The National Soap

The president can turn the tables and dominate the dialogue by ordering the indictment of [James] Clapper, [John] Brennan, [Susan] Rice and [former president Barack] Obama for the wholesale unconstitutional surveillance of Americans... I would seriously arrest [and] perp walk every one of these criminals, making as big a show of it as possible.

Thus saith Roger Stone, this morning, one of the President's favorite right-wing screamers, a man whose vitriol our Great Leader occasionally echoes in his own abhorrent tweets. What Stone is advising is all-out war, a strategy that makes Trump smile. Indicting Obama is sure to keep his brand big and bold in national headlines, international too. 

Ratings is his game. He watches them passionately, and gets them, day after day, night after night. Some wonder why on earth he hasn't called his people into the Oval Office and demanded each and every one create a list of the tete-a-tetes they've ever carried on with anyone having even a vaguely Russian name.  Why hasn't he had this all out? Makes no sense.

Instead, we wait for someone from that circle to rat on the others. The leakers he and the Republicans so bloody hate are, most often, members of Trump's own inner circle, who apparently love going to war as much as he does. 

We've now had 180 nights of flat-out soap opera. As my wife says, "Who needs Netflix?" 

Last night's episode threw everything the administration and its rubber-lipped spokespersons ever said about the Russian story into the wastebasket. What Donald Trump the Second's emails make painfully vivid is that Junior, at least, was salivating for whatever juicy details the Kremlin could pass along. He "loved it," he said--his words right there on the note.

Take any thousand Trump denials of collusion, take words authored or uttered by any Trumpster, and just dump 'em, every one of them. They're all bogus. They're bullshit, plain and simple. 

And what of the Trump faithful, the ever loyal 36 per cent, who would rip Trump out of jail even if he gunned down some poor sucker on Broadway--or was it Wall Street? What do his disciples say after yesterday? Do they second Roger Stone's motion for another civil war?

The lordly Republicans in the House and Senate have been "the silent majority" ever since they've taken office. Yesterday, nothing changed, even someone like South Dakota's John Thune, graduate of Biola, who knows better. Yesterday, the standard answer to the latest Trump mess was to point gingerly at those committees presently investigating the connections, which is to say "no comment." Like the monkeys, they put their hands over ears, eyes, and throat. 

What's going to happen? Figure on this--when Trump gets hit, he's  known for throwing a roundhouse, a dozen of them if need be. Figure on that. 

Maybe he'll listen to Roger Stone. Wouldn't be the first time, after all. Maybe he'll order indictments against every last player in the Obama administration on charges that will only serve to make the national mood even more explosive, divide us even more.

That would keep the ratings up. 

Nobody knows where this is going. Nobody. That's exactly the way he likes it. 

"Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough.'"