Emmanuel Macron Writes Home

Cher Papa, Chère Maman:

Well here I am in Les États-Unis, in Washington, DC, having a remarkably good time in the Country of Buffoons (Le Pays des Bouffons). I have been the guest of the biggest buffoon of all: Le Donald.

I remember when you both thought my Master’s Thesis on Machiavelli and Hegel was a sheer waste of time. You’d therefore be pleasantly surprised how much I have relied on ses pensées Machiavellian this past week in the company of President Donald Trump.

When I was just a schoolboy we had a series of disagreements when I told you that I wanted to be with and eventually marry my Lycée literature and drama teacher Brigitte.

Mais non! you said, she is far too old for you, she is already married, and she has three children about your age. Mon Dieu! you both exclaimed. She is closer to our ages than to yours, you insisted.

As you recall, I was toujours persistent and would sneak out to rendezvous with my beloved Brigitte, so en time you both accepted the inevitable and gave your blessing to my marriage with mon amour.

Eventuellement Brigitte and I settled down, and I entered politics after completing my education. As you know, I ran for President of France last year and won! Quelle surprise!

Alas, my election occurred soon after Donald Trump took office as the American President, and he embarked on a campaign to undermine many international traditions, institutions, and treaties.

It was then that I remembered M. Machiavelli and his advice to leaders: That a sovereign need not be loved or even liked, but should concentrate on making difficult decisions for his subjects. He will as a consequence be feared and respected. This appears to have become the credo of Donald Trump, if indeed he has any understandable credo.

As a result, I began to study Trump and Trumpism with an eye toward insinuating myself into that world; I became the Trump presidency’s Fifth Column (cinquième colonne), intent on subverting its authoritarian goals and chaotic governing methods for the sake of the international community and its need for stability and peaceful co-existence.

Au début Donald and I played dominator games, especially in the public eye. We would vie for the longest and toughest handhold, especially in front of the press, and this progressed to faire la bisse (cheek kissing) every time a camera was near. Sacré-coeur! It was very tiresome to be kissed again and again by this hulk of a man! Alpha male Donald even brushed imaginary dust off my lapels for the cameras.

Mais Brigitte and I had discussed how best to use our visit en Amérique.

At first, Brigitte was entertained at the National Gallery of Art as the guest of Trump’s timid wife Melania, who modeled an expensive white designer hat that focused the attention of the press for most of the day. During that time, Donald and I had discussions about our mutual interests, although M. Trump does not favor acting in accord with most of the treaties and mutual aid pacts that have been signed by our predecessors as heads of state and have governed our countries for many years.

Zut alors, this pea brain with the long neckties ne comprends pas the meaning of these critical documents, and practices being the loudest voice in the room regardless of the subject matter. Tout le monde (everyone) understands this. That is, everyone except l’idiot du village.

I had been invited to prononcer un discours (give a speech) at the most important gouvernement location, the House Chamber in the Capitol Building in the city laid out by France’s own Pierre Charles L’Enfant back in 1791 when Les États-Unis was a very young country.

I therefore seized upon the opportunity to have the attention of the country focused on me to the exclusion of Mr. Trump, and gave the speech of my young life, taking Trump to task on his “America-First” positions on trade, climate change, immigration, the future of Syria, Iran, and the Koreas, and the place of the United States in the world of nations and the global economy.

I emphasized the similarity of purpose of our two nations over the centuries, our two revolutions, our reliance on each other’s strengths through the violent wars and cold wars of the 20th century, and how our soldiers have died for each other (not any Trumps, however, tant pis). I reminded the Congress and the American public of the critical issues of denuclearization and the necessity of strong western alliances to stabilize and strengthen the world in the 21st century.

The reactions in the Congressional chamber were “tremendous” as Donald would say—énorme, formidable. Vraiment!

I think, Papa and Maman, that I have shouldered Le Donald aside in the eyes of the American peuple as un charleton ou faux that he is, and given the American public hope in the future.

Vive la France!

