This info comes from Politico, so obligatory grain assault,* but it sounds plausible to me:
The symbolic 100-day mark by which modern presidents are judged menaces for an image-obsessed chief executive whose opening sprint has been marred by legislative stumbles, legal setbacks, senior staff kneecapping one another, the resignation of his national security adviser and near-daily headlines and headaches about links to Russia.
The date, April 29, hangs over the West Wing like the sword of Damocles as the unofficial deadline to find its footing — or else.
But however real Trump’s frustrations are with the three rival power centers he has installed — chief of staff Reince Priebus, son-in-law Jared Kushner and chief strategist Steve Bannon — top officials inside and around the White House don’t expect Trump to make any drastic changes until after 100 days, lest staff-turmoil stories swamp a key stretch of media coverage.
That reprieve — unless Trump simply decides he’s had enough — has both bought his staff a little time and put it on edge.
“One hundred days is the marker, and we’ve got essentially 2 1/2 weeks to turn everything around,” said one White House official. “This is going to be a monumental task.”
In a White House ceremony this morning marking the successful theft of the SCOTUS seat, Trump bragged, “I got it done in the first 100 days. You think that’s easy?”
Sounds like the brittle narcissist is acutely aware of the 100 days marker, which is why he’s taking credit for a theft that rightly belongs to the senior Senatortoise from Kentucky and a nominee he (Trump) chose — probably on the basis of appearance –) from an array presented by the Heritage Foundation.
Anyhoo, I hope it’s true and that every one of the sleazy fucks mentioned in the Politico story is a real person who is sweating bullets over how to reframe this enormous clusterfuck as the greatest first 100 days of all time. Anyone venal and amoral enough to labor in service of this massive fraud and disgrace of an administration should be permanently consigned to PR hell. That’s the very minimum punishment they deserve for their part in this unfolding absurdity.
Open thread!
*I once heard tell of a person who actually thought the expression “grain of salt” was “grain assault,” so whenever I hear the phrase, I imagine a cascade of barley…
SiubhanDuinne
I love Mondegreens! Heard one recently that I hadn’t come across previously, although it seems to be fairly common: Cutting off your nose despite your face
clay
With Republican control of the Senate and a Majority Leader who will rewrite the rules to consolidate power… yes. That’s easy.
In fact, everything they want to do SHOULD be that easy. That it’s not speaks volumes.
Epicurus
According to Trump, he’s had the greatest six months of any President in history. 2 1/2 weeks? Ain’t gonna happen.
ruemara
I’m holding on to the idea of the fervent prayers of a righteous man availing much. With much fervence, may the Dark Ones consume them publicly en masse. Tekeli-li!
Currently, I’m drawing a pair of breasts to be boned and animated for a side project. If I complete this, I may just check myself into a mental institution for conceiving of breasts fighting to death in a bra.
germy
the new normal
Corner Stone
Wait…I thought he was winning by displaying massive clusterfuckedness?
WTS, this seating of Gorsuch to SCOTUS is a massive blow to our country, and if anything beyond smoking remains are left of the US, it will certainly be Trump’s greatest legacy.
Josie
Just imagine this – you have a short period of time to accomplish big stuff and the three you have to help you get it done are Reince Priebus, Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon. The fact that Trump doesn’t run screaming away from the scene proves how monumentally blind he is to reality.
Felonius Monk
Does this mean that they are going to undo every idiotic thing that they have done so far? I think probably not, so this is just more bullshit being spouted by the underlings.
Corner Stone
@ruemara:
I always thought the bra was a defensive measure designed to keep them from ganging up on the belly button and assaulting it daily?
JMG
As we all know, nothing generates better employee production and morale than a management obsessed with an arbitrary and way too quick deadline.
germy
They get along better on the big court than we do:
WaPo
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
Bullet-Headed Troll has nabbed FTFNYT’s own Eric Lichtblau for CNN. Now they just need three of the following five (Chozick, Haberman, Lord Shafer, Baquet and Spayd) to fill their chickenfucker Bingo card.
Also: IT’S NOT A FUCKING GAME YOU SACK OF SHIT
Corner Stone
Gormless, she persisted.
