Will the White House ever go public on the cost of sending Princess Ivanka to Korea for the Olympics closing ceremony? Did she and her entourage fly merely first class...or AIR FORCE 1 class; how many Secret Service agents were involved; and how much "personal support" staff, (i.e.hair, make-up,and clothing stylists; personal assistance etc.) accompanied her?
What will U.S. tax payers gain from this extravagant display of semi-executive self-indulgence?
6
Remember the conservatives mantra, fiscal responsibility? Well, that only applies to those pesky liberals, no?
24
Dear Ms. Collins as usual another wonderful article. My only comment is that Trump's entire administration is a complete mess and embarrassment. I only pray and hope that things will change in 2018, but then again what will the Democrats do if they gain control of Congress?
When Trump won his illegitimate presidency, I asked myself oh so quietly is this what people wanted, a "businessperson" who will make America great again? But what they got is a reality show guy who is an incredibly poor manager running the White House as a mom and pop business as he has done with his Trump Organization, which by the way files bankruptcy four times.
6
Did Gail become so accustomed to seeing prominent friends reap slices of government money during the flush of cash rolling around after the Obama inauguration that she is shocked to see government actually doing its job instead?
This President and his administrators are bringing the economy back. Workers are seeing their incomes rise like never before.
The jobless issue is no longer a crisis.
The White House family is gorgeous, patriotic, and strong.
No wonder progressives are in a miasma!!
1
It's really hard to tell who is the worst person in the Drumpf administration. They're all so good at it.
16
Are there fewer outspoken environmentalists in first class?
8
I'm looking for a term for someone who appoints a guy as head of an office designed to protect the American environment, resources, and people--so that he can destroy it. Dereliction of duty? Irresponsibility? Sold out to the highest bidders? Worse? Trump and Pruitt, between them, endanger us all by endangering the world we inhabit. Hope that Mars mission works out soon, and can carry several billion people to a new home.
8
Please add "you have to talk to the lawyers about that" to your excellent list of standard Sarah Huckabee pre programmed answers.
10
Trump said he would hire only the worst people.
8
I would have put Rick Perry at the top (bottom) of the heap. Consider the fact that Rick struggled to get a BS in Animal Science, and that is all; and that he is now responsible for all nuclear power plants currently licensed and the few looking for a license. Consider further that he is responsible for the 7,300 nuclear warheads in our possession, and for their "modernization". That should
be cause for a few sleepless nights...
14
I envision Trump will build his Presidential Library in Florida and buy the old Barnum Bailey Circus Tent for the main building. Plenty of clown cars are available as well. Lot of deals as the Circus is going out of business. Plan ahead DT, Just an idea I have, not FAKE news.
12
It is Pruitt's new language rules that the EPA must use in its documents and the removal of valuable much-visited science-related EPA web pages that throw me back into George Orwell's "1984". These are acts of intellectual violence. I feel for the scientists still left there.
9
I believe his office announced he will be back in tourist. (Oh, and Ben Carson has canceled the $31,000 table set). Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing Mr. Pruitt in economy and sharing my thoughts with him on how he is doing so far.
7
Many people truly believe that we need to protect the water, air and land of our only home, planet Earth. However, President Trump and his E.P.A. leaders don't agree with this (business "unfriendly") hogwash.
See Times articles -
- "U.S. To Roll Back Safety Rules Created After Deepwater Horizon Spill" -nytimes.com - Dec. 28, 2017
After an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the blowout preventer failed, so huge amounts of oil escaped and caused an environmental and economic disaster along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
Hey, who needs blowout preventers? Just go and party like a Pelican (until you get stuck in oil goo.)
"67 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump - nytimes.com - Jan. 31, 2018.
Back when the new Trump E.P.A. started obstructing environmental health and safety rules, the Times reported (I can't find the article) that E.P.A. staff were instructed to cover up the computer trail of evidence, so that it would almost impossible to find the computer address of the "banished" E.P.A. rules and research records.
Apparently, government records can not be destroyed without legal approval. However, if nobody can figure out what server and web address the document is stored at, well, Whoop-de-do! Ain't we clever devils!
5
Between the money DT'd appointees waste on traveling and DT's golfing excursions the Federal government will be bankrupt by the time we get Trump out of office.
6
A line from Fort Worth native Dan Jenkins comic novel “Semi Tough”. “God must have hated Texas because he put so many Baptists there”. Add Oklahoma to the list. To be fair with Pruitt, Oklahoma has very little desirable environment worth saving. Fracking induced earthquakes are seeing to that.
7
Sounds like Pruitt has poor time management skills if he has to have a $36,000 military flight because he's running late. Fire his appointments secretary.
6
The Tulsa World Newspaper had a headline today declaring Pruitt will fly coach on his next flight. Yipee!
1
Poor Ben Carson. Waited too long to buy his furniture and couldn't make up the large lead Pruitt had steadily accumulated.
12
Gail - can you find this out?
After all the talk about Kushner's security clearance, it gets me wondering what our current president's security clearance level is? Did he go through the whole extensive review process?
At what point in a campaign is a candidate (president, congress etc) evaluated for security clearance? If they can not pass the review for Top Secret, what is done then?
Thanks!
15
I doubt it is required. More importantly is the fact that much of the staff has to dumb down the reports for him.
6
Don't be too sure about DeVos and our public schools. Trump's proposed budget includes $1 Billion in taxpayer funds to support private, mostly religious schools.
Why is any part of my tax liability going to support beliefs in which I don't share or support? Have we forgotten..............
Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: "Be it enacted by the General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
10
Our votes in Nov. 2020 will mean they all go away.
15
Gail,
Please do not refer to Scott Pruitt as the head of EPA. The proper designation is head of EDA, the environment Destruction Agency. And I am sure you would agree that he is very successful in accomplishing the mission of this agency.
16
Wow - at least three lol moments in this column. But I do feel a little weird about it, because they're so inept but still powerful, yes? Shouldn't that make me queasy? Trump's worst is a collective and you can't name a winner because all of these supporting roles contribute to creating this hoot of a presidency. And that's wrong, I know, to laugh at people. It might be a developing nervous disorder, because I am starting to lol daily. I can't even talk to my students about news with a straight face anymore...
12
Great comment on a WaPo story about Pruitt's excuses for flying first class to avoid the hoi polloi who are SO mean to him in coach:
"I'll loan Pruitt my emotional support cobra to help him ride in coach."
15
Come on Gail. Give the guy a break. We are lucky that he doesn't want to take his $28,000. high security phone booth with him. That's something right out of "Get Smart" or a phone in the shoe heel.
Send this clown back to Oklahoma in a covered wagon--with a mounted security detail, of course.
10
We are the greatest Kakistocracy on earth!
7
Come Gail, this was actually too easy- after all even i finally picked the winner for the first time since Gore beat Bush.
A more difficult/interesting discussion would be trying to figure out the BEST of this bad bunch. That may inspire some much needed positive thought for all of us !
6
I wasn't in on the vote but if I had been it would have been Pruitt of the EPA.
Actually, the name should be changed to the EDA as in the Environmental Destruction Agency
8
Although the Trump evangelicals would give Pruitt a pass, they now have a hated snowflake in their midst. If Pruitt can't take the criticism in coach, give him aheadset.
7
I wrote my master's thesis comparing the world views of St. Francis (God's majesty is perfect just as it is) with that of St. Benedict (it is our responsibility to be wise stewards of the land). Neither St. Francis nor St. Benedict would countenance Scott Pruitt's rape of this country's natural resources.
11
I'm sure you mean linear miles. And even then, it's a stretch.
Zinke's want of flag comes from a Navy tradition of raising/lowering the 'ship's flag' whenever the Capt. arrives or departs followed by announcement to the crew of the Capt.'s departure/arrival this appears to be Zinke's need of recognition beyond his pay grade. Perhaps he feel he is the 'Capt. of the Interior Dept.' therefore entitled to the respect of a ship's Captain, in that vein he falls woefully short.
5
Trump has finally reached his level of incompetence. He's bitten off more than he can chew. I doubt he can salvage his moment in the Oval Office unless he can concoct some type of national or international crisis to distract us.
Whenever he talks of success, it's always about how much property or money he has. Remember one of his first comments was how wonderful the phone system is in the WH. What do you really expect from an individual with no perception or depth?
5
"finally reached his level of incompetence"? He was way in over his
head before he started!
3
If only the winners would go away and take their boss with them. This is the most inept Presidential Cabinet in my 7 decades of life.