Ton fils aimant,

Emmanuel

My Tammy Duckworth Moment

Tammy Duckworth, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and combat veteran who lost both her legs and badly damaged an arm when the helicopter she was co-piloting in Iraq took a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade, thereafter ran successfully for the House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate from Illinois. She has been advocating for military and disability issues ever since she took Congressional office in 2013.

Not long ago Senator Duckworth responded to a Trump tweet accusing Democrats of “holding our Military hostage” to have “unchecked illegal immigration”; she spoke from the Senate floor blasting Donald Trump as a “five-deferment draft dodger” who is trying to bait North Korea into a war, risking the country’s national security and the U.S. military.

(Duckworth has also referred publicly to Trump as “Cadet Bone-Spurs,” harkening back to the purported bone spurs on Trump’s feet that excused Trump—via a fifth military deferment—from being drafted to serve in Vietnam once his four previous college academic deferments ended.)

Senator Duckworth recently bore her second child, and was faced with the problem of bringing her newborn daughter onto the Senate floor for votes, the Senate having had a long-standing rule against the presence of children in the Senate chamber. Senator Duckworth uses a wheelchair, which adds to the obstacles inherent in voting in the Senate chamber.

Since voting must be in person on the Senate floor, and Duckworth is keenly aware of the many close votes in the current bitterly divided Senate in recent months prior to the birth of her baby, the Senator lobbied for a rules change to permit senators with newborns to bring babies onto the floor of the Senate.

When faced with the prospect of newborn infant Maile gaining floor privileges in the Senate, some of the older male senators grumbled that permitting babies on the floor of the Senate would disrupt Senate decorum. Diaper changes, fussing, and even (horrors!) nursing on the Senate floor. Harrumph!

Some senators proposed a compromise whereby a baby could be permitted in the Senate cloakroom, a lounge just off the Senate chamber, where a senator could stand in the doorway and still participate in Senate business. Since the cloakroom is not wheelchair-accessible, that would not solve the problem for Duckworth or for some other potential future senatorial parents of newborns.

Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, a prolific father, grandfather, and great-grandfather in his 80s, posited, “But what if there are 10 babies on the floor of the Senate?” To which Senator Amy Klobuchar remarked that such a situation would mean that more young senators had been elected and “would be a delight.”

Senator Marco Rubio said sarcastically that he would not object to having babies on the floor since there are “plenty of babies [already] on the floor.”

One Richard Armande Mills posted on Facebook that “Duckworth could potentially ‘weaponize’ her baby because infants haven’t previously been allowed in this arena. What if she uses the presence of her child to influence legislation?” (Weaponize an infant how? Encourage it to cry?)

Women who read this sigh and dismiss such absurdities, but too many men take them seriously. Perhaps if more men cared for young children—and worked at the same time—we would be spared such comments.

The entire kerfuffle reminds me of a time, nearly thirty-five years ago, when I was a young attorney with a newborn daughter. My infant had, that fateful day, developed a cold, and her daycare provider asked me to retrieve her to keep the other children from being infected.

I had been representing a woman whose rental tenant had fallen behind in the rent and she was seeking a judgment of eviction. As cases go, this was a simple one with few contested facts.

My client had elected to retain new counsel for no obvious reason, which was her prerogative, and I expected successor counsel to contact me to obtain the file and briefly discuss the case.

But I heard from no-one, and as the case progressed to the day of trial I was subpoenaed to bring the file and appear as a witness in court.

This action contravened all the unwritten rules of advocacy among counsel; cooperation and not confrontation was the traditional manner of transferring representation, and I was fully prepared to assist new counsel in any reasonable way.

The young pup who took on the case may have been trying to impress the landlady plaintiff; I never could understand his motivation.

But one thing was clear: I resented his treatment of me as a hostile witness when I was in actuality merely previous counsel without an axe to grind.

Nevertheless, I had a date to appear in court and my infant child needed a caretaker. So I scooped her up and brought her to the courthouse.

The judge, a part-timer with a supercilious manner (who was once investigated for potential ties to organized crime), demanded to know why I had appeared with a babe in arms, and my explanation didn’t seem to mollify him.

