The Art of "You're Fired", The Sequel

As a means to distract the American public from alleged extramarital affairs, high school students marching for the right to not get shot at and trade wars that might unnecessarily wreck the economy, President Donald Trump continues to make news by remaking the White House in his own image.  The latest:

• H.R. McMaster has been replaced as national security advisor by John Bolton, who used to be President George W. Bush's United Nations ambassador.  Bolton sounds like the kind of guy who'd rather pour gasoline on a fire during a world crisis instead of putting them out, if his past statements on Fox News and elsewhere are any indication.  Rip up the Iran nuclear deal?  Sure.  Bomb North Korea before they bomb America?  Why not?  By the way, what's Dick Cheney doing these days?
• Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe was just two days away from retiring with a pension after 21 years on the job before Attorney General Jeff Sessions canned him.  McCabe's crime, apparently, was for not being honest about the last-minute investigation into Hillary Clinton's e-mails, which ended up costing her the presidential election.  The fallout from the firing resulted in McCabe's old boss, former FBI director James Comey, having his soon-to-be released book zoom up the charts.
• One of Trump's remaining attorneys, John Dowd, quit when he realized that he can't help the President if he doesn't want to listen to his advice.  The last straw, apparently, was when Trump reportedly was willing to be interviewed by special prosecutor Robert Mueller about his role in the alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election.  No self-respecting lawyer would let his client do something like that.  But then, no self-respecting lawyer would be working for Trunp right now.  Oh, isn't Dowd the one who called for the Mueller investigation to conclude?

The number of former Trump employees at the White House keeps growing.  One wonders how long this shakedown period will last--if it ever does.

The Art of "You're Fired".

President Donald Trump's philosophy is rather simple:  Get the best people you can, and make sure everyone's on the same page as you.  It might have worked for him when he was running his own company, but when it comes to running a country he's had mixed results.  When you have people working for you who don't necessarily agree with you, that's when you wonder why they were hired in the first place.

Maybe that's why the White House has been like a revolving door for employees and Cabinet members ever since Trump took office.  Either he didn't like the person he hired, or his staff felt like rats fleeing a sinking ship.  With the number of scandals plaguing this administration (Russia, Stormy Daniels, etc.), who could blame then for getting the heck out while they've still got careers?

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is the latest Trump figure to be shown the door.  A former oil company executive who used to run ExxonMobil, Tillerson wasn't anyone's first choice to head the State Department, much less having to be the one to explain to the rest of the world his boss' peculiar decision-making.

To say that Tillerson and Trump did not get along is an understatement.  They disagreed on such things as the Iran nuclear agreement, Trump's imposing tariffs on aluminum and steel, and on how to handle North Korea.  As a result, Tillerson was kept out of the loop by the President on important decisions.  Oh, and calling his boss a "moron" didn't help either.

Tillerson said his learned about his firing the same way everybody else did--through one of the President's many tweets.  His replacement, pending Senate approval, is Mike Pompeo.  He is currently CIA director, and is thought to have views that are more in line with Trump's than Tillerson's.  Gina Hempel would succeed Pompeo at CIA, once the Senate gets through questioning her about policies that allegedly endorse torture.

Diplomatically, this is an interesting time for Trump to change course.  The unexpected opportunity for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has left the United States woefully unprepared.  There is currently no ambassador to South Korea, and the chief envoy to Pyongyang has chosen to retire.  The President only gets his intelligence via word of mouth.  If he thinks he can strike a deal with Kim that won't end in disaster, let's just say we'll be very surprised.

Here's who else in recent weeks is no longer serving at the pleasure of the President:

• Chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, who quit after questioning the wisdom of Trump's tariffs.  He is being replaced by Larry Kudlow, a CNBC financial analyst who used to work for President Ronald Reagan.
• White House communications director Hope Hicks, and her deputy director Josh Raffel.

Jared Kushner is still around, even though he lost his security clearance.  So is his wife, Ivanka Trump.  HUD secretary Ben Carson canceled a $31,000 order for office furniture.  Education secretary Betsy DeVos gets vilified every time she opens her mouth. 

Confidence in this administration is at an all-time low, but that's the way it's been ever since Trump took office.  The only ones who still seem to believe in him are Republicans in Congress, and the cheering crowds at Trump's rallies embracing his 2020 re-election slogan of "Keeping America Great".