Jeffro
I’d give my left arm…or ‘cut off my nose despite my face’…if just one journalist, JUST ONE, would take the occasion of the 100-day mark to write an article with the theme, “Can We Quit Pretending Now?” As in can we quit pretending
– that these bozos have any clue how to govern
– that Trump will ever become even remotely “presidential”
– that the GOP stands for anything at all other than its own power, the purpose of which is to service the .01%
– that this hasn’t been a complete disaster for the country
I’ll settle for a TIME magazine cover with a collage of everything Trumpov’s managed to screw up thus far, with the title “So. Much. Winning”
MattF
Well-oiled machine or dumpster fire? Whatever. The only thing for sure is that it’s all someone else’s fault.
MattF
@Corner Stone: I learn such a variety of useful things here.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro:
That’s not fair. Give him a chance to execute a military strike against N Korea. For on that day he will become, A President For All Pundits.
ruemara
@Corner Stone: Post surgery, a proper recovery bra is to keep the breasts away from your skin, & each other, vibrations, wind, the flutter of a butterfly wing, you name it.
JustRuss
Christ. So now Trump has to make a grand, futile gesture to meet an arbitrary deadline no one but the punditocracy gives two damns about. What could possibly go wrong?
Jeffro
@Josie:
Well said.
Trumpov’s inability to find staff, period, much less his inability to find competent staff, is a secret and valued resource to us #Resisters. It’s about the only thing that’s keeping this at a low boil for most…
SatanicPanic
@clay: Next he’ll want credit for successfully tying his shoes.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The mind does boggle that is this the easy part for Trump.
So far we’ve learned – in a crises Trump will launch some missiles, declare victory and then raise a white flag.
Woodrowfan
@Corner Stone: the breasts slowly sneak up on the belly button as the person gets older
Corner Stone
“Nothing!”, she hissed at her attackers. “Nothing, does that work for you?!”, as she slowly raised the razor tip of her spatchcock and prepared for their legislative onslaught.
Jeffro
@Corner Stone:
That’s a good point. More “beautiful” missiles launched in the dead of night…Williams and Zakaria are gonna need a cigarette, or a whole bunch of them.
germy
“Nevertheless, She Persisted” sounds like it could be the title of a Kalmar and Ruby song.
lollipopguild
Betty-your semi-automatic rifle fires pearls of barley?
Corner Stone
@JustRuss:
It’s the same thing as why the R House was so desperate to have their vote to repeal ACA on the day it had been signed previously.
They are just assholes.
Betty Cracker
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): I love Drew Magary.
Cacti
@Jeffro:
Jeremy Scahill was right. If Zakaria could have sex with Trump’s missile launch, he would.
clay
@SatanicPanic: It’s the perhaps greatest shoe-tying maybe ever. A lot of people are saying it.
Corner Stone
@SatanicPanic: “Donnie made a poopy in the potty! Look mommy!”
Mike in NC
Looking forward to the bread and circuses Trump will deliver to the peons to mark his lackluster first 100 days. Recall that Obamacare was to be repealed on Day One! Too complicated, he whined. Why haven’t the mosques been shuttered and every brown face deported?
Ah, but he’s a genius businessman who simply moves on to the next grift when reality bites his fat ass. Syria is already in the rear-view mirror as a nuclear showdown with a rival unhinged toddler in Asia approaches.
lollipopguild
@germy: When she persisted “Zing went the strings of my heart”.
ssdd
@germy: And when it gets played on the radio, some people will hear, “Neverthless, Sheep Resisted.”
Roger Moore
Good luck with that. You aren’t going to have any legislative accomplishments in that time, because Congress is going out on recess. It sounds very much as if they’re getting their ears properly chewed off while they’re out, so they’re unlikely to be eager to go back at Obamacare when they return.
SenyorDave
@Corner Stone: “Donnie made a poopy in the potty! Look mommy!”
Doesn’t not need to actually be in the potty just close. Hell as long as he doesn’t drop a load on national television most of the media acts like he’s Lincoln/Churchill/FDR all rolled into one.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Betty Cracker: Whenever I read his articles I always hear them being recited by H. Jon Benjamin as Archer.
Jeffro
Btw noting both the 100-day mark approaching and this nonsense, that Trumpov is pondering writing his own (Best. Ever. Yugely.) tax cutting plan make me feel like I’m going to need quite a bit of popcorn in the last few days of April.