“I should hold you in contempt of court,” he threatened, peering down at us from the bench.

I waited to see what would happen. A long pause ensued. But the judge was nonplussed and eventually let the case, such as it was, go forward.

As things transpired, there was no contretemps, and upon request under oath I surrendered my file and testified to the minimal facts of the case, facts that favored the evicting landlady.

And then I left the courthouse, child in arms, to go home.

So, Senator Duckworth, I’ve been down that road before, risking a jail term or fine for contempt of court for the offense of bringing a babe in arms into a courthouse and—heaven forbid—onto the witness stand.

Much ado about nothing except that parenting knows no artificial limits but must be respected in all its usual and ordinary manifestations.

To make silly rules about when and where babies may appear in a public forum is the height of absurdity. Women instinctively know this and men are centuries overdue to learn this

The Autocrat of the Dinner Table

The ultimate conman Donald Trump feels cornered. Like a proverbial rat.

He is showing his teeth. Again.

(Not a bad metaphor if you prefer cheesecake and chasing tail.)

His current favorite attorney Michael Cohen has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune by having his workplace and residences searched by a posse of polite federal law enforcement seeking details of the Access Hollywood tape and 2016 campaign payoffs to Donald’s extramarital sexual partners, a task apparently shouldered in pre-campaign years by attorney Marc Kasowitz.

We have also learned that Cohen has been taping telephone conversations for years, probably including those with his boss. Perhaps without consent, which violates New York State law. Oh Brother (where art thou?).

Kasowitz was smart enough to get out of the way once Trump ascended to the Oval Office, but Cohen the fixer has been quoted as being willing to do anything for Trump, to take a bullet, leap tall buildings in a single bound, operate as Trump’s consigliere.

“Anything”? Really? His loyalty surely doesn’t include doing a stretch in federal stir.

And we just heard that Cohen’s attorney is seeking a stay in the Stormy Daniels hush money case so that Cohen can plead the Fifth. Alas, Michael neglected to appear at the court hearing he requested for this morning, spoke to Trump during the day, appears to have learned of Trump’s full pardon for Scooter Libby who publicly exposed and thereby endangered CIA agent Valerie Plame and her contacts around the world when Bush W was in charge.

Sending a message, anyone?

If so, that message was received by federal district court Judge Kimba Wood who was mighty annoyed, ordering Cohen to appear first thing Monday morning to answer questions.

(Factoid: Judge Wood was nominated by Bill Clinton to be Attorney General, but was too gun-shy to endure the gauntlet of seemingly illegal nanny employment, although in fact Wood was in full compliance; nevertheless her nomination was withdrawn.) Would a long-time federal trial judge forget her public humiliation when she was nominated for U.S. Attorney General? Not bloody likely.

In any event, Michael Cohen, that dog won’t hunt.

Donald must be apoplectic. His loyalists can't let a little thing like self-incrimination prevent them from protecting Him—The Big Enchilada, The Top Dog?

We also heard that Cohen lied about being in Prague to meet with his Russian handlers during the 2016 election but believed that the lack of a specific border stamp in his passport would support his lie. Wrong. Open EU borders does not obviate the existence of all border-crossing records from all cooperating countries.

And the Steele Dossier claims that “Cohen was dispatched to Prague to clean up the mess left behind by two revelations: that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort had a financial relationship with a politically toxic Ukrainian president and that campaign adviser Carter Page visited top Russian officials.”

This is truly hot stuff.

Only the Vegas bookies may have anything approaching a handle on this one.

And I would guess that the jig may—as they say—be up.

Even the Senate is actually working in a bipartisan way to enact legislation to prevent Trump from emasculating Robert Mueller. Of course, “working on” legislation does not mean voting for legislation or enacting legislation or getting enough votes to override a presidential veto.

So let’s scratch that maneuver from our spring Wish List.

