Donald Trump and what's left of the Presidential Records Act
So it turns out Donald Trump had 15 boxes of White House records stored at Mar-a-Lago and that violates the Presidential Records Act which mandates (and you know how much Conservatives hate mandates they disagree with — mandates they agree with are just fine) that all Presidential records have to be preserved by each Administration so they can be passed along to the National Archives at the end of their time in office.
The records belong to the country, not the President.
But according to a Washington Post story, Trump would tear up documents he was supposed to preserve and then staffers from the White Office of Records Management would try to tape them back together which makes the Oval Office sound like a highly-dysfunctional kindergarten class right after they got a sugar high off their juice boxes.
Trump was repeatedly told he was breaking the law when he destroyed records, but didn’t give a rat’s ass, an attitude mirrored by his lovely Magician’s Assistant Kellyanne Conway and when she was called on violating the Hatch Act (which is either a law that puts a wall between government officials and partisan political activity or an uncannily accurate description of the time I saw the San Diego Chicken break out of giant egg) here’s what Kellyanne had to say about her law breaking:
“Blah, blah, blah…Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”
And here’s what then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had to say about the Administration’s law-breaking:
“Nobody outside the Beltway really cares.”
So you had a White House full of people who were basically saying, “We don’t need no stinking badges” and ignoring whatever law they happened to disagree with, which sounds pretty bad, but is made worse by the addition of a heaping helping of hypocrisy when you remember Donald Trump considered himself a Law and Order President.
Tom Brady retired and I paid tribute through a cartoon that suggests that who and/or whomever follows Brady has some Big Shoes to Fill because Brady won seven Super Bowls and I drew that cartoon even though – like much of America – I don’t like Tom Brady.
Probably because Brady made $293 million during his career in salary, incentives and bonuses which doesn’t count the money he made for endorsements and his wife looks like this:
But also because Brady wore a coat that suggest he was about to perform at the Grand Ole Opry or be the featured matador at a Tijuana bullfight:
Really, Tom?
Your wife’s a fashion model and she didn’t say jackshit about that coat?
Also…
Until I recently watched an ESPN documentary called “The Tuck Rule” I had completely forgotten that Tom’s career got a big boost at the beginning when a referee lost his mind in that snowy Patriots-Raiders playoff game and ruled that Charles Woodson hadn’t caused a fumble and instead said it was an incomplete pass (which is what would happen if I ever hit on Tom’s wife, Gazelle Munchkin…and I might have that name wrong which definitely wouldn’t help my case) and the ruling was so bad that eventually the NFL threw out the rule.
So basically, I’m like the nerds in high school who envy the football team quarterback who dates the head cheerleader and hope the QB shows up at the 20-year reunion 75 pounds overweight, dragging a wife who looks like Leonid Brezhnev and instead he shows up looking like a damn movie star, with seven Super Bowl rings, so much money he’d need a fleet of Brinks trucks to carry it and a wife hotter than donut grease.
Man, now that I’ve thought about it, I cannot believe I did a nice cartoon about Tom Brady.
At some point in the 1980s I belatedly realized my job as a political cartoonist involved a lot of arguing (with editors, fellow editorial board members and the occasional pissed-off reader) and I also realized I wasn’t very good at it.
When I was growing up, family arguments largely consisted of yelling louder than your opponent, telling him and/or her to perform an anatomical impossible act and if none of that worked, inviting him and/or her to step out of the lawn to “settle” things.
Unfortunately, proving a point by offering to kick your boss’s ass is frowned upon in the overly-stuffy business world.
Although I really gotta think if the Lincoln-Douglass Debates were settled by a best two-out-of-three steel cage tag-team match (with the addition of Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Brown) they would have been way more entertaining and Abe Lincoln fans would go absolutely batshit when he pulled out his patented move, The Rail Splitter, did a flip off the top rope and kicked the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the nuts.
Tell me you wouldn’t pay good money to see that and you can’t because you would.
Anyway…
I decided to learn something about debating and the first thing you’re supposed to do in an argument – and you might want to write this down – is define your opponent’s position.
Do not immediately offer a counter-argument, just keep asking questions about your opponent’s position – is it always true, are there exceptions, just who the hell do they think they are (OK, I added that last one…blame my upbringing) – and by the time your opponent has fully defined his or her position you probably will have won the argument because most people don’t think things all the way through and their argument will collapse under its own weight.
This is why lawyers hate the sound of their client’s voice because most of us think if we’re talking a lot we must be winning and lawyers think if we’re talking a lot we’re just providing the rope that will eventually hang us.
Take that last cartoon: if government does not have the right to enforce mandates, then what about driving on the wrong side of the road or driving drunk?
I took my opponent’s argument and extended the logic to another situation to show that clearly the government can enforce some mandates and considering some of the knuckleheads we have running around currently, thank God for that.
Alrighty then.
That’s it for today and if I don’t talk to you before that (although I’m working on something about baseball’s lockout, so I kinda think I will) enjoy the Super Bowl and if you don’t like football, enjoy the Super Bowl commercials.