They are all "entitled" people who believe they are worth $31K dining sets and $36K travel for short distances. They seem to have no idea how ordinary folks live.
Surely Pruitt's bodyguards can protect him from old ladies like me who don't like the devastation he has brought to the EPA, who want the world to be cleaner for their grandchildren, who know what's right and what's wrong.
19
I think this outcome was very unfair to Steve Mnuchin and his Hollywood Nobody wife, Louise Whatshername. These two have worked hard and long to be the most obnoxious, egregious, vulgar and self-indulgent political couple since, uhm, well, since Ivanka and Jared and they weren't even nominated. Third place? Really? The system is rigged.
12
I know you're just trying to lift the spirits of those readers who still hold out hope that the executive branch might simply explode like the Hindenburg or any other huge gasbag. But the subject is so saddening it's impossible for many of us to see any humor in it. Maybe you could more profitably lampoon the way the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Plutocrats heaping heaps riches on billionaires and handing out corporate welfare, while doing its darnedest to cut programs that allow the less fortunate to simply survive another day. That's at least a mildly laughable subject---compared to the disgusting examples of public theft you describe here.
56
somehow the image of mike pence and scott pruitt on horseback strains the cinematic imagination... are they jilted romeos, realizing that women, you can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em? or remorseless desperados, no longer welcome among civilized folks, heading further west where they will eventually meet their death, cold, hungry, and alone, despicable relics of an era best forgotten.
8
Oklahoma screams out: "Pruitt is actually from Kentucky not here !"
3
Pruitt should fly with his therapy Rottweiler.
5
Once, during a ferocious battle in Tennessee, a Union general showed up to brief General Grant. The other general had a special flag made for himself and his staff was flying it. When Grant, who was the supreme commander, saw the flag he called out "What's this, is Caesar about?" That flag has not been seen since.
A lesson in humility from a true leader.
54
Please, enough with the flying first class fixation.... I would expect flying first class on commercial airlines by the dept. secretaries, and heads, of any administration. It has got to be better than using military craft. More power to any of them if they want to fly cattle class.
These Trump people are trying to down grade and hurt our country which seems to cause an over reaction in critics occasionally.
2
What's with all this flying? They are perfectly capable of ruining this
country from their plush offices in D.C.
1
I don't disagree with Gail's choice of Mr. Pruitt, but I do believe that her failure to give at least passing consideration to Ajit Pai does all of us a real disservice.
12
I hope some non-partisan accountant is keeping a tally
Even in first class there will be passengers who think bringing back coal isn't a great idea so for the safety of a federal official, it might be wise to book the entire first class cabin.
The original Snakes On A Plane was better.
7
Does Pruitt's security detail fly first-class with him?
20
I am waiting with bated breath for an Oliver Stone movie about these evil clowns who run the country. The title: Donnie does D.C.
14
I don't think stone's buddy Putin will approve the project.
A more loathsome cast of swamp creatures would be difficult to assemble in one administration. Picking the worst of them is all but impossible. Please let us vote on the worst one of the month from now on.
25
Wouldn't Ben Carson prefer a frequent diner card?
12
Choosing which Nazi war criminal was the worst member of Hitler's evangelicals is an easier task than choosing which Nazi war criminal is the worst member of Trump's evangelicals. Only a fascist could make up a Biblical principle, the "Joshua Principle," to expel scientists from sitting on scientific panels to evaluate scientific data on issues of science on grounds that these scientists would get grants to investigate the scientific aspects of scientific issues while favoring big, industrial, corporate business, which paid millions to Trump and Pruitt to guarantee that no science is applied on issues related to science so that we'll come to the conclusion that 2 + 2 = 4 only "sometimes:" "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.” George Orwell, 1984.
15
Thank you, Gail for the laughs. The best thing I read after Curator Nancy Spector (Guggenheim's) response and golden toilet offer to Donny and Melony.
16
Gail,
I am the reader you mentioned in your article who commented: "Guess we can't nominate Ben Carson because we don't know what he does."
Please let me renominate him again.
As reported in the New York Times, the Department of Housing and Urban Development officials spent $31,000 on the new dining room set for Secretary Ben Carson’s office in late 2017 — just as the White House circulated its plans to slash HUD’s programs for the homeless, elderly and poor, according to federal procurement records.
Is this a more egregious example of what he does do to put him back on the list?
23
Trump's entire Cabinet is a Confederacy of Dunces. Each one at different intervals vies for worse Cabinet Secretary. Many of these ignoramuses cruise under the radar but they are there, doing damage, nonetheless.
Trump's White House is much like a company's monthly update. Who will win this month's Employee of the Month? Who will be this month's Worse Cabinet Secretary? It's a free-for-all each and every month.
DD
Manhattan
14
It's like "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous": on your tax dollar!
20
The whole lot of them are emptying the US Treasury.
4
Look on the bright side. As the personnel exits accelerate it might not be long before these gentlemen are gone too, and poor Donald will all alone...at which point he will do weekly campaign style events, feeding off the love of the crowd like a vampire feeds on blood.
10
It would be hard to tell which of them is the worst. These people are always telling us they want government to be run more like industry. I'd argue it already is, and that's why it's a problem, but that's really a separate discussion. In industry, a turnover rate over 30% is considered indicative of bad management. The Trump administration so far has had a roughly 75% turnover when regarding all personnel either nominated or assigned by a secretary after nomination. I'll leave the conclusions to others.
10
Groucho Marx said he'd never join a club that would have him as a member. This is Trump's cabinet - a motley collection of losers of which, of all people, Jeff Sessions emerges the one with the highest mettle for daring his paper tiger of a boss to fire him. This administration is the Titanic that just hit the iceberg. Stay tuned to see the rats' exodus from this sinking ship. Tweet away, Donald, right up to the point where it's mercifully silenced by Mueller. The only question remains is Trump's legacy. Will historians regard him as a colluding obstructer or an obstructing colluder?
23
You gave us an embarrassment of riches from which to choose, and the readers chose well. The next question must be, “how do we solve this problem”? I don’t think we can wait much longer. The level of destruction is too intense, and the old question, “how much damage can they do in four years?” Has gone out the window. The damage is now, so what’s the next step?
11
If only this vote would get rid of that troglodyte.
18
Thrilled to learn the citizenry's yelling at Pruitt in airports. How's about we organize a detail to birddog him everywhere he goes cussing him out at the top of our lungs making his life a living hell the same way he's turning our precious water, air, soil, trees, parks, and green spaces into a hellscape fit only for miners and hazardous waste haulers.
34
Cool idea. Let's get it organized on FB. #No love for Pruitt
4
Gail , since the presidential election I have been vomitting almost continually ,except for the time-outs I take to guffaw , somewhat wryly , at the way you skin alive the fat , naked emperor , with small hands , no neck , fabulously concocted and confectioned hair , a bloated waistline , a foul and defiling mouth , no judgement , serious reading difficulties , a racist character , no knowledge of history or how our government actually functions , no common sense ,no sense of fairness or justice , no scruples , no sensitivity , no compassion or heart , zero attention span , rapidly failing mental capacity and a horrible self-concept that distorts his personality , no true patriotism , totally narcissistic . . .
Oops, I almost forgot . . .he's a harsh bully and a moron . And along the way
You do a fine job on the creepy , inept , self-serving lackeys that drool over him and "serve" him as his Cabinet . They all stink ; that are all corrupt ; that are all beholden to the Koch brothers and Big Oil and Big Coal and Big Business .
Together , along with their bigoted boss , they are rapidly dismantling the government that was designed to protect and defend us .
Gail , your sharp wit and valor are precious for your large readership . Your work gives us joy as we giggle , brief respites from the frustration , anger and sadness that these uglies are responsible for since last January . In these joyous moments of humor , we feel our unity and hope for a better future.
Vote , folks !
32
I wish I were half as clever as Gail. Although, I suppose sometimes these columns write themselves.
15
I used to devour the NYT every day, for more than 30 years, but now I can't bear it. It's not the fault of the newspaper that every headline reads as if it were taken from The Onion. With this clown car full of nitwits, what else can we expect?
Look at that picture. These idiots are so pleased with themselves. Nothing but a bunch of vandals given permission by millions of ignorant voters to destroy something beautiful they can't begin to understand.
If only we required all voters to pass the U.S. citizenship exam, to actually understand, appreciate, and most important, LOVE, our Constitution, before casting the ballot ... what a different country we would have.