This week Trump was faced with the choice of:

(1) flying down to Peru to hobnob at a trade summit with a variety of would-be dictators who don’t—to their shame—speak English so that the Mighty Sheriff of DC could smooth things over South of the Border (he sent Pence and Jarvanka in his place); or

(2) beating a retreat to Mar-a-Lago to take some mulligans on the golf course and drive his cart over the greens; or

(3) remaining in the White House to alert the Syrians precisely when and how the U.S. would be responding militarily to the latest civilian nerve gas bombing, giving Syria oodles of time to hide its warplanes and assorted military materiél from U.S. drones and other surveillance; or

(4) plotting in his bedroom at the witching hour precisely how and when to fire Rod Rosenstein and rid himself of Robert Mueller, the man who haunts his nightmares, exemplifies every virtue that Trump eschews, and in time Will Bring Trump Down.

Donald even ignored opening day at the Washington Nationals (for the second straight year) because if doing a thing doesn’t result in rapturous personal attention or at least a financial windfall, then it isn’t worth doing at all.

Them’s not the kind of choices that Donnie relishes. He’d rather pursue women young enough to be his granddaughters, eat an overcooked steak dinner smothered in ketchup along with two scoops of ice-cream, hold a triumphant post-campaign rally in a red state, or spend the wee hours ensconced in his White House bedroom on his cell phone talking to loyalists, misspelling Twitter posts, demonstrating his misunderstanding of Just About Everything in those posts, and confirming to the world that his educational level is on a par with Miss Feeney’s Sixth Grade class.

Running the U.S. government, perhaps the most demanding responsibility on the planet, exemplifies the following for Trump, as one anonymous GOP congressman has described the job:

“He wakes up in the morning, sh*ts all over Twitter, sh*ts all over us, sh*ts all over his staff, then hits golf balls. F*ck him.”

Not a sterling job recommendation for a New York City real estate mogul.

Enormous interest exemptions on borrowed real estate investment monies. Five business bankruptcies. Sudden massive worker layoffs. Unpaid contractors and laborers. Construction bribes. Lots of babes. Golf clubs with phony Time Magazine covers and low-paid foreign workers allocated by Trump’s own Department of State.

Donald Trump is a swindler awash in illegalities with branded hotels and condos that hide overseas monies, web-site clothing manufactured cheaply abroad, underpaid employees and eager cohorts, grown children following in his footsteps, secret political and “charitable” funds, conspiracies and cover-ups, lies and “fake news,” distractions that flood our living rooms day after endless day, dyed hair and combed-over bald spots . . . the Art of the Con writ large.

He has had a susceptible audience of gullible Americans who are convinced that white male European America must continue to hold the reins of power to protect them from Others.

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

And this grifter in the White House learned the Bunco Business at his daddy’s knee.

That obsession has governed his entire life, his personal relationships, his construction empire, his inability to understand the concerns of anyone or anything that interferes with the Adulation of Donald Trump: first act, second act, and finale, which America fervently hopes will end soon. In a federal lock-up.

Curtain coming down?

Meanwhile . . . James Comey has begun a book tour for A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, and pulls no punches, even zeroing in on Trump’s pleading request that Comey investigate the Russian hotel golden showers hotel incident “pee tape” described in the Steele report to reassure his wife that the event could never have occurred. Trump clearly worried there was a small chance Melania might believe that Russian hookers actually peed on a hotel bed where Trump was staying.

“Comey muses in the book why Melania might ever entertain the idea her husband was into golden showers.” Readers?

In the Wizard of Oz, the place name “Oz” is the abbreviation for ounce, which is the standard for measuring gold. Like the gold-plated Trump Tower residence of the King of Con who resides there when he is not squatting astride our nation’s capital, soiling it.

Can Dorothy save us? Or Toto? Or the Tinman, the Scarecrow, or the Cowardly Lion? Are there enough dog smarts, heart, brains, or courage contained in the hollow figure of Trump the President? Few people believe that, and fewer think Trump will ever change or focus on the commonweal—the people’s good.

One slight ray of hope is Professor Alan Dershowitz’s dinner invite the other night to the White House to feast on ravioli with that Exemplar of Taste Donald Trump. Donald unloaded his fears on Dershowitz during the meal, (which was actually planned in order to discuss the Middle East situation), but Good Counselor Dershowitz is keeping mum about precisely what was discussed.

