Trump scrambles the boiled egg

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY

IT’S SO GOOD for the soul to laugh heartily at Donald Trump again, as I have been all week. Since he and the Russians pulled off the biggest political con since Brexit, I’ve been waking up miserable every day when I remember that it wasn’t a bad dream and president Obama really had been followed by this fat firetruck, this idiot-without-the-savant, this poster man-child of rich white man’s son’s entitlement and greed.

Except this week.

I’ve been laughing at Trump again, the way I used to when I saw the slovenly fat firetruck on the Apprentice.

It reminds me of the old stag party joke. Because he’s promised to meet the boys at the bar, a man plans to pick a fight with his wife and storm out of the house. His wife, though, greets him at the door with a smile and tells him she’s cooked his favourite, steak and mashed potatoes. He snaps that he doesn’t want stinking blasted red meat that will kill him.

His wife asks sweetly what he’d prefer. He huffs he wants one scrambled egg and one boiled egg. She cooks him one egg, perfectly scrambled, another perfectly boiled, and serves it with hot buttery toast. He sits fuming silently before slamming his hand on the table.

“I can’t stay in this house,” he shouts. “You scrambled the egg I wanted boiled and you boiled the egg I wanted scrambled!” And he stamps out to the bar.

Since the Mueller Report, even as he maintains a masterful masquerade that he doesn’t care, Fat Nixon has been hovering between heart attack and involuntary defecation. His first words upon hearing about the investigation, remember, were, “This is the end…I’m firetrucked.” Stupid as he is, Fat Nixon knows there is one thing, and one thing only, standing between him and certain jail: the office he holds. As soon as he is no longer the legal occupant of the White House, he’s headed for the Big House.

That’s why he desperately needs to win a second term: because, if he doesn’t, it won’t be Melania batting his hand away in public, it’ll be him trying to bat Bubba’s hand away in private.

And, to my delight, this week, he abandoned all pretence of making America great again and zeroed in on keeping his own a-- out of prison.

The turning point, I reckon, came on Monday, when (not nearly so importantly) a first-instance judge ruled that the House Oversight Committee could subpoena Trump’s financial records and – crucially – refused to stay his order pending appeal. What Trump needed – desperately – wasn’t a finding that the House was not entitled to his records, but a stay of any finding that it was. The stay was the thing, not the order. His only aim was to delay everything – tax returns, financial records, Trump Tower Moscow details, Don McGahn testimony – until what we might properly call his Great White Hope of re-election.

He’s fooling the people he needs to fool, his supporters, and that’s easily done, because they’re thick as bricks, but he is himself just smart enough to know that he is well and properly firetrucked.

All he can do to avoid personal incarceration is remain the leader of the free world.

So, on Wednesday, he refused to shake hands with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and stormed out of the meeting declaring he wouldn’t work with the Democrats until they stopped their “phony investigations” of him – and I read the spin: he’s trying to provoke them into beginning impeachment.

Trump’s calculation is that his base won’t care and, as with the Bill Clinton impeachment, it may actually garner him some sympathy with voters. His hope – his only hope – is that impeachment will work for him and against the Democrats, the way impeaching Clinton worked against the Republicans. He knows, too, the Republican Senate will never impeach him.

So, this week, I’m cracking up, watching that poor little rich thieving traitorous treasonous firetruck scampering up and down, insulting Democrats and defying subpoenas.

Look at you, I snickered, trying to find a scrambled egg you can say you wanted boiled.

Man, I’m going to be laughing for weeks and weeks, perhaps until the next election.

But I may choke on that laughter if the Democrats are stupid enough to boil his scrambled egg for him and begin impeachment.

BC Pires is egging on Fat Nixon, who is fiddling as Washington burns