The joke is on us

Where do we sit, fellow citizens, as we reach yet another installment of the Ides of March?

Let’s start with international diplomacy, shall we? Last time I checked in with you, our Fearless Leader had just headed across the pond to Vietnam to meet with the murderous North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. How’d we do? Let’s start with what Kim Jong Un got: He was granted the place on the world stage he’s always yearned for; he got the entire Western world to look the other way about his massive and long-standing human rights travesties; he got Trump to spit in the face of American intelligence agencies, all of whom told Trump of definitive proof that North Korea hadn’t stopped – like they’d promised earlier – developing nuclear weapons. (“I believe Putin,” Trump said to the American intelligence directors when they told him of evidence that the North Koreans were lying. Putin had told Trump – in yet another private meeting that we still know nothing about – that the North Koreans had fair.). The summit also gave Trump the opportunity to take the word of the North Korean despot at face value regarding the death of an American citizen, Otto Warmbier, who was tortured in North Korea and returned to U.S. custody in a coma before passing away. ("He tells me that he didn't know about it and I will take him at his word," Trump said, adding that the North Korean dictator "felt badly about it. He felt very badly.").

Then again, diplomacy is always a trade-off – and Trump, after all, is the best dealmaker our country has ever seen – or so he tells us. So what did President Dealmaker – I mean of the United States – get from North Korea?

Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Within days of Trump’s return to the U.S., we all learned of new evidence that North Korea had resumed yet another nuclear project.

We did, of course, learn of Trump’s craven instinct to believe authoritarian strongmen around the world over the evidence provided by American citizens. But who doesn’t Trump believe? Simple: His longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen. Never mind that Cohen has provided suitcases full of paper evidence of Trump deals he worked on, along with copies of the checks that Trump paid him to give to porn stars to buy their silence before the 2016 election. Nah— that sort of flimsy evidence doesn’t work with Trump, who countered Cohen’s hard evidence and under-oath testimony with… some nasty tweets saying bad things about his former right-hand man of a dozen years.

What else have we learned about Trump just in the last couple of weeks? He’s long claimed he graduated at the top of his class in college—but we’ve learned that he dispatched Michael Cohen and others to not only his college but his high school and grade school to threaten them intensely enough that they wouldn’t release Trump’s transcripts or grades. He claims he’s innocent of everything, but has been using a battalion of lawyers in a desperate hope of preventing him from having to testify under oath about anything. He claims he’s a great businessman, but virtually every business he’s ever operated has filed for bankruptcy— and of course he still won’t release his tax returns.

Earlier this month, we also learned that the 2017 tax law – passed by the Republican-led House and Senate and signed by Trump – will add $1.455 trillion to the deficit. This figure comes from the government’s own nonpartisan budget office. Our federal deficit – Trump promised to erase it in eight years, remember?– grew by 77 percent in a single year.

Where we are now: We have the biggest trade deficit in our country’s history; a federal debt and deficit that’s growing astronomically; stagnant wages; corporations using all the money they’re saving in taxes to buy their own stock back to make themselves even richer, rather than pay people more or put the money back into the economy, which is how the entire program was sold to us citizens; and millions and millions of middle-class families losing billions and billions of dollars in refunds while corporate executives simply give themselves more money.

Thank God for the wall, though, yeah? I mean, sure, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress voted against letting Trump declare a national emergency to try to force the money out of our budget to pay for it— but that’s not stopping our Trump! He’s going to take a few billion dollars from our military pensions fund and a few billion more from planned military construction programs to pay for it. (Anybody remember that great Trump line from the campaign trail: “And who’s gonna pay for it?” “OUR MILITARY’S PENSION FUND!”)

Not to worry, though: After all, Trump’s only one man! He can’t do all this by his lonesome! Problem is, he’s down a few good men: Because of an historic turnover of personnel in his administration, at the moment the United States of America has no Secretary of Defense, no Secretary of the Air Force, no Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director, no Secretary of the Interior, no United Nations Ambassador, no White House Chief of Staff, no White House Communications Director.

Here’s what we do have: $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and $845 billion in cuts to Medicare, according to Trump’s new budget. 191 criminal charges, 75 indictments, 5 guilty pleas, and 5 convictions (and counting). Also: 224 days that Trump has spent at a Trump property, 173 of them golfing (and counting).

Thank God, in times like these, for Senator Kevin Cramer, who’s keeping us focused on the real danger: Socialism! Yes, that’s right: Socialism. The Cheeto Cheerleader’s solution to all of the above and everything else our country is staring down at the moment is to. . . to. . . to convince everyone that the Democrats want everyone hugging trees and waiting in long lines for government bread. (Hey, Kev! You forgot to throw in that old joke about death panels!)

Is this really what you voted for?

Corey Seymour is a proud NRHS graduate who went on to study political science, economics and literature at UND and Georgetown University. A former writer and editor on the National Affairs Desk at “Rolling Stone” and at many other magazines, he now works as a senior editor at “Vogue” in New York. Write him at [email protected].