Trump, the supposedly brilliant businessman, can't do basic math

Look, I can't help it if the Trump administration keeps lobbing these fat pitches.

Donald Trump's budget has a $2 Trillion Math Error:

One of the ways Donald Trump’s budget claims to balance the budget over a decade, without cutting defense or retirement spending, is to assume a $2 trillion increase in revenue through economic growth. This is the magic of the still-to-be-designed Trump tax cuts. But wait — if you recall, the magic of the Trump tax cuts is also supposed to pay for the Trump tax cuts. So the $2 trillion is a double-counting error.

It's astonishing.  Not only can Trump himself not do basic math (no big surprise there, actually) but no one in his administration can either.   Think about that.  Not a single person in the Trump administration caught this massive but ultimately trivial error.  This is second-grade math, folks.  There is no excuse for this.

Trump hypocrisy watch: it's trifecta week!

I am trying to spend less time sniping at Donald Trump and more time engaged in actual productive activities, but sometimes a pitch is too fat not to take a swing at it.

In the last week -- no, in the last week end -- Donald Trump did not one, not two, but three things that he previously excoriating Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton for.

1.  The phrase "radical Islamic terrorism" has suddenly vanished from Trump's vocabulary after insisting that you cannot solve the problem unless you say the name.

2.  He bowed to the Saudi king  after raking Barack Obama over the coals for doing the same thing.  (Oh, wait, Trump didn't bow.  He curtsied.  I guess that makes it OK?)

3.  He dropped from exhaustion a mere three days into his first overseas trip after questioning whether Hillary Clinton had the stamina (and the "look") to be president:

She doesn't have the look. She doesn't have the stamina. I said she doesn't have the stamina. And I don't believe she does have the stamina. To be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina ... You have to be able to negotiate our trade deals. You have to be able to negotiate, that's right, with Japan, with Saudi Arabia. I mean, can you imagine, we're defending Saudi Arabia? And with all of the money they have, we're defending them, and they're not paying? All you have to do is speak to them. Wait. You have so many different things you have to be able to do, and I don't believe that Hillary has the stamina.

If I have to write the word "irony" one more time when writing about Donald Trump my head will explode.

Taking "missing the point" to a whole new level

It's a real struggle to keep upright in the maelstrom of cluelessness that swirls around Donald Trump. He's like a black hole, sucking in all facts and reason beyond his event horizon, never to be seen again, leaving behind an accretion disk of chaos and contradiction.  It's hard to know where to begin to attack this monster.  But you've gotta start somewhere, and this seems like as good a place as any:

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan has been unusually silent over the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, but when he shared his views late Wednesday on Fox News, he stood by President Trump's decision. 

Ryan acknowledged the dismissal "was no small thing," but he joined others in the party who have split from those more troubled by the abrupt firing, which stunned Washington amid the investigation of the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. 

The speaker joined Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in brushing back calls for an independent investigation, saying the ongoing congressional and federal reviews were sufficient. 

"I think the truth is James Comey, who is a worthwhile and dedicated public servant, I think he had just basically lost the confidence of a lot of Republicans and a lot of Democrats based upon his conduct, his actions, and some of the comments that he made," Ryan said. "Most importantly, he lost the confidence of the president, and it is entirely within the president's role and authority to relieve him, and that's what he did."  [Emphasis added.]

Well, of course he lost the confidence of the president!  He was investigating the president for potentially serious crimes, possibly even treason against the United States.  Archibald Cox lost Richard Nixon's confidence for similar reasons.

Yes, it's true that the circumstances here are not exactly the same as the Saturday Night Massacre.  History never repeats itself exactly.  (For one thing, Richard Nixon was never suspected of treason.)  But the circumstantial evidence that Trump fired Comey to stop the Russia investigation is pretty overwhelming.  Whether Trump colluded with the Russians or not, that anyone, Republican or Democrat, would support the president in firing the FBI director to squash an active investigation into the president himself is a threat to democracy and the rule of law.

History is watching you, Mr. Speaker.