This crowd prides itself on its fraudulent ascension to power ... look at that nasty grin on Pruitt's face ... despicable people.
23
Steven Miller, the evil spawn left behind in the White House by
Bannon.
17
You expect corruption and graft. This is America folks. You expect incompetence, although I admit mostly we expect DMV level incompetence not the spectacular levels achieved today. Trump's genius? He appoints people who combine superior skills at graft and corruption with unparalleled levels of incompetence. Stand aside, Warren G. Harding. You have been so outshone that you are looking Lincolnesque.
Pruitt is a problem because he is actually effective. He just is so busily and competently effecting evil that you forget the competence and look at the results.
This is an Administration that put a 29 year old former employee of Ivanks's fashion effort in a key advisory role, and that determined that the number one son-in-law, at 36 and never before in Washington, has what it takes to broker world peace. His other trusted advisor, cyborgian Bond villain Stephen Miller at least has more experience. He is not a callow youth; he is a frightful one. Give Trump credit - he likes millennials.
As for Pruitt and Zinke, the team that would mine every piece of free land? Well, there is a special place in hell waiting for them. It will be run by scores of people who got there by being on the coop boards, PTAs, Home owners associations - and it will spend eternity telling them that they cannot grow that type of shrub and that they must replace the unstylish windows, and that they have to get rid of their giant gas grills. You reap what you sow.
12
DMV where I live is a paragon of virtue and efficiency since they started allowing booking online. The Trump crew is so far from the DMV standard, they can't even see from where they sit on their golden thrones.
Thanks for the laughs, Gail, but I wince that we're laughing at cretins hell bent on destroying the environment when we should be running them out of town on a rail.
14
Am so tired of all things political; ignore these obvious columns and their authors, perhaps even the times. The old lady is just too old now.
So stop reading them.
HATE !!! Hate of country, hate of 'others', self-loathing..... These are the sentiments, stoked by stumpy, that are on the ascendance in the good ol USA....
So, Gail, thanks for the yuks.... but there's nothing funny amount the attacks on competence and decency that continue to undermine the efforts of the many, many good people, here...
Rapists! They happily rape the planet and, if their hearts to known, would slaughter, rape and pillage there way total lawlessness.
The bonds of civilization are more than they can stand....
3
Thieves and liars and always thieves and liars. These lowlifes spend lots of time back-patting each other and on their knees to the Golden Calf. The Criminal Chamber of Commerce.
5
give Pruitt Zinke's horse. he doesn't know how to ride it.
3
How low can we go? These unqualified creeps are in the position of making life and death decisions for our people and the planet. Is this the new norm? After all it is working for the GOP and there is nothing like success. However, they are plundering the people and the environment but to what end? What will be left for good people to salvage? We are a stupid, stupid country.
6
Worse member you ask Gail ?
Although trump is an inept, vulgar, uneducated , corrupt man the Country have chosen to be the President.
So he could be the worse, but in his cabinet undoubtedly , Jared + ivanka
= Javanka I vote for.
Get all three of them outta here Bobby Mueller !
5
Neither are actually in the official cabinet. (Or hold "cabinet-level" positions, for that matter, as does our winner, Mr. Pruitt.) They are just "unpaid advisors" - with Daddy/Daddy-in-Law's ear.
1
I'm still not sure my need for Charmin is to wipe my Pruitt or my Zinke.
7
Once Pruitt is no longer flying on the taxpayer’s dime, I pray he’s seated next to the most annoying, stinky, projectile-vomiting (even) noxious examples of putrid humanity possible.
6
Having flown across the globe, multiple times, I know what passive and subtle ways that annoy travellers. But these are perfect excuses try them on Pruitt, Mnuchin, esp
lady Mnuchin.
6
Rick Perry?
5
Thugs and dopes, dopes and thugs. Day in and day out these awful people demean our nation with every move they make.
6
Tammany Hall levels of corruption. Bottom feeders for whom the rank of pond scum is an aspirational goal.
7
And yet I cannot get over the feelings that the voters that elected Trump and his swamp denizens : Kremlin Barbie, The Kush, Hope The White Witch, Scott Fracking Pruitt, Zinke The Forger, Ben Sleepy And Bashful Carson, Rick Gone Boy Perry, Kelly Ann My Own Circle In Dante's Inferno, and Sarah Bull Frog Huckabee may deserve the vote for the worse member not named in a Mueller indictment
9
Broom this bozo and the rest of the Trump sock puppets as soon as we can. Fools like this have done irreparable harm to this country. As soon as Dems get a majority in Congress, bring Pruitt, Zinke and the other clowns up on "dereliction of duty charges" and failure to execute the duties of their office.
7
I mourn our country, and the depths to which it has sunk with the Trump administration. While I don't know that the travel behavior of these miscreants merits anything besides black humor, it does represent the sordid nature of the political control exercised by the Republicans. I hope that there are enough thinking folk who will vote in November to wrest control of at least one chamber of Congress away from the Republican party so that we can begin a period of healing and repair. If not, then our country, as we've known it, is finished. Kaput. Don't know how Gail Collins will find any humor in that event.
10
Forget about draining the swamp; the US needs to shut down the pig trough.
11
Watch out Pruitt, Ben Carson is right behind you.
5
sick. funny column but sick people. feeding like hogs at the trough even as they destroy our government.
11
No government rule says you have to fly coach. It just says, the government will only pay for coach. If you upgrade, you pay the difference.
So, why aren't these millionaire appointees, who obviously are going to make money out of their positions, not doling out what for them is chump change?
13
Putin & Xi love American voters. Democracy in USA has been good to them.
6
Pruitt deserves the honor of Worst, since his decisions will be irreversible once he's gone, unlike those made by Carson, DeVos, Mnuchin, and the rest of the idiots in the cabinet. The damage being done to our environment and all living creatures in it is permanent. Every day that he's making deals with the devil is a day we will never get back.
11
Grifters, all.
12
Can our friends who gave us the Statue of Liberty also give us a guillotine?
10
they should take the statue back, since it doesn't apply to America any longer.
5
Choosing the worst in this administration is like looking at a cage full of sewer rats and being asked to choose which one you think is the worst and the ugliest and the simple answer is -- it's impossible -- because they are all ugly, fetid, dirty, gross creatures which need to be eliminated.
10
How about a least bad survey? I'd vote for Tillerson.
6
No, Gail, it's Sarah Huckster!
7
Most anyone with any sense at all, in Oklahoma, could have told you we were most happy to get rid of the jerk. Of all the Oklahoma politicians to have been selected for either this or any other government position, Pruit is the absolute worst -- the least intelligent, the most selfish, and the most destructive of all.
We regret that he comes from here, but we are so happy to be rid of him.
Thank you, Mr. Chief whatever, for helping us rid our state of such incompetence. Now if you would only make him the ambassador to Lower Slobovia, or Outer Mongolia, you would be improving the lot of both of you.
9
Zinke would have won hands down if the public knew the full extent and details of Little Lord Ryan's running of and expectations of the department he and his family seem to think is their personal property. Taking helicopter pilots away from fighting 22 active fires? That's gotta be the winner.
What is with Whitefish, Montana? Home to Lord Ryan Zinke. Home to white supremacist leader Richard Spencer. Home to the two-man owned company who somehow got the huge contract for Puerto Rico's electrical grid. And home of Tanya Gersch, a Jewish woman, terrorized by neo-Nazis and their troll farm, and she's suing. This town has a population of 6,357!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/18/montana-jewish-woman-sue...
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/27/politics/ryan-zinke-nra/index.html
6
How about a Travel Debt Clock racking up the cumulative air travel $$$$$ racked up by these fools?
7
A Biblical reflection on the daily and remorseless New York Times vilification of Donald Trump,
'Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.'
Oh, jeez -- nice try, Alexei - or Vasily - or Gennady.
6
DJT vilifies himself. The NYT just reports it. Note that the Pharisees (the Repubs) in the biblical crowd left first because they were guilty and knew it.
8
Scott Pruitt, who requires a soundproof booth for 25K in his office to keep out the noise from the voices in his head and who believes God hates our government while Scotty works for our government sounds like a good choice for the Stoopid Winner.
Zinke's aide Christine Bauserman just got canned for her conspiracy theory and birther posts on FB that someone found. Ben Carson whining that you cant get a good chair these days for less than 5K while serving people who barely have a roof over their heads and Hope Hicks leaving after saying she is only a "white lies" kind of gal. Wow.
What a bunch of losers these "winners" are. Lock em ALL up.
12
Put him in baggage!