Trump: “What plan would be hugely popular with my voters?”
Aide: “Cutting taxes on white people”
T: “Can we do that?”
A: “Erm…”
germy
@Mike in NC:
I’m sure these two fine men can reach a diplomatic and historic agreement.
Corner Stone
Ineluctable, she persisted.
SatanicPanic
@SenyorDave: “I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of his poop.’”
Gin & Tonic
I wouldn’t mind a cascade of barley right about now (in liquid form.)
Corner Stone
Raising the Mighty Smash Gavel she pondered her options. To strike down her foe now and be done with him, or let him attempt to wield the Gavel only to be torn down by the pack he could not control.
“Counting votes is not for everyone, John. I doubt I’ll be seeing you again.”
Corner Stone
@germy: Since they both have tiny hands I am scared to death they will meet and have a Thumb War for the deciding factor on nuclear deals. After hours of neither of them being able to cover the other person’s thumb, they get frustrated, slam their tiny palms on the Big Red Button and go take a nappy while the world burns.
Aleta
@SiubhanDuinne: My partner still says ‘It’s a doggy dog world,” as he thought as a child.
germy
@Corner Stone: I’m more optimistic. These two great men; these fine statesmen will use their combined wisdom to craft a new era of peace and prosperity for both nations.
Stan
“grain assault”
I’ll be attending a wedding soon and it will be all I can do not to blurt this out while throwing rice.
clay
I’ve heard people say “For all intensive purposes.”
Redshift
Ah. I assumed it that was about the advisability of applying grain alcohol after reading Politico.
Aleta
‘You think that’s easy?’ He has majority Senate + time to play gold every weekend. His benefactors chose the guy, someone wrote the words for him and scotch taped his tie. Not that hard unless tying his shoes counts.
Steve in the ATL
@ruemara:
I assume there is a context in which this makes some sense, but if you worked at my company I would have HR do a mandatory EAP referral.
Aleta
@Stan: Do it! Or shout it at combines in the field.
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
Ye of little faith, it will be the bestest, most wonderful tax plan ever written!!!
Villago Delenda Est
Look, tending a dumpster fire is not that difficult, Schmendrick. You people are doing just fine. Cripes, you’re making the deserting coward look like Abraham Fucking Lincoln.
Redshift
So he’ll avoid doing anything about the fact that it’s a dumpster fire of governing in order to avoid stories about it being a management disaster. If there was any justice, journalists would take advantage of the reprieve from staff shakeup stories to cover the actual dumpster fire, but since leakers aren’t spoon feeding them those stories, it seems unlikely.
Villago Delenda Est
@SenyorDave:
This is reason 5,923 for my nym.
hovercraft
@Mike in NC:
The Decision to Send a U.S. Navy Fleet Toward the Korean Peninsula Has Made Seoul Nervous
Notice our friends are not comforted by President Tiny Hands turning his lonely eyes to them. SAD!!
Gin & Tonic
The WaPo’s David Fahrethold has won the Pulitzer for National Reporting. Unsurprisingly.
Central Planning
I think you could make a mini-series or made-for-tv-movie with grain assault… “Grain Assault: When Good Wheat Goes Bad”
clay
@hovercraft: Pshaw! What do the South Koreans know about dealing with North Korea?
randy khan
@Gin & Tonic:
Also, the NY Times won for international reporting for its work on Russia.
But Peggy Noonan won the Pulitzer for commentary.
hovercraft
@Gin & Tonic:
Good for him, there really was almost no competition.
Speaking of @Villago Delenda Est: , your name not your comment. What the hell happened to Mrs. Greenspan today?
Andrea Mitchell Blasts Trump Administration: ‘People Just Flat-Out Lie’
Can someone check her meds?
HeleninEire
@Gin & Tonic: OMG. So did Peggy Noonan. WTF??
Aleta
@ruemara: Breasted are the peacemakers. :)
hovercraft
@randy khan:
But Peggy Noonan won the Pulitzer for commentary.
So another institution just died. So long Pulitzer, you had a great run.
catclub
@lollipopguild:
I thought the grain assault was grain alcohol and it indicated time to start drinking.
