How low the mighty USA has fallen
Videos from Donald Trump’s excursion to Scotland have repeatedly gone viral. They demonstrate that the convicted felon has a lousy golf swing and, oh, “Pele” cheats.
Another viral video comes from Trump’s meeting on Monday with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the president’s opening comments got drowned out by a nearby bagpiper. The pair were meeting to discuss their recent trade deal.
The Irish Star reports:
Trump met Starmer to much fanfare at the golf course, with the prime minister rolling up in his motorcade and exiting to blasting bagpipes. He and his wife, Victoria, greeted Trump on the front steps of the clubhouse, then began to speak — but the bagpipes drowned them out for several minutes while Trump attempted to deliver his speech.
The rest of the president’s trip involved visiting his many golf courses around Scotland, including one near Aberdeen that his family is slated to open next month.
Critics have argued that the overseas trip — which includes Trump’s entourage of advisers, White House and support staffers and Secret Service agents as well as the pool of reporters who cover Trump — is a prime example of Trump blending his presidential duties with promoting his family’s business.
Self promotion and grift are among Trump’s few, true talents. Indeed, he seems to have arranged for the American taxpayer to buy him a $1 billion-plus “free” airplane, a gift from Qatar. It needs, um, a little upgrading to be suitable as Air Force One (The New York Times):
Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where “black budgets” are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Mr. Trump’s pet project are inventive.
Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon’s most over-budget, out-of-control projects — the modernization of America’s aging, ground-based nuclear missiles.
In recent weeks, congressional budget sleuths have come to think that amount, slipped into an obscure Pentagon document sent to Capitol Hill as a “transfer” to an unnamed classified project, almost certainly includes the renovation of the new, gold-adorned Air Force One that Mr. Trump desperately wants in the air before his term is over. (It is not clear if the entire transfer will be devoted to stripping the new Air Force One back to its airframe, but Air Force officials privately acknowledge dipping into nuclear modernization funds for the complex project.)
If Trump is lucky, “upgrades to its communications systems and engines as well as the addition of antimissile systems,” plus lots of tacky, gold decorative accents complete in time for him to use it as the president’s plane in time for his final(?) year in office. God knows what he’ll pick for a paint scheme.
He’s making national humiliation great again.
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