Nevertheless, we should all breathe slightly easier to have Dershowitz in the picture as Donald’s confidante from three decades ago—regardless of his wavering views on the status of civil rights and liberties in the Age of Trump. He may just talk Donald out of the most stupid move possible—the firing of Robert Mueller.

We should rejoice at the prospect of a man of rectitude being the recipient of the confidential ravings of Trump because maybe, just maybe, Dershowitz can talk Donald down from the heights of improvidence and bravado. He is, as he keeps insisting, merely a retired practitioner, law professor, and “independent outside commentator.” In the absence of a full roster of presidential counsel to advise Trump on an appropriate response to the Mueller team—a roster which Dershowitz declines to join after so many others either quit or refused offers—the “civil libertarian and skeptic of prosecutorial power” might be the Fifth Column in the White House that Trump’s frazzled advocates will value and hear.

Or not.

Updated March 13

Making Us All Crazy

In the past year or so the American psyche has gone full schizophrenic, scattering paranoia across the rest of the world.

The Trump Effect—abetted by a government without expertise, experience, sufficient personnel, understanding, sanity, sympathy, order, or any real plan—is pushing us all psychologically over the edge in a maelstrom of cowering fear and dread.

What will the Orange Flufferbunny do next? . . . we continually worry.

What norms will evaporate in the wake of the strongman’s inner panic and Playtime in the Oval Office with Fox News and Twitter?

Which nation’s skeptical leaders will be paraded in front of the White House cameras as props for the president’s next rant about Hillary Clinton and the millions of immigrants who illegally voted for her in the November 2016 “rigged” election (by now, who can remember that far back)?

How can a country raised on tabloid language and reality television deal with the flood of runaway superlatives (“the greatest,” “the best,” “disastrous,” “terrible”) that pepper Trump’s speech to the near-exclusion of language that has any recognizable applicability? When will the jackass in the Oval Office stop making transparently empty boasts about having the “best words,” being the “greatest jobs president that God ever created,” his “tremendous” appointments, or policies, or speaking skills, or crowds?

How many AR-15 assault rifles will be aimed at our children and their teachers while the gun lobby counts its profits and maintains its stranglehold on Congress?

Which communities will cower in fear of bankruptcy as tariffs on Chinese imports soar in Trump’s tit-for-tat world, endangering millions of businesses and livelihoods in Trump’s Red America?

How long will it take for North Korea to remind Our Dear Leader that it holds all the cards and will never surrender its nuclear toys in the wake of empty bombast and threats from Washington?

How significantly will Putin rig future American elections while Republicans are in denial or—worse—in cahoots?

When will the American military be deployed strategically to help America’s allies rather than marking time on the Mexican border to prevent Latin American immigrants from entering the country?

How many military parades to tout the glory of The Donald will wend their way down Pennsylvania Avenue to jeers and hoots of derision?

Will the country ever recover from the exodus of diplomatic, scientific, financial, economic, and military know-how as the best and brightest scramble for the exits under an onslaught of insults, leaks, disclosures, dismissals, and derisive backstabbing?

When will Congress grow a backbone to counter its cowardice and greed?

How many more deadly floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, polar air masses, historic tides, vanishing shorelines, wildfires, blizzards, and nor’easters will it take to expose the ignorance and greed of climate change deniers?

How can we teach our children kindness and manners and recover our equanimity when the elected leader of the country describes his own female aide Hope Hicks to her face—in the presence of two Trump sons—as “the best piece of tail” her ex-boyfriend Corey Lewandowski will “ever have”?

Can Americans imagine a time when we will not cringe as Trump mauls the lessons of history, tramping around the globe metaphorically, dismissively describing other countries without the requisite number of gold-plated bathroom fixtures as “shitholes”?

How many more relatively sane administration heads will roll and fearfully unleashed new hires embark on tearing down the fabric of American life that took so many years to create?

Will there ever come a time when Trump will climb out of our skulls and leave us to pick up the pieces of the American Dream without his bloated, twisted, malignant presence?