Mercifully, I missed most of the triple digit heat wave that hit Texas last week and got back just in time to think, “Ugh, it’s too darn hot!” And based on the number of dashboard thermometer pictures posted on Facebook, a lot of other folks thought so, too.
Does complaining about how hot it is make it more bearable? Is it a “misery loves company” thing? Maybe so.
While Texas was becoming Hell’s Sink Hole, Trump was over in Helsinki creating a whole other kind of heat. (OK, that was a stretch, but studies have shown it’s harder to think, much less be clever, when it’s too darn hot.) So back to Finland.
Standing by Putin (literally and figuratively), Trump sided with Russia against the FBI and set off a firestorm. With folks tossing the “T” word around as casually as the “N” word at a KKK rally, Trump copped to a misspeak—the old “I meant ‘wouldn’t’ when I said ‘would’” bit—setting off a host of memes, featuring celebrities and characters retracting the declarative statements for which they are most famous. (My personal favorite: “When I said that I would return, I meant that I wouldn’t return”—attributed to both Douglas MacArthur and Jesus Christ.)
Tripping on his words isn’t Trump’s only heating problem. Lanny Davis, lawyer for Michael Cohen, who was Trump’s lawyer, said that Cohen is “no longer the previous Michael Cohen that you knew—taking a bullet for Donald Trump, saying anything to defend him, being a good soldier—that is over.” Sounds like Cohen couldn’t stand the heat and is trying to tap dance out of the Trump kitchen. For Trump, the only thing worse than having someone turn on you who knows where the bodies are buried is having that someone be the one who actually buried the bodies. Gee, it’s getting hot up in here.
Plenty of other government officials are feeling the heat. Congressmen Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows filed articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, arguably the lamest dance step by a politician since Rick Perry was on Dancing with the Stars. It’s not clear who put the heat on them, but only 11 of the 236 Republicans in the House of Representatives signed on to the effort. That leaves a whole lot of Republicans feeling a different heat. From the midterms, maybe? Even the long suffering Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended Rosenstein. And, Lord knows, Sessions knows a thing or two about handling the heat in the Trump kitchen.
In any event, we’re not even half way through this long, hot summer. And while I’d like to tune in to the Washington folks trying to tap dance their way out of the kitchen where the oven is preheating to cook someone’s goose, it may be too much for me.
This weather saps my energy, so I may skip cable news and just watch some pros doing some real tap dancing. A little Fred Astaire, a little Gene Kelly.
And perhaps a whole lot of Ann Miller, who knew what to do when it’s too darn hot.