Meanwhile, those who continue to work for President Trump would be well advised to update their resumes.  They're going to need it.

The Shape of Oscar Night

The 90th Academy Awards on Sunday was, given everything that's happened to Hollywood and the rest of America over the past year, a do-over.  White males were reduced to spectators by women who spent parts of the evening echoing the sentiments of the MeToo and Time's Up campaigns against sexual harassment in the entertainment industry, and by African-Americans and LGTBQs for being mostly ignored on their own merits all these years.

To that end, we got to hear host Jimmy Kimmel tiptoe through a minefield of a monologue, Ryan Seacrest being routinely snubbed on the red carpet due to sexual harassment allegations, the first transgender awards presenter and Jordan Peele becoming the first African-American to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay ("Get Out").

On the other hand, the Academy chose to reward two men whose time should have been up, but the statute of limitations must have expired:  Kobe Bryant, who won Best Animated Short for "Dear Basketball", was accused of raping a woman back in 2004.  And Gary Oldman, whose impersonation of Winston Churchill in "Darkest Hour" won him a Best Actor nod, allegedly assaulted his wife in 2001.

Frances McDormand, whose role in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" earned her her second Best Actress Oscar (the other was for "Fargo"), inadvertently revealed an inconvenient truth about this year's awards when she asked all the female winners in the audience (including Allison Janney, who won Best Supporting Actress for her role in "I, Tonya") to stand up during her acceptance speech.  In spite of all the love for director Greta Gerwig (whose "Lady Bird" garnered zero Oscars), and for Rachel Morrison as the first female to be nominated for cinematography, there were fewer women Oscar winners than in the previous six years.

McDormand also introduced a new phrase to the entertainment lexicon during her acceptance speech:  inclusive rider.  It's inserted into actors' contracts to promote gender and racial balance in hiring on movie sets.  It may not be as remembered as "plastics", but McDormand deserves credit for taking the time to read the fine print, which is what most actors usually leave to their agents or attorneys.

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway got another chance to announce this year's Best Picture, which went to "The Shape of Water"--this time without a hitch.  As for the movie itself, its love story between a mute woman and a top-secret sea creature sounds kind of retro in a year of female empowerment, does it not?

The shape of the Oscar telecast was . . . flabby.  Despite a three-hour prime time window with an earlier starting time, and Kimmel's promise of a jet ski to the winner with the shortest acceptance speech, the show still managed to clock in at nearly four hours.   Around 26.5 million of you watched the proceedings live on ABC, which is 6.5 million less than last year's Gaffe Heard Round The World.

That's another challenge in the post-Harvey Weinstein world of the Academy Awards--or any other awards show, for that matter.  How do you change the world without viewers changing the channel?

Parkland: Students Up Against The Walls of Resistence

The worst school shooting since Columbine nearly two decades ago happened on Valentine's Day at a high school in Parkland, Florida.  Seventeen students and faculty were murdered because the suspect, who reportedly had a history of mental problems, apparently used an assault rifle to take out his frustrations on his former school.

Usually after something like this happens, we get the usual hand-wringing over how could this have happened and why isn't anything done about it, while the people in power insist "this isn't the time to talk about it" as they offer meaningless "thoughts and prayers".  The only ones who benefit from all this is the National Rifle Association.

What's different this time is that the students who were survivors of this event, having seen too many of these played out on television, are no longer interested in the status quo.  They are speaking out while mourning the loss of their peers.  They are organizing nationwide marches.  They are calling BS on the establishment.  They are calling BS on having to play the victim every time, raising their hands in the air as if they were prisoners about to be shot, or being held hostage during a lockdown.  Centers of learning shouldn't be centers of incarceration.

These students are following in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents who protested the Vietnam War.  Back then, they shut down universities and burned their draft cards to show their displeasure at a conflict no one really understood.  All that got them was more years of war and "four dead in Ohio".

The Parkland high school students will be facing a number of walls on the road to firearm sanity.  Not just President Donald Trump's wall, but also the wall of the NRA and its bought-off politicians who brush aside any meaningful gun reform, and the wall of public attitudes among Second Amendment zealots who believe gun control meaning they have to give up theirs so only the police and the bad guys have them.

