Total Depravity
By 
Chris Murpby tried to block Trump from accepting a billion-dollar bribe in the form of a Qatari 747 retrofitted with hundreds of millions of dollars of American taxpayer money. He offered an amendment that would bar the plane from being transferred to Trump after Trump leaves office.
“This is an extraordinary amount of money to be used on a plane retrofit that will likely only be in service for a short period of time. Well, the administration has essentially refused to brief us on the full cost,” he said. “Reports are that this number could be easily $1 billion.”
“To most Americans, that’s a lot of their money to be spent on a plane that is not going to be in the service of the United States military, in the United States Air Force, for perhaps any longer than a few months, because the president has, in fact, stated his intention to take this plane with him when he leaves office.”
The “few months” is because the retrofitting will take years. This is the most obvious possible bribe/unconstitutional emolument, so the Republican response to it all is that Trump is probably just joking, because if he were serious this would be like a bribe, which is not something they would vote for of course:
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a spending cardinal, [wtf is a spending cardinal] argued the president has only jokingly said the jet would be transferred to his library, however.
“The president has never came out and said he’s putting this in the library. He said it in a joke one time,” he said, adding that there have been talks instead “about using the current one that has been in the air for over 35 years to possibly be retired and go in the presidential library.”
“Senator Mullin, on May 12, the president of the United States said this, this plane will, quote, ‘Go directly to my presidential library at the end of my term,’” Murphy later argued. “There was no great chuckle from the audience after he said that you may interpret that as a joke. It certainly didn’t seem to be intended as a joke.”
As always, kidding on the square is integral to the fascist schtick.
The friend who pointed me to what in these totally depraved times is basically a non-story: “Remember how Hunter Biden got paid to do actual work and how mad these same people got?”
Next up, Unconditional Election, to be followed by Limited Atonement.