Saying good riddance to Trump

Trump left the White House without the pomp he had hoped for.

The outgoing president, who has broken with tradition by refusing to attend his successor’s inauguration, took a government helicopter from the White House at 8.18am, leaving what has been his home for four tumultuous years, and headed for Joint Base Andrews, a military facility in Maryland.

Trump had demanded that aides prepare an ostentatious ceremony at the base, accompanied by a sprawling audience, but two weeks after Trump incited a riot at the US Capitol, he got neither. The soon-to-be former president arrived at the military base just before 8.30am, and was met with a flat sendoff marked by a sparse crowd.
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The long national nightmare comes to an end

I timed this post for noon on January 20th to celebrate the end of the Donald Trump presidency.

There will be many things that the Biden-Harris administration will do in the days to come that will enrage me but I want to savor this sweet moment for just a little while.

Roy Zimmerman also serenades Trump off with a parody of ‘My Girl’.

UPDATE: Bette Midler gives her own sendoff.

Bye, Donald!

The last days of Trump

Trump has been rarely seen in public these days. If you were worried that he was holed up in his bedroom sulking and bingeing on his comfort food of Big Macs and Diet Coke, you can rest easy. His public schedule says that he is hard at work though it is a little vague on details.

As has frequently been the case in recent weeks, Trump had no public engagements had his public schedule blithely stated that the president “will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings”.

I only hope Trump does not overwork himself in his last days in office. He should relax and take some time off to play golf.

Seth Meyers says that moving vans have been spotted arriving at the White House.

Trump is a loser

Now that he has become the first president in history to impeached twice, he is slowly starting to lose his allies too.

Donald Trump has fallen out with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and is refusing to pay the former New York mayor’s legal bills, it was reported, with the president feeling abandoned and frustrated during his last days in office.
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According to the Washington Post, relations between Trump and Giuliani have dramatically cooled. Trump has instructed his aides not to pay Giuliani’s outstanding fees. The president is reportedly offended by Giuliani’s demand for $20,000 a day – a figure the lawyer denies, but which is apparently in writing. White House officials have even been told not to put through any of Giuliani’s calls.
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Jordan Klepper reports from the riot

Jordan Klepper has made it his niche to embed himself at rallies where angry Trump supporters gather and talk to them. He was at the insurrection at the Capitol last Wednesday, though he did not enter the building. I have mentioned before that I wondered if at some point these crowds would attack him because his reports show them in a poor light and this time his cameraperson was attacked, though I am not sure if they were targeted specifically or as part of the general attack on media personnel.

Stephen Colbert has been on a roll following the riot and yesterday he had another rant.

And now … killer squirrels?

As if the news from Washington about Trump’s rampaging goons wasn’t bad enough, we now have to deal with the possibility of rampaging killer squirrels in New York City.

At least three people in Rego Park, in the borough of Queens, have been jumped upon and bitten by the possibly deranged squirrel in recent weeks. The tree-based rodent’s reign of terror has made some people in the area afraid to go outside without being armed with pepper spray or other anti-squirrel weaponry.

“A few people are quite scared,” Micheline Frederick, a local resident, told Guardian US. Frederick was herself targeted by the squirrel in a bloody attack on 21 December, when she was holding her front door open for furniture movers.
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