There's also the wall of skeptics who think this wave of student activism is really a bogus plot by liberals to get more Democrats in Congress in November.  They point to how the FBI allegedly botched its surveillance on the shooting suspect.  How's gun control doing in Chicago, they say, which has the nation's highest crime rate?  Or how many abortions have been performed when compared to gun deaths.  Or why we should believe teenagers who have made Tide Pods detergent part of their diets?

The skeptics will also point to how there's been 18 mass shootings in 2018 alone.  If that's true, then how come we haven't heard about any of them?  Also, if you want armed guards and pistol-packing teachers in school, who's going to pay for them?  And how long will it be before somebody blames all this on the Russians?

We wish the students of Parkland, Florida, and all the other survivors of gun violence--whether it occurs in public or behind closed doors--the best in convincing our lawmakers to rein in those weapons and the individuals who use them to commit murder.  But Rome wasn't built in a day.  These students will be well into adulthood before the walls of skepticism and doubt come tumbling down, and their kids won't be cowering under their desks waiting for the all clear sign.

Trump Marches On

President Donald Trump wants a military parade, just like the ones that have been held in Paris and other, less democratic world capitals.  He wants to show off America's military might on the streets of Washington (or failing that, New York) in front of flag-waving, adoring onlookers who aren't too concerned that this country is still involved in a war (see: Afghanistan) or that the President himself doesn't have a service background.  He'll get his parade, damn the cost and the appropriateness, because he can.

Whether Trump is aware of this or not, he's already the grand marshal of several parades that have been coming in and out of Washington since he took office.  Most of them are not the kind where he can cover himself in glory.

• The parade of staffers coming into and out of the White House, due to either incompetence or the need to save their own hides.  The latest is Rob Porter, who quit his job as a staff secretary after reports of alleged domestic violence surfaced.  Trump is defending him as much as he's defending his chief of staff John Kelly, who has offered to resign.  The President has been saying that only the best people would be working for him.  Those are hard to find anywhere, let alone the White House.
• The parade of debt the country owes that continues as we speak.  Even though Congress finally passed a compromise bill that will spare us any more government shutdown drama at least until next year, they now have to consider the President's request for more money to fund the military, the country's crumbling infrastructure and that wall of his along the U.S.-Mexico border.  Which leads us to what Trump hopes will be . . . 
• The parade of undocumented workers and their children across the border to go back to wherever they came from.  After several false starts, Congress is finally ready to discuss the merits of keeping DACA, also known as the so-called "dreamers" act, in place.  Trump wants to keep some elements of immigration reform that doesn't involve a one-way ticket out of the country, but that's only if he makes some kind deal that'll appease both Republicans and Democrats.  And the likelihood of that happening is . . . ?
• The parade of evidence against Trump and his aides in the 2016 Russian election scandal.  As much as the President wishes special prosecutor Robert Mueller would wrap up his investigation and let him get on with his life, the budget calls for more money to let Mueller continue his probe into 2019.  That gives Trump plenty of time to figure out new ways to discredit Mueller, including releasing the classified GOP-written memo claiming biases inside the FBI, but not releasing the Democrats' top-secret rebuttal.  And to always come this close to firing Mueller without the lawyers holding him back.
• The parade of supporters in and out of the Republican party who are deserting Trump, either by denouncing his actions or by not running for another term in Congress.  Granted, the parade is a mere trickle compared to the millions who still think Trump is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  As long as the President admires dictators who throw military parades to boost their own egos, as well as enabling men who've had histories of sexual violence and harassment against women (it takes one to know one), he can ride that support all the way to the 2020 presidential election while the GOP crumbles and the Democrats field a weak candidate.

By then, of course, President Trump won't need parades.  He'll sign executive orders declaring his birthday to be a national holiday, and to replace Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bill.  Because he can.

The Olympics in South Korea. What Could Go Wrong?

Pyeongchang, the host for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, is in a mountainous region near the eastern coast of South Korea.  It is 110 miles southeast of the national capital of Seoul (which hosted the 1988 Summer Games), takes two hours by train to get there, and is 15 hours ahead of the United States.  Seoul itself is not far from the North Korean border, where a state of war has been frozen in place since the fighting stopped in 1953.

