Nurse the Hate: My Favorite TV Show

The best show on television right now is the circus surrounding Donald Trump.  It’s one of those difficult shows to follow if you aren’t dialed in, like if David Lynch produced “Lost” and you first turned it on during the third season and expected to understand what is going on.  All of what I am about to type seems unbelievable, but that’s what makes this the “can’t miss” program of the TV season.  It’s “Must See TV”. 

In the last few days, the President of the United States brought on a possibly mentally unstable Rudy Giuliani as a member of his legal team.  Giuliani promptly went on TV reversing course on the previous version of events regarding Stormy Daniels and volunteered that Trump knew Cohen had paid off the porn star and Trump had also paid Cohen back via multiple payments.  He also added there was another $300K of payments to other individuals that had not even been reported yet.  Why he offered this up without being asked on live TV was difficult to explain. 

The White House pretended that this was exactly what they had planned all along, despite every other person that worked at the White House being completely blindsided.  The President then tweeted a confirmation of Rudy’s version of the events.  This flies directly in the face of the video of Trump on Air Force One previously being asked if he knew about the payments to the porn actress and him saying “No”.

Today in a wild story twist, Trump went back to his original version and claimed Giuliani “didn’t have his facts straight” as if he hadn’t confirmed what Giuliani had said just the day before.  “Virtually everything said has been said incorrectly, and it’s been said wrong, or it’s been covered wrong in the press.” said Trump.  While the sentence itself is baffling, it’s especially confusing as what has been said has been recorded directly coming from the mouths of the participants.  When he is referring to things “being said incorrectly”, he also must be referring to himself as he has at one time or another supported every version of this story.  Trump, who often refers to himself in third person, has now entered the surreal by calling himself out as not speaking accurately about himself.  The point has now been reached where even Trump cannot follow the storyline he has created. 

Giuliani released a statement today that said “references to timing were not describing my understanding of the president’s knowledge, but instead, my understanding of these matters.”  I am not sure what that means exactly, but I do know this.  Generally, when legal council is hired, it is hired for the specific purpose of helping you out of trouble.  It is not usually hired to help fuck you up even further.  I don’t think I would want my lawyer volunteering to go on TV and just start riffing on what I knew and when I knew it to have entered into the public record.  However, I probably also wouldn’t hire a lunatic like Rudy in the first place.

What cannot be disputed is that Rudy is a great addition to the cast of the show, perhaps the best new cast member since The Mooch.  The one thing about The Show is the cast turns over quickly.  Story lines are unpredictable and characters can get written out at any time.  For example, it appears that John Kelly might be on his way out shortly as he has been reported to have referred to the President as “an idiot”, which I think isn’t as bad as Tillerson’s “moron” comment, but still seems unlikely to play well with Trump.  With luck, we’ll get a more exciting member of the cast in that role soon.

I think it was all summed up perfectly by the President this afternoon.  “Wait a minute. It’s actually very simple. It’s actually very simple. But there has been a lot of misinformation, really. People wanting to say — and I say, you know what, learn before you speak. It’s a lot easier.”