- reverse pyromania
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- No Self Respect
This quote is from a piece by a WSJ royal court correspondent:
Inside the White House, top advisers joke that they are ruling Congress with an “iron fist,” according to people who have heard the comments. Steve Bannon, the influential Trump ally, likened Congress to the Duma, the Russian assembly that is largely ceremonial. When senior White House aide Stephen Miller recently held a party at the exclusive Ned’s Club to celebrate his 40th birthday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) showed up to honor Miller, the people said.
Bannon, who worked in the first Trump administration, attributed some of the faded resistance to Trump’s comeback after four years “in the wilderness,” a period that he said hardened Trump. “He’s doing things now he wouldn’t have ever considered the first time,” Bannon said. “He’s jackhammering away on levels you haven’t seen before.”
Bannon’s not wrong about the role of Congress in the current Trump Administration. One would have thought that the native lust for power in most Senators and Reps would lead to them asserting at least a little bit of their prerogatives as members of the body that is supposed to control appropriations. It’s telling that MTG is one of the few who are making noise about the cuts to healthcare spending or the Epstein files — the lust for power is especially strong in that one.
Trump’s decision to order the DoD to pay soldiers out of whatever funds they can find is yet another sign that the “shutdown” is going to last a long time. He might well funds to pay Air Traffic Controllers or any other group that threatens to inconvenience Americans with money.
Part of why this is happening is because Thune and Johnson are weak — they don’t want responsibility. Well, wish granted, they don’t have any. Also, God only knows what kind of pressure Trump is exerting on Johnson to keep him from letting the discharge petition for the Epstein files hit the floor. It’s going to be a long “shutdown” at the rate things are going.
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