Tensions have been ratcheted to the point where North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has all but promised to not only invade its southern neighbor, but to launch nuclear weapons on Japan and the United States (We don't need to tell you how much President Donald Trump is not helping the situation).  But in a rare gesture of making nice with the enemy, Kim has decided to send some of his athletes to compete with the South as a unified team.  After the Olympics, of course, they'll go their separate ways.

Athletes from all over the world are coming to Pyeongchang, but Russia will not.  At least not officially.  The International Olympic Committee banned them from the Winter Games for violations of their anti-doping program.  But 168 Russian athletes (at last count) are coming anyway as members of Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR), minus their own flag and national anthem.  And 28 more might come because their bans were overturned in court for lack of evidence.  Of course, there's this burning question:  If Russian President Vladimir Putin could influence an American presidential election, what could he possibly do with Olympic results?

Players from the National Hockey League aren't here, either.  The NHL didn't want to shut down their regular season just so they could travel thousands of miles to risk their stars getting injured, or try to interest a country that's not interested in ice hockey.  So the men's tournament will go on with college kids and minor leaguers making up the rosters, bringing the quality of play down to 1992 levels.  Or you can watch the women's tournament instead, where you can expect Canada and the United States to compete for gold once more.

NBC and its family of networks will broadcast hundreds of hours of these Olympics.  What's different this time is that Mike Tirico has replaced Bob Costas as host of the prime time coverage, which will now be seen live coast to coast.  What won't change is the way NBC sees the Olympics, which is more like an extended version of the "Today" show with a dash of "This Is Us" thrown in.  What frustrates viewers is that, with all the feel-good profiles and other trivia, you never get the sense that you're watching an event.  Instead, you're just watching a typical prime time TV show geared toward women, which advertisers covet

For the next two weeks, the athletes will be taking center stage in the mountains of South Korea, winning medals, hearts and endorsement deals.  But there's always the chance of an interloper to ruin things, be it someone who's faked a clean drug test or a drone attack from the North.  The world is watching.  Be on your best behavior.  And have a good time.

SOTU: Will You Still Believe This Tomorrow?

After a year of controversy and upheaval, President Donald Trump made his first State of the Union address Tuesday before a joint session of Congress and a worldwide TV audience.

For nearly an hour and a half, the President talked of unity in a divisive time, hope in a country that desperately needed it, and pet projects like spending billions on the nation's crumbling infrastructure.  He talked of bringing the best and the brightest to these shores--provided they were born here and not from some terrorist haven, while insinuating that some of those so-called "dreamers" are actually violent criminals like the members of the MS-13 gang from New York City.

Trump interrupted his speech from time to time to acknowledge the people he used as product placements to highlight his agenda (the Democrats did the same thing).  Then he went back to boasting about his "accomplishments" during the past year, some of which (like tax reform) he actually had something to do with.  He also kept it civil, avoiding the insults and name calling that marked his past public comments.

The Republicans in the audience responded to nearly everything Trump said with enthusiastic standing ovations worthy of a game show, while the Democrats in the room mostly sat stone-faced on their hands.  The President's constant hand-clapping into the microphones sounded like a faucet dripping in the middle of the night.

Even before the speech, people in Washington were wondering how long Trump's conciliatory rhetoric would last after it was over.  All it takes to burn it down is an errant tweet or three, an offhand remark caught on camera when he thought no one was listening, or just reacting to something he saw on Fox News.

Of course, the things Trump chose not to talk about in his speech are the ones that are thus far defining his presidency.  Such as the ongoing Russian investigation, with the New York Times reporting that the President tried to fire special prosecutor Robert Mueller last summer, until his lawyers talked him out of it.  Or his battle with Congress over whether to make public classified documents of how the FBI is handling the investigation, while their deputy director Andrew McCabe abruptly quits.  Or the alleged payments made to porn actress Stormy Daniels to cover up her reputed affair with Trump.  Or that his approval ratings are hanging around 40 per cent.

President Trump can paint a rosy picture of the kind of America he'd like to see, and take as much credit for it as he possibly can.  The truth is that the state of this union is divided and anxious, wondering how they're going to survive with a man like this at the helm.