Dear Commons Community,
Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist, today again set her sights on Donald Trump. She referred to him as a “Manchurian candidate”. To quote:
“Trump hugging Putin even as Putin stabs at our democracy is an incomprehensible mystery.
Flummoxed and craven Republicans scramble to go along with a president who has turned the traditional heroes and villains of the G.O.P. topsy-turvy, berating our European allies, NATO, the N.F.L., the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and canoodling with the mendacious and scheming Russians.
On the eve of the Helsinki summit, which Trump has arranged as a very intime pas de deux, it is still befuddling and alarming to watch him kowtow to Putin.
Maybe he is the Manchurian candidate, in need of a hypnotic tuneup. “Will Trump be meeting with his counterpart — or his handler?” Jonathan Chait asks in his New York cover story.
Perhaps it’s an Oedipal thing, that Putin reminds Trump of his authoritarian father. Possibly it’s blackmail or his fear of people suspecting that Russia saved his businesses.”
Dowd’s best lines were her last:
“It’s hard to believe that the British have found someone to despise more than they despise George W. Bush and his poodle, Tony Blair. But they have. With their flair for satirical wit, they perfectly lampooned the loathed American president with “Trump Baby,” a 19-foot floating balloon in the shape of a wailing orange baby in a diaper holding a cellphone with Twitter on the screen.
There were dueling Trump babies — the real one and the blimp — when the president sucker punched his hostess. Trump gave Rupert Murdoch’s Sun an interview criticizing Prime Minister May on Brexit, threatening her on trade, praising her rival, Boris Johnson, and throwing in some white nationalist dog whistles as clotted cream on the crumpet.
Ever the Ugliest American, Trump tried his own version of crazy damage control at the Chequers news conference, declaring his taped Sun interview fake news and buttering the battered May with belated praise.
It is up for debate whether Donald Trump will be a sad aberration in American history, a mere blip. But, thanks to the cheeky citizens of London, he will always be a blimp.”
Ouch!
Tony
