This past week, ABC News settled a $15 million lawsuit brought by Donald Trump's lawyers accusing the network of defamation. The case resulted from an interview last spring when George Stephanopoulos said on the air that Mr. Trump had been found "liable for rape" in a New York civil trial. In fact, Mr. Trump had been found liable for "sexual abuse." Apparently, no sexual abuser wants to be called a rapist. It must be a pride thing.
Following that capitulation, Jeff Bezos, whose Washington Post decided in the eleventh hour to withdraw (or demur from) an endorsement of Kamala Harris for president, got in the queue for a meeting with Trump. Sexual abuse decision was not a deal-breaker.
In other oversized business items, Open AI CEO Sam Altman intends to make a $1 million personal donation to Trump's inauguration fund.
Put Mark Zuckerberg down for a million, also. Chump change, which will, unless I have this wrong, lower the price of that supermarket peanut butter the GOP kept harping on last fall.
So it's a good week to be Donald Trump and find that former enemies are not merely friends but willing to pay for that friendship. On a personal note, I'm happy for Skippy and Jif, too: fewer people will be swearing at those overpriced jars from here on in. Add to the kitty the $15 million from ABC, and pretty soon, Pricer Chopper will be giving those jars away, not just the smooth but the chunky, too! PBJs for all! Thanks, business barons. You always knew what side your bread was peanut-buttered on.
Speaking of food, sort of, in 1938, 17 years after hydrogenated oil began to keep peanut butter fresh, Nevil Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement, ceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. One would think that event alone would guarantee Chamberlain's title of appeaser-in-chief for the remainder of history; after all, it's a rarity indeed to sell out your own country and another simultaneously with a simple penstroke. Or it was a rarity before Lindsey ("The president must resign!") Graham ("I love Donald Trump") and his ilk came to town and made selling out a MAGA sacrament, and if statistics are accurate, slightly ahead of matrimony in popularity.
And Trump himself, in his typical rollicking-good-time demeanor, will respond by shutting down the government. I'll admit that a lot of businesses do slow down after Christmas. That kiosk at the mall selling candy—that'll be as gone as the fireworks shack on July 5 or the Halloween mart on November 1. But usually, the government is not one of those seasonal huts—we pay taxes for all four seasons.
There's a strong whiff of Chamberlain here, selling out the American people before they've paid the bills they accumulated to celebrate the holidays (and for MAGA people to celebrate Trump's impending coronation.) In former times, I would call it treasonous, but since the term was redefined after January 6, 2021, to exclude an armed attempt to overthrow the government, I'm not sure what it means anymore.
So let's just call the shutdown a fit of pique by the child-president-elect—a stomping of the feet and the holding of the breath until the adults in the room give in and let him stay up for an extra hour. If only there remained some adults in the room. Once the clown car with Patel, RFK, Jr., Bondi, and Hegseth rumbled in, anyone with any sense was on the first Metro to Bethesda, then onward to Dulles and a flight to somewhere warm where the drinks are festooned with umbrellas.
Admittedly, it has been entertaining listening to Kash Patel's plans for the FBI to hunt down and punish Trump's detractors, to RFK Jr.'s proposal to reintroduce disease to American children, to Pam Bondi's eagerness to prosecute anyone that Patel doesn't persecute, and to Pete Hegseth who needs one more positive recommendation to land that plum of a job, or maybe two more.
We are entering an era when squillionaires blatantly curry favor and build their fortunes, the middle class continues to be pauperized, and some Monty Pyton-esque Ministry of Silly Ideas populates the government. It's the MAGA plan, laid out in black and white and uttered throughout the Trump campaign—a return to a two-class America: the rich and everybody else. And Americans, who weren't too lazy to vote, said yes, count me in.
You're in! The plan is taking shape and progressing as smoothly as peanut but..., well, you know.
So let's call the shutdown a Christmas card of sorts from the president-elect—you can picture it easily enough—those two stubby middle fingers extended in the air like goalposts—and yet with enough fingers left to throw us under the bus.
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