"Two beautiful poles”: President Trump turns the White House into a joke

At first I thought it was satire.

On Earth Day, the Trump administration published a press release with the headline, “On Earth Day, we finally have a president who follows science.”

I stifled a laugh.

Washington, Adams, Jefferson and every other previous president took actions that supported science. John F. Kennedy challenged us to go to the moon. Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency. But, apparently, none of that counted. Thank God, we “finally” have Donald Trump. Of course, Trump also couldn’t help himself. The press release also took a swipe at former President Joe Biden and referred to “the previous administration, which wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on virtue signalling and ineffective grifts.” According to Trump, the guy who promoted an anti-vaxxer,the man who wants to eliminate climate change science, cut funds to the EPA, NOAA, NASA and the National Weather Service, is the only president who has ever supported science.

That’s not the only laughable thing Trump has said recently. Wednesday morning, the president walked out of the White House to the North Lawn and told members of the press he’s paying out of his own pocket for two new flag poles at the White House. “We're putting up a beautiful, almost 100 foot tall American flag on this side and another one on the other side, two flags top of the line. And they needed flag poles for 200 years. It was something I've often said, you know, they don't have a flag pole per se. So we're putting one right where you saw us, and we're putting another one on the other side, on top of the mounds. It's going to be two beautiful poles."

The current flag poles, 75 feet tall, and one on top of the White House apparently don’t count. Trump’s does because it’s bigger. “You don’t think he’s overcompensating do you?” a former GOP member of Congress asked me. “He probably needs something that looks patriotic to sit on.”

But wait, there’s more.

Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, apparently sent texts including classified information to his family members. The Trump administration blamed the corrupt media for that. Hegseth went on Fox News to say the media and others would be investigated. After all, we were reminded, it’s a crime to publish classified information.

Pot, meet kettle.

And, while you’re at it, don’t forget about that briefing on Tuesday.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed the whole Pentagon is out to get Hegseth and he’s the only one telling the truth. When reminded that it was Hegseth’s own people – those closest to him – who outed him for his less-than-stellar behavior, Leavitt blamed “leakers” – those people who are disloyal to the president — for causing the problems. As for Hegseth himself, the president still claims to love him – although there are dozens of defense and White House sources who say the hunt is on for another defense secretary. After all, it’s hard to be taken seriously when the “entire” Pentagon considers Hegseth a cable news clown with bad tattoos who wants to install a makeup room in the Pentagon. Seriously, you can’t make this up.

Meanwhile, the comedy keeps coming.

The Supreme Court, in a rare late Saturday night order, directed the Trump administration "not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court," following an urgent application by the American Civil Liberties Union.The ACLU argued the individuals have not been afforded due process. By Tuesday, in an Oval office spray with pool reporters, the president was again publicly defiant, saying that he hoped to "get cooperation from the courts" to deport the "thousands of people that are ready to go out" and claimed that "you can't have a trial for all of these people."

So, who gets due process? Apparently only those Trump deems worthy – which will only be those with whom he has beneficial transactions. Cue the canned laughter.

But, admittedly, the most cringe-worthy attempt at low brow humor came last week when the Trump administration paraded a crime-victim’s mother through the briefing room.

The hardest thing I’ve ever done as a reporter is interview parents of dead children who were victims of violent crimes. For several years, I did so for the television show “America’s Most Wanted,” and it affected me on such a level that when I left I needed to find something less draining and more life affirming. So I started writing for Playboy Magazine.

I learned that the key to interviewing a crime victim is to not exploit them. In fact, I would often explain it this way to parents when I approached them about having to relive a horrifying aspect of their lives, “You may not know it, but in telling your story, you may remember a detail that could trigger a memory in a viewer that could lead to the capture of the killer.”

It was a fine line to walk, but in my years with the show, we caught hundreds of criminals and helped console thousands of suffering crime victims.

So, when Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, who was murdered by a Salvadorian fugitive in Maryland, stepped into the Brady Briefing room and in anguished tones told the story of the death of her daughter, I connected on a level I had not since I left AMW. I was left in tears.

I was also angry.

