Every ten minutes, we seem to get another remarkable reminder of the scale of Democratic victories on Tuesday. There is so much we never would have even imagined. The Democrats may control enough state governments to get rid of the Electoral College! A Democrat who quit his campaign for an Iowa state House seat in September due to illness won anyway! The Rhode Island state Senate has to change its rule about having at least one member of the minority party on every committee because there are now only two Republicans left in the chamber! Granted there were only four (out of 38 seats) before the election, but still.
Donald Trump’s advisors know they need to keep the giant diaper baby occupied amidst all this upheaval so he doesn’t throw half-eaten Quarter Pounders at his gilded walls. Which is why this week we got pronouncements declaring outer space the province of all humans (thanks?) and proclaiming this week to be Anti-Communism Week. If only he had declared that before the American people voted, maybe we wouldn’t all be sliding into this Marxist hellhole where Medicaid cuts get restored and members of his administration get held accountable for all the crimes they have spent two years gleefully committing.
On Thursday Trump outdid himself. He made a show of summoning reporters to watch him sign an executive order making the Oval Office a national monument. This involves ordering the Secretary of the Interior to develop a “management plan” that “prioritizes the preservation of the Oval Office,” and
to document, review, and consider alternatives before substantially altering or demolishing the Oval Office, and to ensure that any proposed changes to its historic character are consistent with the Oval Office’s national significance.
First, never mind that the entire White House is already a National Historic Landmark — which did not stop him from doing the aliens in Independence Day to the East Wing. Apparently the Oval Office “merits more recognition” that it already has. Or else Trump had to do something to make himself feel important this week. We’re guessing the latter.
Secondly, the fucking nerve of this walking diseased gall bladder, who tore down the entire East Wing of the White House without permission so he could put up his monstrosity of a ballroom, who wrecked the Kennedy Center, who paved over the South Lawn for a helipad and the Rose Garden for a patio that looks like an outdoor mall food court, who turned the Lincoln Bathroom into Caligula’s vomitorium, to suddenly decide that there is a sacred space in the White House that no one should be allowed to wreck.
And this is after he redecorated the Oval to look like the finest brothel in all of Kazakhstan. We’ve all seen the pictures: the overabundance of portraits with gilded frames, the gold curtains, the cheap-looking gold tchotchkes covering the fireplace mantle and every other surface. And don’t get us started on the gilded accents that Trump himself has superglued to literally every square inch of empty wall space he sees. That man has taste so tacky that it would give Marie Antoinette a brain embolism on the spot. Besides which, Trump is the only asshole president who would knock down the Oval Office without the permission of Congress or any historical preservation board. He’s the only asshole president the Oval Office, in its more than 200 years of history, has needed protection from.
Sir, we doubt very strongly Satan is going to furlough you just for that. Though you are welcome to ask him when you get there.
Not only that, but Trump signed this executive order just a few hours after First Lady Melon Trump hosted Ukrainian and Russian officials to cement the one-city ceasefire she claims she negotiated with a slight assist from the pope. Was anyone else jarred by the sight of the first lady conducting foreign policy while the president spent his week leading tours of his ballroom and yammering on about the Oval Office’s beauty and his historic White House renovations like a PR rep pitching a story to Home & Garden? It’s like watching a bargain basement John and Jackie Kennedy get trapped in a Freaky Friday situation. But at least Melon probably got some good footage for the docuseries about her life, which — coincidentally, we’re sure — dropped a trailer on Friday morning. Everyone mark your calendars!
While Trump was pulling his Stupid Martha Stewart routine, at least there was some good news on the DC makeover front. An hour after a federal commission stacked with his cronies ignored public opposition and approved the building of his 250-foot Triumphal Arch in a traffic circle by the Arlington Bridge, a federal judge — oh look, it’s our old friend Judge Tanya Chutkan! we missed her! — put a hold on the whole project in a scathing order. First she snorted at the administration’s assertion that the arch is needed for national security to protect presidents from assassination attempts. Then she added this:
“The sheer improbability that a 100-year-old statute would contain authority, unknown to every previous administration, to erect a 250-foot arch at a principal location in the Nation’s capital indicates how far Defendants must stretch to justify this project,” Chutkan wrote in her order.
The administration had been planning to start work on this latest monstrosity this week, which seems even dumber in the wake of Tuesday. What triumph exactly is Trump’s arch supposed to celebrate, given that at the moment he looks like a galactic loser?
At least Trump didn’t make the ballroom a national monument, so presumably we can swing the wrecking ball into its giant drone port at 12:01 P.M. on January 20, 2029.
Wonkette is powered by this weird new feeling of — optimism? And also by the generous support of you, our faithful readers.
Susie Wiles stepping down, to be replace by Stephen Miller. Why not torpedo the Trumptanic after it hit the iceberg?
Chutkan said something about "the defendant wanting to bedazzle Washington DC", and I love her so much for it.