9
Pruitt and Zinke , and the new combined, Department of Demolition, another stunningly idiotic achievement by............their leader.
5
Here's what the Trump Cabinet thinks of the American public:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sztf4hcGrB4
1
If one has read enough about history, leadership, government, foreign affairs, and the psychology of decision making, one can see that Trump had no idea why he picked the people he has for his administration. His reasoning is exactly the same as the much revered, feared, and profoundly misconstrued machine learning algorithms. He is like a driverless car, he responds to and compares and decides without any understanding. He only seems smart to people who don’t have any reasoned skepticism about what is going on.
3
Very amusing ... and then I remembered how tragic it is.
9
Dang!...my choice came in 2nd. Pruitt reminds me of that scene in “The Grinch” where he does a medical scan of his own tiny beating heart and shouts, “YES!....down a size and a half!.....and this time, I’m going to keep it off.”
3
Come to think of it, I feel empathy for Sessions !
2
Words fail me. aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh.
7
All these Trumpies should eventually get the same treatment from the public, for the rest of their lives, as Harvey Weinstein should get, because they're doing the same thing to America that Weinstein did to all those women.
6
I tried to think of something witty to say about this ignoramus, but the reality of actual idiocy being in control of our environment is simply not funny. It is disgusting.
VOTE, PLEASE.
10
Well, we all know what buffaloes produce.....
1
Not funny.
1
Ryan Zinke? Here’s a little Zinke scoop.
He has appointed Wayne LaPierre’s wife Susan to his National Park Foundation board of directors!
Wonder if they all sit around a $31,000+ table to discuss how they’re going to decimate our parks? You know, those parks us little people used to enjoy?
7
Worse, there will soon be a new presidential order, "Anyone entering a National Park will be required to carry an AR-15 to protect themselves from killer squirrels."
1
Well, Trump loves Russia and Putin, and he would love to run the US the way Putin runs Russia. That includes putting all his inept cronies in cabinet positions and making them oligarchs. I think these oligarch wannabes are well on their way to fulfilling his dream with their reckless spending at the expense of the very institutions they are supposed to be caring for. They are all excelling at gutting the institutions that are supposed to protect our citizens and lining their own pockets. I guess Trump wants to "Russianize" America so his buddy Putin won't feel so homesick when he comes to visit!
3
Well thought through analysis.
Betsy DeVos is on most days is the worst but Gail's point's well taken. Nevertheless, many deplorable dummies simply ape her thoughts, attitudes and values + her laughable ton of ignorance and wrong-headedness.
2
The worst of the worst winners clearly indicates that we the people are the biggest losers in this high stakes game and our children and grand children will lose even mores if this maniac and his entourage of destructive self seekers are allowed to continue on the course they are on.
3
A Confederacy of Dunces.
11
Amazing how things change in 12 hrs with this clown crew!
Jared lost his top security clearance...there goes peace in the Middle East!
Trump went against the NRA and wants to do a gun grab...”Due process can wait.”
Hope Hicks has joined Sean Spicer and Mooch from Communications and is saying buh-bye to the WH even lying for the reason she is leaving!
And Jeff Sessions ACTUALLY spoke back against Trump. Wow who knew the Keebler elf had it in him!
My favorite expression in medicine has always been “Wait until the book comes out.” In other words give it some time to get to the bottom of what’s really going on.
This book will be called “Ship of Fools.”
BTW--gemli? “Jerry and the Pacemakers?” Almost did a spit take on that one. Well done sir!
4
Gail, the fact that we are even having contests such as these you are conducting indicates outright that the whole lot of them STINK!
7
Let Pruitt and the other cabinet members be seated in the rear bathroom of the airplane. They can keep the door locked and never fear being approached by any of the public. The airline could let them be seated first and get off after everyone else has left the plane. Problem solved.
2
america has become a garbage pile - everyone probably recognizes that fact by now. The real question is, Why do decent people chose to live in a garbage pile?
#calexit - Californians, at least, deserve better.
3
Don't write off Betsy DeVos just yet. God may or may not be on her side but Mike Pence certainly is, and he is only one FBI investigation away from the hot seat in the White House.
3
Great job Gail. Must have been really difficult to select the Remora (suckerfish) with the most suction on the taxpayer. Kudos!
5
People who still support Trump are traitors who don't deserve to live in America.
5
You continue to ridicule and criticize President Trump and his administration just because they are corrupt and incompetent.
7
Ms. Collins, my wife said your election was hacked. She is really mad at Muck Mulvaney. Recount! Fake news!
6
Does it ever occur to Pruitt just why all these people he flies with are angry with him/
I think the image of Zinke's horse as it rides away sums up my feelings about our interior secretary the best.
83
or (as I like to call him) the "inferior" secretary.
10
Hillary was right, they're all deplorable and proud of it.
6
This is NOT false.
1
How much of the $6,250 chopper ride was for Zinke's horse?
1
I am certainly tired of all this winning.
7
Trump is a con man. Period. Most New Yorkers dislike him because they see a con man coming way on the horizon. The only New Yorkers that do like him are the other con men who make up investment bankers and their ilk. What Trump doesn’t get is that being a con man on the world stage requires a skill set he never acquired. This is also why the media is merciless toward him. However, the GOP loves Trump as they now have all three branches of government and can do what they’ve always wanted. They love having Trump in the White House, but they also keep a rein on him. Think they really want the Wall? Think they really care about the average human? No, the GOP is now the Cloud Minders who look down on the mere troglodytes, who don’t even know the air they breathe will become poisonous.
3
Darn, I thought the prize would be a one-way ticket to Russia.
5
Hey why doesn't somebody get Pruitt's travel calendar for each week and we all meet him at security and yell obscenities at him!
I'm in!
6
They are all losers. It starts with the top.
I still contend that Kelly dived to the bottom by invoking the sacred ground of the Arlington National Cemetery in reaching his decision to lie about Congresswoman Wilson. That reaches the lowest of lows, far exceeding the abuse of taxpayers.
4
Gail, your contest for worst member of the Trump administration makes it unmistakably clear that, In politics, absurdity is not a handicap.
3
Great work Gail.
God have mercy on us!
HELP? SOS? May Day May Day!
5
The swamp is alive and well!
4
Simply stated: Trump's cabinet is comprised of a bunch of self indulgent thugs.
8
Did you ever think you'd feel sorry for Jeff Sessions?
4
Pruitt just announced he will be flying coach from now on. He should wear ear plugs, grin and bear it.
3
The worst people in history. They are determined to ruin the country.
3
" make a date to go horseback writing with Mike Pence". Really, the jokes just write themselves, even the clean ones. I really feel sorry for the Horses. Imagine their boredom and humiliation. SAD.
5
I'm waiting for Huckabee to condemn this article for criticizing ex-military members...
5
My finger still remains unwaveringly numbingly jammed onto the "All of the Above" ballot button.
Terrific column, Gail! You did it again!
4
The real waste of American tax payer dollars is paying for Trump's weekly trips to FLA and/or NJ (depending on the season) so he can hob knob with the financial elites and play a round or two of Pasture Pool.
9
How about Neil Gorsuch? When Pruitt was a middle schooler, Gorsuch's mother, as Reagan's EPA Secretary, worked diligently to try to shut the Agency down, but had to settle for re-authorizing the use of a few deadly pesticides that had previously been banned.
7
Gail,
I learned last night from Rachel Maddow that there is a White House calligrapher. Apparently, this is not a joke. Can't they do that stuff on computers now? Maybe there is a monk in the WH basement slaving away working on invitations? I guess the good news is that this is the rare occasion on which someone in the Trump WH is competent.
2
The chief calligrapher's job is to create hand-written cards, letters, greetings, military certificates, awards, recognitions and other items. The salary is about $102,000 - and you get gorgeous classy cursive.
For another $70k/yr. you get Betsy DeVos wrecking the Education Dept or Ben Pruitt who's ready to wreck the entire planet.
So you have to ask - if this was a school field trip, who's office you would you prefer your child spent time in?
3
Wow, I had no idea. I love calligraphy but am still surprised that we have someone in the federal government who is paid to do it. I am happy to have some of my taxes go to that!
1
Should we be concerned
That Russians hacked this vote? Did
DeVos really win?
1
It's not funny. None of it. The only wonder of it is that Trump collects so many monsters, as if they were all there is available. But then so have other fascistic, moronic, lunatic dictators in the past.
And the GOP facilitates and enables and applauds him "Good Job!" and "Good Boy!" like a special needs kid.