Angrifon
Ever see the movie Witness with Harrison Ford? Grain assault is no laughing matter…
Gin & Tonic
@randy khan:
They also won that when Walter Duranty was fellating Stalin. And have not renounced or returned it, even though Duranty was proven to be a liar and fraud.
catclub
@Cacti:
meanwhile there has been zero reporting of what (if anything) happened in the meeting with the Chinese premier.
Another Scott
@Aleta: How long did it take us to realize that “Elemeno Pee” wasn’t a word? For me, it was quite a while.
;-p
Cheers,
Scott.
randy khan
@Jeffro:
If he’d just hired Priebus, there would be a much better chance he’d get things done (given his ties to regular Republicans), so the three-headed monster is best.
Tom Q
@hovercraft: The same prize Maureen Dowd won, so it was already irredeemably tainted.
Though i always thought the Pulitzer to Dowd — the only prize centered on the Lewinsky affair after a year during which the DC press corps had obsessed over it — was meant ironically.
Central Planning
@Another Scott: I had a friend who named her cat Elemenoh.
middlelee
I was in my 40s when I discovered we were “Bringing in the sheaves,” not “Bringing in the sheep.”
ruemara
@Steve in the ATL: Steve, breasts always make sense. And your company is boring.
TenguPhule
The corpse of the Republic can’t survive another year of this shit, let alone three.
John Revolta
@Aleta: doggy-dog world
My son thought the same thing!
TenguPhule
@ruemara:
Or just move to Japan, where you’d be considered fairly conservative in the animation community.
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone:
Only till he’s impeached. Or dies. he’s not long for the court, whatever happens.
Brachiator
@middlelee:
Oh, shit…
NeenerNeener
I actually saw a corporate memo once that had “take it for granite” in it. I’ve looked at upper management differently ever since.
TenguPhule
@JustRuss:
Everything and the kitchen sink. Its all going pear shaped.
bystander
@Villago Delenda Est:
Little known fact: Abraham Lincoln was a repub, just like Trump. No really. Not many people know that.
Gravenstone
@middlelee: I still prefer beckon call to beck and call. Just call me stubborn.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator: First clue you brought the wrong thing in.
Steve in the ATL
@ruemara: boring? Why today alone I’ve had to give HR advice on handling a suicidal employee in one state and a gun-totin’ employee in another. And the gun toter, a former cop in Missouri, claims to be friends with Darren Wilson. So we have an armed racist in the office. What could go wrong?
Brachiator
@HeleninEire:
She won a Pulitzer this year?
I know she won in 1999, for commentary, but I didn’t see anything this year.
Lurking Canadian
@bystander: Lincoln is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.
misterpuff
@ruemara: So its a Side Boob Job!
Betty Cracker
@misterpuff: Pullet Surprise for funniest comment in the thread!
JustRuss
@bystander:
I keep hoping Trump brings up that little factoid at one of his rally’s in the deep south. Should go over bigly.
J R in WV
@Corner Stone:
And, don’t forget, they FAILED!!
I have things going on, keeping my mind busy, some travel planned even in the face of what we hear about going on at the border and points of entry. I contribute to candidates who seem to be good guys, hard to tell from a distance, but still.
Best of all, I have always loved Science Fiction and some Fantasy. So I can submerge my mind in another universe for escape, and even when I’m stuck here, I can fantasize about being in that other universe, one where there’s a resistance movement planning things, interesting things no one can foretell. Because they have help from beyond, or the future, or a wizard from the distant past, frozen in amber until needed to save freedom for all.
And when that doesn’t work, I come here to see Betty Cracker’s latest rant, and learn the news behind the “news”, which almost always works. I must admit, modern pharma chemistry is the only way I get a regular good night’s sleep now-a-days. Sad…
J R in WV
@Central Planning:
Friend has a dog named Deoh Gee. Then the vet assistent asked “How do you spell that?”
Pretty good humor. He makes a living painting plastic ponies and installing their unicorn horns, selling them on eBay. Does very well, actually… ????!? Hard to believe, but there it is. Fans collect them. really~!
bartkid
>I once heard tell of a person who actually thought the expression “grain of salt” was “grain assault,” so whenever I hear the phrase, I imagine a cascade of barley…
I hear the phrase “a cascade of barley”, I think of John Barleycorn: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barleycorn