Saturday, February 22, 2025

The Supernatural Bride, 53rd Day of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Electra): Trump spent nine of his first 30 days in office, or roughly a third of his time, playing golf on one or another of his courses at an expense to taxpayers of $10.7 million. By visiting his own for-profit businesses, Trump directs government spending to follow him there and profits off the trips. 

The $10.7M total is based on a 2019 GAO calculation of $3,383,250 per trip to Mar-a-Lago during his first term. About one-third of that is the flight cost of Air Force One for the round trip, with additional expenses for flying down vehicles, including two presidential limousines, for Trump’s motorcade, and reimbursing the Coast Guard for stationing a gunship off the coast in the Atlantic Ocean and heavily armed boats in the Intracoastal. The costs are based on 2017 dollars and are probably even higher today. 

Last night, he fired the African-American four-star general who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling him a DEI hire, and replaced him with a white, largely unknown, retired three-star general. The first female commander of the U.S. Navy was fired as well for the same spurious reason.

We need to add these events to our ever-growing list of the Stable Genius' most stupid actions since taking office just last month: 

  • He posted a picture of himself to social media wearing a crown on his head and with the words "Long live the king."  
  • He has spent roughly a third of his time in office playing golf on his own for-profit courses at considerable expense of taxpayer money for travel, logistics, and security. Trump personally profits from the money spent on each of the trips.
  • He claimed that Ukraine had somehow started the war with the invading Russian army and falsely called Zelensky an unelected “dictator” who took money from the U.S. to go to war with Russia.
  • He's demanding half of Ukraine's mineral wealth in exchange for providing military support. 
  • He spread a lie that U.S.AID had shipped $100M of condoms to Hamas.
  • He suggested the U.S. should take over the Gaza strip and "own it," displacing all of the native Palestinians to create some sort of Middle East Malibu. 
  • He hinted at taking over Greenland and Panama using military force and suggested Canada should become the 51st state. 
  • He imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China and then lifted the tariffs on our North American neighbors after they repeated pledges that they had already made. 
  • After firing the workers in charge of U.S. nuclear-weapon safety, he realized that those workers were actually kind of important but didn't know how to call them back.
  • The very same thing happened after he fired Agriculture workers who were combatting the avian flu. 
  • He proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Denali and then threw a hissy fit when the AP didn't adopt his new names. 
  • He blamed the L.A. wildfire crisis on some imaginary "giant faucet" in northern California and then ordered 2.2 billion gallons of water dumped from the state's reservoirs onto Central Valley farmland that didn't need it and where it won't benefit firefighters at all (but will cause problems this summer when droughts begin). 
  • He replaced a four-star general as Secretary of Defense with an inexperienced, alcoholic, black-out drunk Fox & Friends weekend host.
  • He's named a vaccine denier to head HHS, a Russian asset now directs National Intelligence, and a conspiracy theorist is the new FBI chief.   
  • He fired the African-American four-star general chairing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling him a D.E.I hire, and replaced him with a white, three-star general. The first female commander of the U.S. Navy was fired as well for the same spurious reason.
  • He pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of the convicted January 6 rioters, including the most violent felons who pled guilty to attacking and, in some cases, killing police officers. 
  • He withdrew the U.S. from both the Paris climate-change treaty and the World Health Organization.
  • He tried to end the constitutional birthright citizenship of those born on American soil. 
  • After a tragic air accident, he blamed the incident on "DEI," even as he admitted he had no evidence but just "common sense." 
  • Finally, there's his "greatest hit," the continued Big Lie that the free and fair 2020 election was somehow "rigged" against him, despite the absence of a shred of evidence and multiple lost court cases.

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