kippur, which means I fast — that includes liquids! — for 24 hours until sundown tomorrow. I’m the only one in the house fasting this year, because my daughter is too young and my wife is pregnant. But then it occurred to me, my wife didn’t do it last year either because she was breastfeeding, and she didn’t do it the year before because she was pregnant. Which means she won’t do it next year either on account of the breastfeeding. So I’m starting to wonder if this having kids business was just an elaborate plot to get out of fasting.