Trump Goons Promise Everything Is Fine, At Home And Abroad, On The Sunday Shows
We watch so you never have to!
In Episode 10 of Season Three of HBO’s Game Of Thrones, Lord Tywin Lannister imparts this wisdom to his petulant grandson, who had just exclaimed that he was “the king” after being lightly mocked and threatened by his Uncle Tyrion:
“Any man who must say, ‘I am the king’ is no true king.”
This thought was recurring as we watched the Sunday shows and Trump’s toadies kept trying to assure us that everything is going smoothly, despite our very eyes and facts disputing this.
Tom Homan
Let’s start with the disasters at home as we take a look at the jumbled mumbles that came out of Trump’s “Border Czar” Tom Homan.
Appearing on CNN’s State Of The Union and CBS’s Face The Nation, Homan tried to assure viewers that ICE is totally useful and definitely assisting TSA during this GOP-caused partial DHS shutdown, and NOT just standing around, how very dare you!
On CNN, he promised that TSA would be paid by today or Tuesday, while we await for the House GOP to stop holding them hostage, thanks to a plan by new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
But Homan, an oaf, was not prepared for the logical follow-up Jake Tapper asked:
TAPPER: If the administration had the power to move funds around to pay TSA agents this whole time, why did it take 41 days to do it? And how long will this money last?
Homan tried to marblemouth his way around this by saying the Coast Guard, Secret Service, and CISA would still not be paid. But Tapper, in a rare moment of journalism, pushed further:
TAPPER: Right. But if President Trump had the power to pay TSA agents this whole time, why only start doing it now?
HOMAN: Look, I don't understand — look, I'm a cop. I don't understand the whole appropriations language, appropriations law.
We mock Homan for looking like/acting like a cartoonishly unintelligent stooge, but then he outright proves the accusation. Homan (and probably Mullin) was in such a hurry to get a cookie or a head pat from Trump for moving some of the massive DHS budget already appropriated out of the $191 Billion from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act, he failed to realize that it implies the pain caused by this shutdown could have been avoided the whole time.
Homan was also asked if, now that TSA is getting paid, would ICE kindly go fuck right off out of airports since they are not trained or qualified to do anything of use.
For that answer, we turn to his appearance on CBS.
Homan’s answer to host Margaret Brennan was not very reassuring.
HOMAN: Look, we’re going to continue a nice presence there, and until the airports feel like they’re in- they’re in 100 percent, you know, in a posture where they can do no normal operations. If less TSA agents come back, that means we’ll keep more ICE agents there. […] We’ll be there as long as they need us, until they get back to normal operations and feel like those airports are secure.
No one needs ICE at the airports, especially for security, and yet they’ll persist in “keeping a presence.” They’re like a herpes flare-up, but somehow less charming and much deadlier.
James Lankford and Tom Cotton
But if you’re worried that it’s really bad domestically, it’s also quite the shitshow internationally. After stumbling ass-backwards into another Middle East war, Trump’s party is scrambling to tell us “it’ll be different this time, baby,” like a toxic ex.
On NBC’s Meet The Press, Oklahoma GOP Senator James Lankford struggled to insist we are winning this non-war/kerfuffle in Iran.
WELKER: Senator Lankford, do you agree with President Trump that the United States has, in fact, won the war?
LANKFORD: We are won or winning, there is no question about that.
We have questions about that.
Not only because it’s still going on, but as Lankford later stated, Trump is bringing in thousands of Marines as ground troops and preparing 10,000 more to deploy to the region. That’s not what winning looks like, and it certainly makes everyone question things.
For a less nuanced and more rubber-stamp-like perspective, GOP Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas appeared on Fox News Sunday.
When asked about his concerns about ground troops entering this region, after host Shannon Bream read an op-ed by a veteran and military analyst saying they would be sitting ducks, Cotton reverted to nonsense babble preapproved talking points:
COTTON: [M]y concern is that Iran is a revolutionary regime that’s been killing Americans by the thousands for 47 years. […] We’re going to destroy their missiles, their missile launchers, their drones, sink their navy, destroy their air force. Um, we’re going to again set back their nuclear program.
They never explain what they mean by all these “thousands” of “Americans” that “Iran” has been “killing.” We guess we’re just supposed to accept that We Have Always Been At War With Iran.
Cotton, like the common Gollum he is, went on to blame all the bad news and headlines on those “tricksy” Democrats and the media. But, when Bream brought up GOP members of Congress who attended the same briefing he did, like Reps. Nancy Mace and Mike Rogers, who are saying they are concerned about what they are seeing, good ole ‘Tanker Wars 2” Cotton went back to his warmongering.
COTTON: The endgame is has been clear from the very beginning. This revolutionary regime is going to be defanged and neutered. It will no longer be able to hold the civilized world at risk.
“Defanged,” “neutered,” and “civilized world”? Welp, we just completed our colonial interventionism BINGO card with those dogwhistles, so we think that’s a good end for this.
Have a week.
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>>LANKFORD: We are won or winning, there is no question about that.<<
But is our children learning?
"We are won or winning"
Grammar, however, was lost.