The Trump administration, including the Presidential Pep Secretary, did something we never did on AMW. They exploited a mother’s grief to make a political point and they did it dishonestly and by caring less about that mother’s horrifyingly bone-chilling grief than Trump cared about painting the press, Democrats and anyone who didn’t agree with his accidental removal of a different Salvadorian migrant in Maryland to a prison in El Salvador. The two cases are totally unrelated, but that didn’t stop Trump, once caught in a mistake, from describing Kilmar Abrego Garcia as an MS-13 member and a terrorist, though he’s never been convicted of either crime.

The only enemy to this country that I see is Donald Trump – and by extension all of his servants, especially his Pep Secretary who acts as a propaganda minister for the most egregious anti-American activities ever taken by any president.

But, again, they are worth laughing at for their venal stupidity, empty reasoning, and sheer chutzpah in preaching the unbelievable to the unknowing and uncaring. It’s like watching Lucy constantly convincing Charlie Brown that she won’t pull the football away from him if he wants to kick it. On that note, Stephen Miller has his Lucy impersonation working overtime. In fact, he is second only to Trump in that arena and is destined for shackles and prison yard time for openly lying in the Oval Office about Trump’s 9-0 Supreme Court loss concerning immigration that Miller peddles as a victory. Of course, Stephen Miller is about as funny as a hack comic on open mic night.

“You saw him in the Oval,” Mary Trump said about the president. “He looked at Stephen Miller and said, ‘hey, we won that one, right?’ and Miller said ‘yes’ they did. Nobody is telling this deeply damaged, destroyed human being the truth about anything that could bring him down. He’s entirely buffered and his very, very fragile ego is being protected at all costs by people who need him and are using him.”

And while that is ultimately to the detriment of the rest of us, it is still cause for laughter because it is blatantly obvious and so extremely juvenile. Unfortunately it’s like laughing at a child who continues to stick his finger in a light socket.

And speaking of hilarious, watching Tesla stock fall while Elon Musk tries to cosplay Tony Stark is worth a laugh or two. The joke running around the bubble in D.C. on Easter was that Musk had replaced all the Easter Eggs in the White House Easter Egg hunt with Teslas because they are cheaper.

With a few days left in the first 100 days of the new Donald Trump regime, it is perfectly clear (to steal a bad saying from Richard Nixon) Donald Trump remains convinced that only his opinion matters – that only his words are law. It’s kind of like Ramses in the movie “The Ten Commandments” when he says, “Command them to kneel before Pharaoh.” Mark Zaid, the Freedom of Information and national security attorney who lost his security clearance because of Trump, put it this way, “The one thing we quote we have seen in this administration is that any decision that emanates from the President of the United States is the ultimate law. That’s it. Nothing else. There is no due process.”

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But, what, if anything, can be done about this unending parade of low-brow comedians assaulting us on a daily basis from the executive branch of government? That’s a natural question that evolves from the unending daily tirade of articles and headlines telling us that Trump is a tyrant, a liar, a moron and a horrible fool.

“I think things are going to get bumpy and violent,” former Republican congress member Joe Walsh explained to me. “I think the American people are going to be in a position where we’re literally going to have to practice civil disobedience. He’ll soon be at the point where he’ll say, “we don’t need no stinkin’ midterms” and declare Martial Law. And some say that will lead to a general strike that will bring everything grinding to a halt. “That may be the only thing that will work,” Mary Trump said.

That’s a hell of a way to end a bad comedy, but it’s not the only way.

Harvard filed suit against the Trump administration to stop his erosion of education. The Associated Press successfully sued Trump to keep the AP in the White House press pool. And on Wednesday, 12 states sued the Trump administration for “illegally imposing” tax hikes on Americans through tariffs. The question remains whether Trump will respect any court decision that doesn’t go his way. At least in the case of the AP, he’s already proved that he will not.

That leaves what his niece Mary says may be the only action left: a general strike.

If you can’t use a hook to yank the bad comic off the stage, then the only way left is to simply refuse to be part of the audience. After nearly 100 days of Trump in office the options left to stifle our descent into madness and monarchy are dwindling to just that.