It’s official: Trump $1.8 billion slush fund for traitors dead at least for now
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This is, I believe, the first significant thing that Trump has wanted to do during his second administration that went too far for at least a few members of the current version of the Republican party:
The federal government is abandoning an effort to create a $1.8bn secretive fund to compensate Donald Trump’s allies, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said on Tuesday.
“We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche said during a House appropriations committee hearing on Tuesday.
It’s unclear if Trump, his family and related entities will continue to receive immunity from IRS audits.
What this illustrates of course is that just a handful of Republicans in Congress is a sufficient number to stop most of what Trump is doing. The fact that it’s been impossible to find such a handful until this moment is emphasized by this. On the other hand, things are clearly getting bad enough in re the midterms that some sort of pushback might start to develop.
Many thanks to everybody who has contributed to the fund drive. I got a couple of nice messages (and contributions) from longtime readers this afternoon, which was a pleasant reminder that there’s got to be a morning after.
Which reminds me that I’m so old I saw the original Poseidon Adventure during its original theatrical release. The only things I can remember are Shelly Winters’ heroic and unexpected use of her swimming skills, and Gene Hackman cursing God at the end, although I might have mis-understood that last bit. The whole 1970s disaster movie genre is interesting, and maybe I’ll write about it after re-watching Airport, The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down . . . there were a bunch, all with the fabled “All-Star Cast.” Airplane is of course one of the greatest parodies ever made, right up there with LGM canonical text This is Spinal Tap. Wow this post is really rambling on. Time to take the MoCA again!
To avert further disasters: