Our Lady of Eternal Rationalizations

Years ago, I allowed on the air that one of the many reasons I worried about the effect Rush Limbaugh had on his many listeners was that he gave them permission to simply not care. Climate change? Ozone depletion? Racism? Poverty? The role of women in society? Homelessness? Non-issues, all of them. Who cares what a bunch of tree-huggers, race hustlers and "feminazis" say? You are just fine never leaving the couch.

I only met him a few times and realized that most of it was an act, schtick. At least at first. And it made him incredibly rich.

As the legendary humorist and social critic H.L. Mencken observed...

 "No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

But Limbaugh came to believe his own BS and fancied himself a societal force, and I suppose, within his limited realm, he was. Right up until Donald Trump actually, in front of God and everyone, gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, joining names like...

• Politics & Public Service: Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Angela Merkel, Colin Powell.
• Civil Rights & Humanitarian: Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa.
• Arts & Entertainment: Elvis Presley, Steven Spielberg, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan.
• Sports: Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth, Mariano Rivera, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. 

And his devotees stayed with him and excused the 4 marriages, while he railed about America's moral decline, drug addiction, and pretty blatant racism, including insulting people like Nelson Mandela. Because that's what that kind of devotion demands of you.

There are supporters, and then there are acolytes. One offers their vote, and the other fealty and idolatry. And as with Limbaugh, that fealty demands that all is forgiven, and every action defended, whether it makes sense or not. And what we are seeing in MAGA is that kind of blind defense. Even if a particular policy or action makes no sense, is crass, or indeed, hurts you.

There is a fellow on Facebook who posts AI renderings of Donald Trump and at first, I figured they must be satire. But it seems they are not.

As I write this on a Sunday afternoon, even I feel a bit sacrilegious posting his picture. A t-shirt I saw recently read, "If Paul were here today, we'd all be getting a letter," and they have a point.

And so, forgiving, explaining, and justifying all of it is a full-time job for some. He can fall asleep at yet another meeting, this time, his latest money-making scam, the "Board of Peace."

He promised to send one of America's two huge Hospital Ships, which he called "boats,," to Greenland to help with some unnamed widespread illness, despite the fact that A, Greenland has universal healthcare, and B, the ships are both in port being refitted.

Even more embarrassing, a sailor who fell ill on a US submarine off the coast of Greenland was airlifted by the Danish military to a hospital in Nuuk for treatment, for free, incidentally.

Now, after the Supreme Court apparently went on eBay, and managed to win the bidding for a collective spine, and said no to the President using an emergency law to unilaterally impose tariffs on the rest of the world, his anger was not only fully expected, but amazingly personal. Here's another bit of Trump goofiness his timorous lickspittles will have to defend. On the government cable channel C-Span today...

John Barron? Really? But all and sundry in the administration, Congress, and on Fox will have to defend this, no matter how bizarre the defenses have to be.

That includes the guy with the most punchable face on the tube these days, Jesse Watters. He turned the smirk-o-meter up to 10 and said this...

“He’s now gotten the Panama Canal back from tariffs, he’s brought Greenland back into our orbit, and he’s gotten NATO funding boosted from tariffs,” said Watters. “Not to mention the fact that wars have been settled because of tariffs.”

The answer here, by the way, is a collective NO.

But the fumbling attempts by another smirkmeister, Treasury Secretary Bessent, to avoid truly admitting who actually pays for tariffs, have been something to behold.

So, again, for the epsteinth time, you pay them. Or Walmart, GM, Ford, Lowes, or any other American company does, and they charge you. But of course, Trump says there are other means to impose tariffs like, what is called "Section 122." This is a provision that I'll let an old friend, and maybe the best lawyer around, Jerry Birnberg explain. And this is a bit dense, but I promise it's worth the slog...

The President’s imposition of so-called Section 122 tariffs as soon as the Supreme Court declared illegal the IEEPA tariffs shows again how much Trump is willing to ignore the law. The law which contains Section 122 says those tariffs can be imposed only if there is a “balance of payments” deficit. As the law explains and as was well understood at the time Section 122 was enacted, the term “balance of payments deficit” means a situation where the country is bleeding gold reserves needed to underpin currency exchange rates. That was a problem (indeed, a crisis) in 1971 when the law containing Section 122 was enacted, because the country was operating under a fixed exchange rate system.

Under that system, the dollar was backed by gold. Soon after Section 122 was adopted, however, Congress took the country off the gold standard, so there could never be a “balance of payments deficit” anymore. In fact, the Solicitor General explained that to the Court during oral arguments in the IEEPA case, explaining that was the reason why Trump had not used Section 122 to impose last year’s tariffs – they could not be used, he stressed, because there is no such thing as a “balance of payments deficit” anymore, and a “balance of payments deficit” is required to impose tariffs under Section 122. In other words, the Trump Administration has already told the Court (and lower courts in briefs) that Section 122 tariffs are illegal. Yet, there’s Trump collecting them anyway, clearly (as he knows) violating the law.

So, his reaction to losing in the Supreme Court is to announce something his lawyers already said was illegal. And now the bootlickers will have to defend this as well. And they will. You'll see some average Joe or Jane in East Bumf*ck, West Virginia, allowing as how we really need these tariffs the President wants. Oh, and I sure would like inflation to go down, and I'm about to lose my farm, by the way.

And now we find that parts of the Epstein files that seriously implicate the President have been erased. From the New Republic...

The Department of Justice spoke four separate times to a woman who credibly accused Donald Trump of having sex with a minor he met through Jeffrey Epstein—but most accusations against the president appear to have been removed from the government’s documents on the alleged sex trafficker.

A 21-page slideshow buried in the massive trove of Epstein-related documents included allegations that sometime between 1983 and 1985, Trump forced a woman to give him oral sex when she was in her early teens. When the woman bit down on Trump’s exposed penis, he allegedly punched her in the head and kicked her out. That same woman told the DOJ that Epstein had introduced her to Trump in 1984.

Yet last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that there was “no evidence” that Trump had committed any crime.

Justice Department records indicate that the FBI spoke to this woman not once but at least four separate times, according to independent journalists Roger Sollenberger and Nina Burleigh. Now those records appear to have been removed from public viewing—despite the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires all documents relating to the alleged sex trafficker to be made public.

So, of course, two carrier groups and umpteen ships and planes are now poised to strike Iran, ostensibly because of its nuclear program. You know, the one Trump said we "obliterated" in a bomber strike months ago?

Don't get me wrong, there's probably no country more deserving of this than Iran, but if you think that the President gives a single bitcoin about the threat of Iran, I have...well, more bitcoins to sell you. And the fact that the President has made an estimated $4 billion while in office on cryptocurrency and other scams doesn't matter to people who would be at the ramparts with pitchforks if Obama did it. Like the second most punchable face on TV, supposed "comic" Greg Gutfeld.

When the subject of Trump profiting personally from the presidency came up, he said...

TARLOV: Okay, a couple of things. One, the head of your party and the president of the United States–

GUTFELD: Is the greatest president ever.

TARLOVE: –of America and his family has made four billion dollars since coming into office. Four billion dollars.

GUTFELD: That’s not from– that’s not from me. That’s not being stolen from me.

So, as long as my personal pocket isn't being picked, that's cool. And, by the way, a show title like GUTFELD! with the exclamation point is just dumb.

But like Limbaugh, they have great ratings and loyal viewers. But who cares, right?

So, if it isn't mindless deification or the simple profit motive, this guy will have more devoted defenders than Custer.

I just hope we aren't headed for the same result.