Trump Built A Wall. Wonkagenda For Wed., Jan. 2, 2019

Trump complains about his 'Wall thing,' Warren's in, and WHO'S awful in the new year? All of them, Katie! Your morning news brief!

Happy New Year, Wonketariat! We're ready and rested and here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today.

With the government shutdown now entering its 12th day, Trump has spent the last week unable to visit his white trash palace in Florida, so he's been shitposting from the White House about his wall. He has invited House and Senate leadership to the White House for a "briefing" on "border security and the Wall 'thing'" that both Democrats and Republicans continue to say is a non-starter. Some Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham are now trying to dilute the taste of additional border security by offering itty bitty immigration reform measures, but Democrats are telling them to eat a bowl of sandy shit and demanding protections for Dreamers and DACA kids. Welcome to 2019!

With government workers on furlough, national parks are literally starting to fill up with shitas people max-out port-a-potties and trash cans. The National Park Service is warning people to be careful if they decide to venture into the "lawlessness," noting that nobody will come to your rescue if you decide to go off-roading with your dog and drone in bear country.

It's not just rich white people in Joshua Tree who are having a shitty time, Native American tribes are dipping into cash reserves in order to fund health clinics and basic services like snow removal. Many tribes are starting to wonder if Uncle Sam is going to back out of its deal to to protect and care for the basic needs of Native people (more, again).

On Sunday, ret. Gen. Stanley McChrystal told ABC's Martha Raddatz that Trump was a big, stupid, liar, and cautioned anyone considering becoming the next Secretary of Defense. Yesterday, Trump sent some butthurt tweets aimed at "Big Stan."Fun Fact: Back in 2009, "Big Stan" was considered Jesus 2.0 to all the spec-ops ninjas, but Obama fired him after Michael Hastings quoted "Big Stan" getting drunk and talking shit in Rolling Stone .

On Monday Elizabeth Warren announced #ShesRunning in 2020 in a super nice time video , surprising nobody. In making her announcement, Warren told reporters, "The problem we've got right now in Washington is that it works great for those who've got money to buy influence, and I'm fighting against that. And you bet it's going to make a lot of people unhappy. But at the end of the day, I don't go to Washington to work for them." As he had nothing better to do than drag his ass around the East Wing, Trump called up Fox News to make Warren's announcement all about himself.

If you're feeling particularly nerdy, the New York Times has a lame retrospective about how presidential races seem to start earlier and earlier every year. TLDR: They're not, we just have a news cycle that gets shorter with every tweet, but it sure as hell seems like we're starting a presidential race earlier than ever before.

 Mitt Romney wrote mean words about Donald Trump. Mittens notes he loves Trump tax cuts (for the super rich), but complains that Trump is forcing him to choose between shitloads of money and being the Marco Rubio of Jeff Flakes. Trump world was largely silent on this until late this morning when Trump started shitposting about Romney with his baby sausage fingers.

 The Arizona Republic got its hands on video of children detained in the now-closed Hacienda Del Sol baby jail showing them being dragged, shoved and slapped this past September. The video comes as the company operating the baby jails, Southwest Key, is under renewed pressure for hiring random assholes and perverts without background checks. While the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office initially told Buzzfeed sometimes you gotta slap a brat, it reversed course yesterday and referred the case to the county district attorney's office.

Customs and Border Patrol officials say they fired tear gas into Mexico (again) yesterday after they spotted 150 migrants attempting to cross the border near San Diego. CBP officials say that people were throwing rocks and trying to "lift toddler-sized children up and over the concertina wire," and that's when they started gassing them.

 Donald Trump welcomed Jair Bolsonaro into the club of rightwing racist homophobic sexist scumbags leading first world nations following his swearing in as Brazil's new president. The rape advocate has promised to "restore order" to the country by reinstituting a military dictatorship under the belief that this will fix the country's struggling economy and rampant political corruption. What could go wrong?

Since Trump wasn't able to attend his own lavish holiday party at Mar-a-Lago due to his government shutdown, are we going to get back the taxpayer money that went towards party tents and Secret Service toys? Should we bill the Trump Organization, or just add that to the tab?

Comedian Louis CK is trying to stage his comeback by mocking Parkland shooting victims, gender-neutral pronouns, Asian people, "retarded" people, and his "old fucking Jewish fag" doctor. According to lucky Louie, it's a tragedy that he lost $35 million in a single day, and nobody else had "365 shitcunt days in a row." Apparently forcing people to watch him jerk off wasn't really that bad.

Jerry Falwell Jr. sat down with WaPo for a batshit interview about how Donald Trump is making America gooder than ever by taking all the money from the poor and giving it to all the rich people because, "A poor person never gave anybody charity." Indeed, what WOULD Jesus do?

US StratCom is super sorry its New Year's Eve tweet about being able to "drop something much, much bigger" than a ball was seen as being in poor taste. The joke is being blamed on former Defense Sec. Jim Mattis since nobody in the administration is allowed to admit a screwup.

And here's your morning Nice Time! MEERKATS!
 

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