As Brian Williams on MSNBC at 11:00 pm says in his show, The Eleventh Hour , "today is day 396 of the Trump presidency, a day like no other..." and for 396 days, most of us who watch MSNBC have been alternately pulling at our hair, scratching ourselves incessantly, throwing things at the TV, and generally walking around in a state of total disbelief. "How could this guy be President", we say to ourselves. It is so incongruous to everything we believe in the universe. It is exasperating. We talk to ourselves -- based on his behavior and the things that come out of his mouth and fingers -- "this guy couldn't be on the local school board, let alone be the school board president. He wouldn't be allowed to be a Boy Scout leader, a Boy Scout, a football coach, and God forgive, the local mayor". He'd be kicked out of every conceivable elected or non-elected job faster than you can say, "sexual harasser," "pathological liar," "racist," "misogynist," "philanderer," or just plain, nutcase.
Yet here he is, the number-one guy. The "top person", as Bridget Jones would say, in the whole United States, of three hundred and thirty million people. Some would say (Bridget) the "top person" in the entire world of seven billion! It is so earth shattering, no wonder Mika looks like she is having a complete nervous breakdown every single day. (For those of you who don't know the reference, you obviously aren't an MSNBC junkie.)
At this moment, just thinking about it, my body is actually twitching, because the reality of him being where he is, is - I keep searching for metaphors, but things are so bizarre metaphors don't even do it anymore - "Discredited Joe Paterno rose from the dead and became Governor of Pennsylvania," "Bernie Madoff, fresh out of prison, has become the Secretary of Treasury today", "Dean Solden was elected President today", "the Lions won the Super Bowl today." These things are so inconceivable yet they pale in comparison to our present state of reality.
I used to keep track of his lies, falsehoods, racist tirades, and stupid comments. I stopped after about day 150, because there were so many and they have come so fast -- one after another, day after day -- that my brain has turned to mush and I decided it was better to just shake for a few minutes every day.
Seriously, it is like living in The Twilight Zone. When after a school shooting, he says, "see, no collusion!" or after the last Mueller indictment of 13 Russians, he still says, "it was Hillary who was colluding with the Russians," or his turning on the FBI, and his own Justice Department. It's like (okay, the metaphors are coming now) if you were a kid and your mom said to you, "Don't go to school, it's bad for you, here is a cookie and a martini for dinner, and I'm going out so don't watch your little brother." Or if someone said to you (I can't even make up who that could be) "if it's dark out, it's daytime, it's okay to swim when there are sharks in the water, or, definitely, I mean definitely, the world is flat..." Our reality has been turned upside down.
Luckily, because I don't live in Washington, I can still get up in the morning (how does Mika do it?). But really, how does Melania do it? Girl after girl, porn star after porn star, payoff after payoff, I'm only exasperated and twitching, but how can she even stand next to that guy? Though doesn't her face say it all? Wouldn't you just love it if she left him right now, right in the middle of all this mess, and gave a tell-all to Oprah? That's the kind of fantasy I need right now to keep me sane, because tomorrow morning I'll be seeing Mika's sad face looking like Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live, Joe going on a rampage on the latest craziness, as I wonder when he'll announce he's running in 2020, slog through my day, listen for a few minutes to Nicole Wallace at four o'clock in my car and feel good for few minutes that at least one Republican is sane (I admit it -- I have a little crush on her) while hoping that Steve Schmidt will come on -- don't you just love that guy? Then with my TV friends who help salve the inner wounds, I hear just the beginning of street-cred Chris Matthews at 7, wonderkund Chris Hayes at 8, Rachael at 9 with a legal lesson, Lawrence at 10 so jolly when one more bad thing happened to DJT, until finally, lying in bed, sleepy-eyed, it's back to Brian Williams at 11, soberly saying, in his Cronkitean way, "and today is Day 397 of the Trump Presidency and it was a day like no other, which in the Trump age is a day like every other..." as I begin to doze off, finally calm, after living through another day of bizarro American history we are all living through.
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