3
I disagree with Ms. Collins about the necessity of retaining the White House chef. We don't need a chef to cook cheeseburgers. Just order them in.
2
For shame GOP. You are once again being exposed for the hypocrites you are and always have been. Talking to you McConnell and Ryan. C'mon 2018 mid terms.
3
I wonder if Scott Pruitt will finally come to believe in human-caused climate change when he crosses over into the next life.
Gail, I remember long ago I was on a trip by Amtrak and saying that you were the person I most admired at the New York Times.
Oh for those days! Now you are little more than yet another shrill voice shouting imprecations at the president, who BTW, just endorsed gun control.
Mike Pence on a horse? I hope it wasn't the kind that trots in that funny way that has been known to result in certain, um, "feelings," particularly in young women. Ol' Mike might have some explaining to do.
4
Gail,
Where on the list is Rex Tillerson, Linda WWE McMahon, Rick Ops Perry,and Elaine Chao?
Does anyone know exactly what any of them do?
If Kushner is the de facto head honcho of everything, what does Tillerson do? Why is he even there?
3
The solution for a secure seat on airlines is in plain view. It is enclosed, can be locked from the inside and no one inside be reached with insults. It is called the toilet.
3
Teapot Dome maybe? Certainly the Gilded Age with different standards of behavior for different classes of people. This article turns my stomach. But these days that is the new normal. Someone please pinch me and tell me this is all just a bad dream that will blow away when the sun rises tomorrow.
Eat your hearts out libs! Your socialist/elitist views of the world has always been out of touch with the vast majority of the country. Trump is getting stronger as you ruminate on what to do. The country is already better off after only a year and he will continue to push forward. Good luck on trying to stop his re-election let alone the 2018 mid-terms because you have nothing. Continue to barricade yourselves in NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, etc and pretend you know what is going on!
How much longer? That’s what I think every time I read a story about trump and his thugs which includes the gop. How much longer will this infestation of incompetence, arrogance, ignorance etc., be flushing our country down the sewer. How much longer!
3
Gail Collins should be president.
2
I understand completely that you do this to make your readers chuckle. Sorry Gail, it stopped being funny a long time ago.
They didn't "drain the swamp." It has merely been populated with bigger serpents, vipers and other creepy crawlers as it oozes, bubbles, gurgles and boils with more slimy characters than ever. A foul stench can be detected coast to coast and border to border.
5
The personages employed by Chief-in-Hades could well be parading in Bulgakov's Master and Margarita straight down the road to perdition...
Billionaires tasked as Cabinet members for market sectors they have business interests in can make some brazenly stupid choices.
These folks are not draining the beltway swamp.
Trump's cronies are financial alligators with no moral compass who love the swamp.
2
"What is it with these people and travel?" They are all used to flying on corporate jets or first class at the corporation's expense. They don't really feel like giving any of this up just because they now work for the government. After all, they all really still work for the corporations. When you hire CEOs and millionaires, you get their lifestyle and habits along with them.
3
I am just hoping enough of our Nation survives this onslaught of awful that we might be able to rebuild it.
Since most of the wrecking that is being done is by DECREE I am counting on the next Democratic President to undo the worst of the damage.
That process must start this year.
We must vote and vote in such numbers that overwhelm any degree of gerrymandering, voter suppression, fire hoses, whatever they bring to keep US from voting.
Knowing the depth of t rump's character and principle I will bet that when democrats take over the congress this year he will change parties and switch to being a liberal just so they'll be nice to him.
Until that happens everything and everybody connected to him is just horrible.
4
Gail, Pruitt will never, ever be surpassed as the worst, until the Donald is included. He is the pride of Oklahoma, and did an absolutely outstanding job of Fracking Oklahoma, nearly to death. Effects felt far and wide, especially here in Kansas. How bad is it? People in KANSAS make fun of Oklahoma. Enough said. He should be required to take the bus, for his
" essential travels ". Or better yet, a ( very ) used RV. The driver could double as his security, to protect Him from the public. We really wouldn't want him to be afraid, or to have his feelings hurt. That's for later.
In Federal Prison.
8
There is no worst. There is only Trump. He is the agent of national immune suppression that allows all these disease entities to flourish. HRC was prophetic with her "basket of deplorables." Anybody think she was mistaken or too harsh now?
9
Every day a new outrageous scandal.
Every day, this Congress does nothing.
5
Profiles in Incompetence. And THAT is being polite, and generous.
Just saying.
4
Gail, I just have to disagree with you and, uh all, of your readers on Trump's cabinet. I would give them all an 11 on a scale from 1 to 10. Their level of absolute incompetence, and ignorance concerning the operations and purpose of government completely prevents them from dismanteling it! Besides it's really tough to get around with all those wads of cash sticking out of their pockets.
3
What about Jared Kushner?
The most important member of the Trump administration who does not need a Security clearance to attend to his vast Foreign Policy Portfolio.
1
There is plenty of room for good journalism and editorials that mean something. This just seems petty, pretentious, and beneath The Times. This is the fodder used by people who support Trump, to influence those to come to their side in hating the media.
Ms. Collins is a humorist, that's her job. Times readers love her. Plenty of other folks to write the serious stuff.
7
On the next commercial flight Pruitt takes, I would like to book a seat in first class directly in front of him. A few hours prior to take off, I will have eaten a salad, 4 boiled eggs, refried beans, topped off with two cups of dark roast coffee and some chocolate. I don't know about you, but for me, that is the perfect combination of food for maximum pungency. I apologize to all fellow travellers. Consider yourselves collateral damage!
1
Us normals should take up a collection to buy all of Trump's Cabinet 'officials' (ha!) a first-class airline ticket to anywhere they want to go-- one-way, no-return.
I am shocked the poor man had to fly commercial! What do we have an Air Force for anyway? I do have a question for any aeronautical engineers in the readership: Would there be any drawback to building a solid gold 747?
3
I nominate Candy Carson, Ben's wife, for her hubris in taking over Ben's office and it seems without Ben's knowledge ordering a $31,000 dining table--nothings to good for her man!!
1
The environmental devastation of our and financial pillaging by Pruitt et al is yet another issue the Democrats could use with great effect in the congressional election, but they need to stop hyperventilating about DACA and immigration. Want to help dreamers? Get elected first.
Thanks, Ms. Collins. He is the worst of the worst. If Pruitt were honest, he'd change the name of the agency under his "leadership" from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Extra Pollution Administration.
2
In a single year, businessman/playboy who promises to run the least corrupt administration ever to exist in history gives us the most corrupt cabinet, staffers and on-site lobbyists, and brings in family members and friends.
While making millions at his properties while in office.
And somehow the vice president's son's absurdly ridiculously high rent in NY Trump Tower is paid by taxpayers. Every day scandals, a flurry of breaking news,---and a special prosecutor's face right there in the side mirror anytime Mr. Trump is in a car:
Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
3
Wait till Judge Roy is nominated for the federal bench.
I pine for the days when the Republicans managed to make it a term-of-office length scandal for Bill Clinton to have sat on the tarmac an extra 30 minutes so he could get a haircut. Good times, those, as it turns out.
1
With regard to Scott Pruitt:
While I'm no lawyer nor have I studied the details of his prior lawsuits & current policy changes, I did hear a bit of an interview with him in which he runs out some fast-talking legalistic justifications for his rollbacks & attacks on environmental protections.
Since so many of us feel the actions of Pruitt are so far the most consequential & scary Trumpist in terms of protecting our health, the biosphere & the landscape from the abuses of industry, it would be helpful if Pruitt's legal justifications for his actions be broken down for us to try to understand why he's doing what he's doing.
He appears to be claiming it's all about law, but I suspect that's not all there is to it. His actions don't appear to be only about protecting the rights of industry to use & abuse the environment for the financial benefit of industrial businesses under the rubric of some general 'trickle-down' economic ideology, nor does it appear to be only about money & palm-greasing pay-to-play insider-connected pro-business dealings.
There may be a religious ideology involved in his decision-making that aligns with the Southern Baptist 2007 manifesto denying climate change.
Journalists should ask Pruitt if he's a 'Dominionist' or believes that god gave Adam "Dominion" over the earth.
In this view, if the bible grants Dominion to use up the earth & directs us to use up Creation.
Falwell claimed environmentalist scientists are paid shills of an evil government.
2
Is Pruitt under the illusion that someone who really wanted to hurt him wouldn't buy a first class ticket? Trump is rich and privileged and he likes all of his administration to be rich and privileged. But Trump's supporters are still unwavering in their belief that Trump is concerned about the common people.
