"like an umbrella"

Sometimes it seems that the present administration is capable of producing a few rollicking old stories as good as anything from the pens of Gilbert and Sullivan. I mean, there are far bigger stories, far more reasons to despair than the new, sickly green color of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. There is a war in Iran--or is there? There's a newly invigorated socialist movement in the land of the free and the home of the brave. There's an ancient overweight would-be monarch who seems utterly incapable of holding on to power, given polls that increasingly and convincingly make him look like a loser. And there's a few moments of sheer hilarity.

Those off-color reflecting pools have been raising a stink for weeks already, but last week they turned into created a flood of madness when Janine Pirro, one of Trump's oldest and most trusted buddies and recently named the U.S. District Attorney for DC, ushered her own version of the truth into the fray and blamed the horror on shoddy workmanship, an indictment that made another explanation loyalist in Trumpster camp look, well, dumb, former gov of North Dakota, Doug Bergum. It  appears that there was long ago on capitol hill some bad blood coursing through both of their veins toward or with each other--about what I don't know. 

Trump, who is not practiced at keeping his mouth shut, laid into his old friend (and Fox News-er), Ms. Pirro, offering her newly documented explanation for the green mess on incompetent handlers. That did not sit well with the boss, who characterized Ms. Pirro's new explanation memorably, by saying "she folded like an umbrella," a line that set lips a grinnin' all over town. Yet that day, the Fox News barrister was spotted leaving her office complex all by her lonesome, packing enough ammunition to end the battle, if not the war. 

What happened? It's unclear, except it seems that the meeting with the king left him mellowed a bit, in a state of mind a few notches below "fold like an umbrella."

Much ado, much ado.

Sometimes I wonder what the American public will expect of his immediate successors--MAGA or not. This one has made the f-word pretty much standard political dialect. He's strangely off -key more often than a kid trying the violin. His anger at one of his oldest and trusted friends resulted from his having to field questions about her refusing to stay with his much preferred vandalism story, the explanation he liked, true or not. Trump goes unhinged because one of his trusted lieutenants told the truth when a lie was the much-preferred route , or so he directed. 

Are we going to take that from whoever replaces him in two years? Are we going to want another number 1 who blows a gasket when someone tells the truth? Can there be another? Are there others? 

I don't know. I'd like to believe he's one of a kind.