Month: August 2017

This week across America, millions of children will be getting ready to go back to school and returning home that evening with their first work assignment – an essay with the title: “What I did on my summer holidays.”

Now imagine for a second you’re Donald Trump, and you’ve just been given that piece of homework. I think the first thing you’re going to do is ask for a few extra sheets of paper because, what a summer. This is what Donald and his pals in the White House got up to:

• Tweets a doctored video of himself performing a bodyslam on Vince McMahon at WrestleMania 23, with the CNN logo superimposed on McMahon’s head
• Goes to the G20 meeting. Meets Putin twice, one occasion not reported to the press. At one session, sends Ivanka in his place
• Hires a new communications director called Anthony Scaramucci
• Press secretary Sean Spicer quits in protest. Says he’s happy but is fulminating
• The Mooch (aka Scaramucci) gives obscene interview to New Yorker magazine
• Trump fires his chief of staff, the hapless Reince Priebus (abandoned at Andrews air force base)
• Hires a new one, Gen Kelly, who was the head of homeland security
• On Kelly’s first day, the president fires the new communications director – Scaramucci has lasted just 10 days – less time than it takes for a pint of milk to go off
• He hires a new comms director, his fourth in seven months
• He publicly shames his attorney-general, numerous times, but Jeff Sessions clings on
• Loses a healthcare bill
• Publicly lashes the three Republicans who voted against it, several times
• Bans transgender people from the military, via Twitter, without telling the military
• Military chiefs say: “Forget it, we don’t take orders from tweets; there’s a chain of command”
• Makes political speech to Scouts aged between 11-18
• Claims Scouts leader rang to congratulate him on greatest speech ever made
• Scouts leader says there was no such call, and issues statement apologising to Scouts for president’s misjudged address
• Says the president of Mexico rang to congratulate him on his border policies
• Mexican president says no such call ever took place
• White House denies the president is a liar, but can’t explain the president’s claims
• Takes days to sign bipartisan sanctions bill and then criticises Congress for making him sign it
• Thanks Vladimir Putin for expelling hundreds of American diplomats
• Condemns leaks but then says he likes the leaks because it shows people love him
• Encourages police officers to be rough with suspects during arrests
• Police chiefs condemn statement. White House clarifies that it was a joke
• Publicly shames the Republican Senate leader, whom he needs to get anything done, several times
• Seems to respond to North Korea by threatening nuclear war
• Tells Guam, which has a big US military base which North Korea’s leader threatened to attack, that the publicity will help tourism
• Chief strategist Steve Bannon contradicts president. Says: “There’s no military option in NK”
• Threatens Venezuela with a military option
• After a neo-Nazi rally in which a woman was killed, the president blames both sides
• Retweets photoshopped cartoon of a train running over a CNN reporter
• After backlash, cleans it up. Denounces white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan
• Cross at having been forced to do this, erases all of it and reverts to blaming both sides, saying there were “fine people there”
• Military high command issue statement condemning all forms of discrimination in thinly veiled attack on commander-in-chief
• Promotes his Virginia vineyard when asked if he will – as president – visit Charlottesville
  And gets condemnations from Democrats, Republicans, former presidents, world leaders, allies, his own staff, and the Pope.

• Vineyard says they have no affiliation with him
• Publicly shames company bosses who abandon him. There’s a mass walkout by execs leading to disbanding of key White House business bodies
• Fires Steve Bannon, his chief strategist and architect of Trump victory
• Does U-turn on Afghanistan and commits more troops, having repeatedly said he’d pull US forces out
• Threatens to close government down if he doesn’t get funding for border wall with Mexico
• Appeals for unity of American people
• Next day lambasts his enemies and critics in highly partisan speech
• Day after that appeals for unity again
• Pardons ex-Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had been convicted for defying court order to stop traffic patrols targeting suspected immigrants

And this is the quiet season. This is the still, millpond of August when nothing happens; when days are long and news bulletins are slim, when surfing dogs and the battle of the bake-offs should dominate the news cycle.
Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, and now the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, tweeted at one point that he was going to nominate the White House for a Tony award for most drama. Not best drama. Just most.

Original article published by the BBC