1
Pruitt was definitely my first choice as he has caused the most damage since he took "public" office. He believes he is still working for the private sector and is demolishing all rules and regulations protecting our climate and our labor force much more effectively now that he has the power to. When he was the legal mouthpiece of billion and trillion dollar industries he did not always win the fight against our environment or the American people.
He can be bought, and was, and revenge is sweet for Pruitt, but if you believe like me that 'right is might', he will be taken down. For one thing he has violated more laws than any of the others, except Trump.
1
Not the least bit surprised. Oh, I think about 54% of the voters knew well ahead of time that a Trump presidency would be about every baser impulse of a bloated, fried-chicken-eating, narcissist without even a rudimentary understanding of how government works, never mind anything substantive. Trump's cabinet and staff might as well be cartoon villains, wearing top hats and curled mustaches. The only think they haven't done yet is literally tie a damsel to the train tracks.
I think it's a pity that the late push by a dedicated public servant like Ben Carson didn't bear fruit, but I am pleased to see that sending Rick Perry off to negotiate on nukes with the Saudis gets him off to a strong, early start for next year.
1
There's a "worst" in this administration? This is like picking between a cobra, a rattlesnake and a mamba.
4
Pruitt's and Zinke's travel choices give them a chance to not only contaminate our environment and destroy our natural heritage through their policies, but to make sure they are doing so through their wasteful and carbon-spewing personal travel choices.
2
The corruption in this trump swamp is overwhelming.
I completely agree with the top two picks.
The plan is to start to decommission the National Parks.
How to achieve that?
Make them prohibitively expensive so attendance drops to levels low enough to use that as the excuse.
We have never been in more danger on this front.
One helpful thing about this exercise; It shows just how deep and wide the Trump slime ball has become.
It was Tom Price.
OMG one of your best ever Gail and there have had some really great columns.
When it the misery going to end? Teflon Trump seems to be impervious to anything coming his way - maybe it's there are just so many you can't remember yesterday's transgressions because more come up the next day to obliterate yesterday's stories.
I know that I am suffering from Trump Fatigue that's for sure.
Just flew from Boston to California. In coach. Am glad none of those mentioned were back there.
1
What if we had a vote and everybody won! Might look like this one.
We may eventually be able to get rid of all these self-serving parasites but sadly, they will take their sizable pensions and benefits with them when they go.
And as we've seen, the wealthy can always find 'friends' to gloat with and golf courses to play on, and will continue to revel in their pretty things with pretty people, no matter how despicable and crooked they are. Unless they end up in prison.
2
I still say "all of the above," because clearly the whole damage Trump and his army of perfidious appointees can do to our country is far greater than the sum of all these corroded, defective parts.
But then where would Trump and his deranged and destructive cabinet be without the full support of the GOP, the NRA, right-wing media, and Trump's new best friends, the Russians?
As a Chinese official said about Trump and his administration: "We cannot believe our good fortune."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/making-china-great-again
Remember "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country!" That was long, long ago - in spirit as well as in time. Sad.
1
I would agree that Pruitt is in position to cause the most physical damage to the country and seems to be proceeding along that line. However, if an award is given to the most irritating member of the Trump administration, that award should go to Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
2
I think we would be better governed if only the White House Chef and grounds keepers would be running the show. At least they know what's it like to really work for a living.
2
Priceless, Gail:
"Pruitt needs special seating, the E.P.A. claims, because other travelers have begun to verbally assault him in the airports."
Maybe travelers could take out extra trip insurance against having to travel with Pruitt or Zinke.
I don't know what Carson does, either, but that's similar to all of the others in the Trump cabinet who have sworn fealty to him. Swamp drainers?
1
There is no satire strong enough that can accomplish the job of denigrating some of these grossest examples of public servants ever to fill cabinet posts.
13
In my lifetime I have never seen cabinet members who are so outrageous and incompetent that their antics become household comic gossip. Well, we are in the court of Emperor Donald the Dumb and here we are in the realm of the crooked clowns as courtiers. When they are not grifting they are falling on their faces. What they are not doing, is their jobs. They are all unfit for service.
The only difference is the degree to which their greed and raw partisanship makes them a national liability. This puts Pruitt at the top of the list of corrupt clowns. He is pure evil and ridiculous as well--a rare combination to be sure, but sadly not surprising in the Trump court.
13
Only the best. Only the best. The best of the worst. And to be sure, this is a wurst party for sure.
6
So many choices in this administration but Pruitt is a really despicable and compromised EPA head, so yes, he’s at the top of the deplorables who is taking us back decades. Vote like our lives depend on it !
10
Their problem with travel? They do not want to be mixed-in with the common masses. Isn't this fairly obvious? As much as Trump appealed to this group ("I love my poorly educated"), his chosen crew are almost all some sort of rich arrogant snot that doesn't want to be "soiled" by any personal engagement with ordinary citizens.
12
So much for those hated coastal liberal elites, what the grass roots, salt of the earth, flyover country Trump base craves is the contempt of their beloved rich, corrupt, greedy, crass, right wing country club Republican hedge fund managers and bagmen for the fossil fuel industry.
Enjoy having the people your votes put in office spit on you and your families every day Trumpista's!
Hey be fair Gail, he has not yet been indicted on anything.
I think to be #1, you have to indicted or made a deal with Mueller, like Flynn, Manaford, Gates etc.
3
Right. I guess their is no federal statute to indict Crimes Against Humanity.
2
Pruitt is but a part of the team working toward the deconstruction of our government as described by the late Bannon. This means the undoing of every step of social progress we have made in the United States in the past century or more.
Pruitt is just one of many of Trump's arrogant greedy and power hungry sycophants. Just look at those he has surrounded himself like Paul Manafort, Wilbur Ross (Bank of Cyprus), Mike Flynn, Bannon himself, Ajit Pai, Betsy DeVos, Arpaio, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, Rick Gates. Steven Mnuchin, Nikki Haley, Sarah Huckabee Sanders,. the list goes on. This is the team that will work for the end of Social Security, Environmental Protection, Medicare...every program that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and their donors want to see scrapped.
Trump is a champion of ignorance and will do anything to get a few cheers from his racist, Fox News fan club. That is what drives Trump - the money grasping extreme narcissist, the face of the Republican Party. Trump is a disgrace to our nation and yet the Republican Party chooses to look the other way. They must all be replaced. Get out the vote starting in 2018 and throw these and cowards and hypocrites out of our government!
11
This would be funny if it wasn't so sad
5
I vote worst member of the administration is....Trump.
4
Peers or vi-peers? Sssssso obvioussss
5
trump administration - worst ever -hugely bigly god awful. by far the greatest most awful administration in all of history in all of the entire universe and let's hope for all future time to come.
5
All of this winning by Trump, Inc, A Corporation Of And For Grifters, is just making me giddy.
3
So funny that every day a new "winner" appears. While I heartily agree that these dastardly clowns deserve high finishes in this event, the gold has to goy to Boy Child Kushner, who has scored massive loans (and who know what else) for his family's bankrupt business from his desk in the West Wing, Such chutzpah - clearly NO rules apply to him. I guess rules are for peasants.
6
Ivanka and Jared should be resigning soon and going back to NYC to spend more time with their family.We know Hope Hicks is doing that, but with whose family it is not quite so clear. All this has nothing to do with Gail's Worst List, but the Old Timey GOP Family Values Syndrome is in a resurgence and must be duly noted.
1
Disgraceful
From top, all the way through.
4
Is it my imagination or do all of these people actually look like weasels too.
9
A.G. Jeff Sessions keeps blaming Obama for all the administration's problems. His twitter is disgusting. Because of his power and his professional obligation to be ethical - and he's not - Sessions gets my vote.
1
It's noteworthy that--even with Gail's long list of contenders (Con-Tenders) for most deplorable candidate--commentators here are naming dozens of even more worthy deplorable candidates! To be perfectly fair, and not to leave out any deplorables, you may have to institute a Most Deplorable of the Month award. Well, make that TWO each month. Big guy will feel left out, so his name should be placed--each and every month--above the winner of each month. What a rich harvest this administration is! And they're still not tired of winning!
3
Since we're from the same state I'm tempted to say that Pruitt makes me ashamed to be an Oklahoma, but then I think about the burden Gail must bear.
4
So a leftist columnist from the leftist NYT runs a poll amongst it's majority left wing readers and Scott Pruitt is named the worst of President Trumps administration.
Congratulations Mr. Pruitt. This poll is a badge of honor that only confirms what an outstanding job you are doing. You have successfully eliminated many inane and counter productive regulations. These regulations were costly to industry, job creation and citizens, especially the poverty stricken who are most affected by increased energy costs.
And the effect on the environment of the Obama era regulations, created by unelected bureaucrats in the deep state, is statistically nil. The amount of CO2 reductions these regulations would create would have zero effect on the earth's climate.
XL Pipeline = Winning. Stopping payments to Green Climate Fund = Winning. Dakota Access Pipeline = Winning. New coal leases = Winning. Reducing costly time consuming and project delaying paper work = Winning.
Pruitt = Winning!
2
My congrats: brilliant satire, though I do feel you went a little over the top of nuttiness.
2
You = choking on the foul air
2
This collection of entitled mediocrities degrades the country.
7
I still think it should have been Rick Perry. After all, he has the nukes. Now, if he can just remember where he put them.
8
" Birds of a feather flock together ", wouldn't expect any different from this guys.
3
Jill Stein and the so called Green Party gave us Mr. Pruitt. They did it gleefully and with spite as they traversed the country telling their followers that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were the "same". No greater nonsense has ever been spewed!
The so called Green Party gave us George W. Bush and now Donald Trump.
Will we survive these smug, know it all ding dongs?
And what was Jill Stein doing in Moscow at the SAME TABLE as Vladimir Putin and Michael Flynn in late 2015?
Coincidence? Yeah, right? The Russians needed her to run. It was part of the plan. Did they fund her?
12
The worst wasn't Jill Stein. There was also the self-declared socialist bernie sanders, who stole the Democrat label than went back to being an independent. In the end, it was the outdated electoral college who gave us the deplorables who are using our treasury as their personal bank.
3
One word....kakistocracy
3
but but but best KAKISTOCRACY ever.....
1
I don't any more watch FOX cable news, because they cover spending
embarrassments by Obama administration and are probably not so gungho re folly luxuries by DJTs personnel. I miss Solyndra so much, because FOX seemingly exposed it daily if not hourly.
Well at least the
Trump reprobates get some joy from their wasteful expenditures.
The competency of the Trump appointees is seemingly generally solid ...waste, and
the GOP will be defending their meritricious good ole boys and girls no matter how painful the regressions infamously
are.
Scott Pruitt is a deserving winner in a tough competition No one worked harder to be the worst at his job. But I'm worried about some of other cartoon characters in Trumpworld. Has anyone seen Rick Perry lately ? Is he still alive or is he just lost in traffic trying to find his office ?
Is Rex Tillerson feeling better now that Jared lost his security clearance? Are there any openings at Fox News for Hope Hicks? Is Bannon going to be homeless or does he just look like he is ? Is Ben Carson going to be eating off a folding tray ? Will Mnuchin have to get a second job to afford his wife's clothes? There's so much to worry over.
4
Why is there not an honorable person in the whole of the Trump administration? Gail your take on Trump's worst is funny, but somehow I can't laugh as these creeps and takers grin and pat each other on the back as they take from our national parks, from our insurance, from our schools etc. Their licentiousness, in full view of our country and our planet, is galling. Our nation is reduced to being run by a bunch of sticky fingered, greedy, and selfish scroungers. Can't laugh at all about that. Vote the GOP out.
2
Most entertaining and yet so sobering and outrageous, all in one take. Who are these plutocrats that they mock the very idea of service in the government? From whom do they take their actions by his actions? Trump and I guess Melania and Barron and who else fly hither and y on all on the government's dime. Cabinet members should fly cheapest no matter the chatter in the coach section. Great line about the cost of the trip out of Ohio "could have paid for paving cracks in apprx. 110 sq. miles of road." And then the flamboyant Zinke who reminds me a bit of Custer and that story. Of course, Zinke must larger than Custer, in physical size. I guess he feels impervious to any band of citizens coming after him for he continues to spend the money, spend the money, while raising the flag and getting on his horse(s) here and there. What a cast of characters!
1
First, class.
Not.
1
The only people who might even beat out Pruit and his like in Trump's cabinet are his followers who support the president. What a bunch of far-seeing deciders of a nation's fate!
1
I'd be mean to Pruitt if I was sitting beside him on a flight, if, by being mean means talking his ear off. He'd want to take a train next time.
3
"He'd want to take a train next time."
He'd be pretty anonymous going Greyhound.
4
"Fake news." This survey was skewed. You obviously didn't reach out to corporate CEO's, jailed politicians, or civilian militia members....although you can be excused for the latter, difficult to find as most are rooting around in their shelters finding new places to stash the AR's...
1
Ahh, just wait until we get to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and his time as Vice-Chair of the Bank of Cyprus (hint: lots of Russians here!)
2
It’s kinda sad that Jared and Ivanka couldn’t be part of this contest.
Jared, that polished, immaculate, forever young, hairless man with the empty empty eyes, has been assigned by his father-in-law to:
1) Finally bring peace to the Middle East
2) Reorganize the units of government responsible for solving the opioid crisis
3) Act as liaison to China
4) Act as liaison to Mexico
5) Facilitate criminal justice reform
Can we vote again soon, please?
3
"Jared, that polished, immaculate, forever young, hairless man with the empty empty eyes"
One of the few induhviduals on the planet who would look less like themselves than their wax figure at Madame Tussauds'.
3
The Donald said he would drain the swamp. He forgot to mention that he would refill it.
1
I'm telling ya. What a collection of "winners."
But Pruitt, yes, takes the cake.
1
Mnuchin, aided by his wife, seems worse to me than Pruitt.
3
The only relevant data is the emission of lies and corruption emanating from the White House. The link to verify it sits in the Oval Office while his minions and associate kleptocrats wallow in the miasma around the Potomac swamp.
9
Their extravagance of flying let-them-eat-cake fares could possibly be forgiven if in return they bring some good results. What is galling and adds insult to injury are INTENTIONAL damages they wrought from their stewardship of the nation’s precious resources. These damages may take years to unwind if they are not already made irreversible. Disgraceful!
18
You know whom I’m most sorry for? Webster! Now they have to redefine the word “Public Servant”. Oh, I forgot. Webster is also going to have to redefine the word “President of the United States”.
19
Too bad Pruitt doesn't have a coal-fired aircraft at his disposal. Maybe Amtrak can special order a locomotive for him.
13
"Maybe Amtrak can special order a locomotive for him."
Maybe the train from "Back to the Future III" is available.
2
Wow! I never knew that being head of the E.P.A. was such a dangerous job!
12
The next time we play this Who's the Worst game, Gail, can you figure out how to let us just toss a dart into a board with all the names on it?
Save us the agony of having to actually think on one of 'em.
7
So, all of that is painfully true. But these incompetents are only symptoms, as is Donald Un(fit). The problem is not in *"our stars", but in ourselves", the voters.
*The Trump (crime) family, everyone in the administration, And Donald Un(fit) himself.
12
So hard to chose just one from this buffet of bamboozlers, this smorgasbord of swindlers...
12
... emporium of evil?
This is scalding and brilliant - one of Gail's best - from:
"To be fair, if we had included Donald Trump himself in the balloting, I’m sure the big guy would have swept the field — actually winning the popular vote for the first time in his presidential career."
all the way to her witty, dry closing with "special gold-embossed frequent flyer card"
Why does it matter that today's piece is brilliant? Because Trump and his minions have done so many things wrong that people are getting oversaturated with bad man Trump stories, and are starting to ignore his many failings.
With her column today, Gail shows that even 13 months in to this moral and intellectual bloodbath of a presidency, someone with her talent can exhort us all, in no uncertain terms, to keep our eyes on the road.
14
Next contest: Worst member of Congress.
So many choices!
6
McConnell - hands down champion
2
By far, the worst. I wonder if there will be a legal case to be made, later on, to indict Pruitt for crimes against humanity (that is, Americans.) However all these appointees have acted against the interests of the American people, and I hope they will pay for their offenses.
8
I guess we put Trump in there to stop anyone from complaining about any future government. .. just to show us all how bad it can be..
5
Why is Rick “Pickles” Perry gathering tumbleweeds in the polls? His chicken little “the grid is falling” alarm to buoy coal mining fell like a lead brick before the FERC. The department he couldn’t remember wishes they could forget him? Does not this raise his stature in the polls?
5
Fifty years ago, Jimmy Breslin gave us a look into an absolutely inept Mafia family with the book "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight".
Who is going to be the one to bring us the story about, "The Plutocrats Who Couldn't Govern"?
6
We paid $6,250 so another cabinet member could have a play date withMike Pence?
9
How about we vote like Screen Actors Guild and give the award to the ensemble. In this case the worst ensemble cabinet ever.
7
My wife, seeing the handwriting on the wall, retired from the EPA as an administrator in the RTP campus in NC after a lovely and fulfilling career. Virtually all of the people she left behind are depressed and are just waiting for the axe to fall on them. Her retirement party was a little like a wake. Pruitt, beyond his enabler Trump, is likely to cause the most lasting damage. But unlike the other horrible people in the Trump administration, Pruitt is strategic and unfortunately effective. The ineffective and out of their element poll? That list is long indeed.
9
I love the article and the comments. I call Trump "opposite man". He chooses to do and appoint precisely the polar opposite of any person or action I believe to be good. It's as though he started out his presidency saying to himself. "How might I hurt the United States the most?" And as for Jared or Ivanka, God it makes me SICK that these two can have anything to do with my country. To this day I can't believe how unbelievably objectionable it is to think of ANY of the Trump family having access to to anything classified, much less top secret, or to sit in that place of honor.
10
The Trump cabinet is one of the most capable in decades, an assembly of successful individuals, who are applied their recipe dor achievement to America, so that the nation can reach heights never before imagined. Thank you.
1
Well what's in the water in Rural Tennessee? Are you located near a leaking still? The Trump WH is a sieve and a revolving door of all this "success". Even poor old Hopey admits to lying. Ugh.
Almost as humorous as the original column.
1
Historians are going to need multiple chapters in future textbooks just to cover all the scandals and larceny.
And this is just the beginning. Once the indictments start to fall like spring rain it is going to get very chaotic.
9
When the crew notices Scott Pruitt sitting up in first class, they should go back into coach and announce how honored they are to have a member of the Cabinet aboard this flight, and invite the people to come up front and greet him warmly as soon as the seatbelt sign is turned off.
14
"and invite the people to come up front and greet him warmly as soon as the seatbelt sign is turned off."
They could splice the scene into a refresh of "Airplane!". Imagine a lineup of people with baseball bats, boxing gloves, brass knuckles, flails, mace (the ones with the chain) . . . . .
2
We should get his his advance travel plans and load first class with bums.
These awards should be a reminder of what kind of unfettered ethics reside in the business community. No wonder they despise government regulations. "Conservative spend thrifts", the lot of them.
3
An award Ms. Collins? If this wasn't so serious, I'd laugh, though I do think you should give out some gold plated statuettes.
Here's another winner for you, the complicit Congress (House and Senate), who pushed through a Tax scam, (which the populace did not want) and kept quiet and whose continued silence and corruption has allowed Trump to break so many laws and get away with it! If the average American Minority citizen broke just one of these laws, the'd be sent to a federal prison for 20 years.
How about another contest: In Which country can we kill the most civilians? How many American military people will die? So far, we have Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, N Korea, Syria and Niger in the running, thought there are others.
I'll watch for the next batch of winners.
5
When still a kid my dad explained to me there are two types of funny; peculiar and ha ha.These guys don't bring a smile.
2
Funny, but not funny. I think we are coming to the point of more scandals in this administration than in any prior administrations combined. MAGA - More Administration Graft America.
2
Scott Pruitt may have won, but the real answer is "all of them".
2
I think that if Mexico is going to pay for our wall, Russia should pay for tRump's administration travels, amirite?
I mean, so much of what Republicans do actually benefits Russia, their citizens should throw in some rubles. I'm a genius! (A very very stable one, I might add.)
2
If global warming from the oil and gas industry has already doomed mankind, those still living in the final days of human existence on a scorched planet will likely regard Scott Pruitt as the worst government official in human history.
4
I want to put Kellyanne, Stephen Miller, Sarah Huckabee, Melania and the entire Trump family minus children under the age of 21, and Mike and Mother Pence in coach seating, as well, so we'll have the chance to yell at all of them.
6
I for one did not vote. How on earth could anybody pick just one?
4
Medici, So, you live in a dark cave, yes?
Sorry, Gail, but even your fine sense of humor cannot quell the outrage and disgust I feel in reading about Trump's cabinet members' race to the bottom, a race you summarize succinctly.
Thinking about Carson's furniture and Pruitt's travel that my tax dollars helped pay for is absolutely maddening. For over a year now I've fretted about the fate of America as Trump and Company drive ordinarily sane people like me over the edge.
Will all of America soon look like Alabama and Arkansas, every state left populated by gun-toting, ignorant folk who cheer on the people destroying them?
6
I don’t think anyone in this administration has any morals, ethics or basic common sense. However, they do seem to excel at being bullies and definitely excel at feathering their own nests. Maybe, at some point, the swamp will get deep enough to swallow them up.
5
It seems every individual associated with this administration is ethically challenged; there is no responsible adult supervision whatsoever.
2
It is my understanding that the educational system is so bad in Oklahoma that a significant percentage of graduating seniors couldn't even name the first president of the U,S. I wonder if Pruitt was one of them?
2
Thanks for the humor, Gail.
However, I do offer a sobering thought. I suspect that most (all?) of these candidates are proud of being on this list. To our faces, they claim to be working for the public good. Behind our backs,,they’re all laughing at us.
75
It's telling that the winner of the "Worst Cabinet Member of the Trump Administration" is the most capable. Unfortunately, Scott Pruitt knows exactly what he wants to do--undermine the very mission of the agency he's been hired to lead--and he's proven to be quite competent in carrying out that task. Pruitt's overspending is appalling, of course, but it's nothing compared to his larger goal.
But it should be mentioned that he says he's made cleaning up Superfund
sites--contaminated toxic land areas--a priority. In fact, he's so focused on Superfund sites that he wants to create more of them.
32
I believe this constitutes a "basket of deplorables" to quote the winner of the popular vote for President of the United States.
95
Gail, perhaps you’re column inches are limited, but you left out our Veep, Mike Pence. Didn’t he fly to a football game in Indianapolis in order to make a statement when players took a knee just so he could walk out? He didn’t see one play. What you have to do to keep the base with you.
Then there was the trip to the Olympics in Korea so he could play nice with Adam Rippon in order to show his admiration and compassion for the gay community. But oops, Adam had more important matters to attend to like preparing for the skating competition. On top of that Pence needed to throw in a snub of Mr. Kim’s sister. I haven’t heard whether he enjoyed the games or not. How long did he stay at the Olympics? Well perhaps the flag carrying athlete from Tonga got his blood racing. Then it would be well worth the expense of his journey.
38
So funny.
It makes me pine for Huey Long to come back from the grave and take trumps’ place.
Trump: patronage, American style.
15
I love Gail Collins!
She got it right, but I believe she left off a fourth absurd defense given by Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Trump's crazy talk - he was just joking/isn’t really going to do that/was totally misunderstood...
It was Obama's fault.
54
he was just joking/isn’t really going to do that/was totally misunderstood/Rude Democrats.
1
"top finishers will get a special gold-embossed frequent flier card." I would have preferred that the top named "worst cabinet member" get a "Frequent Liar Card" but the Prez has it already. Can you please establish subcategories of Frequent Flier Liar so we can include the whole bunch? Let's not be stingy with such priceless awards.
I recall a placard at the January 2018 Women's March in NYC: "I've seen smarter cabinets at Ikea." Brought me close to tears.
49
Although it's a group honor and it wasn't appointed by Trump, I think the Republican controlled U.S. Congress deserves a strong shout out. You know, sort of like Doctors Without Borders winning a Nobel Peace Prize, a group effort, except exactly in the opposite direction These public servants approved all the incredibly horrible Trump appointees. And, let's not forget all the Trump voters who, in their collective wisdom, decided that this country needs the worst president ever.
32
Jared and Ivanka have fake jobs, they don't get paid a salary, and despite being senior advisors to the President, they can't pass a security background check. Ben Carson is a fake Doctor as all it seems he can do is harm. Melanie is a fake First Lady as her husband seems to put other ladies first.
43
And since Trump is a fake president, it all seems very apropos.
I personally will help with the cost of a one-way ticket to Oklahoma.
23
I'll split it with you!
1
Me too. But ONLY in Coach/Economy.
3
Crowd funding
1
I feel bad for Ryan Zinke. Well, actually I feel bad that Zinke is allowed within a country mile of our public lands. Much as Donald Trump's sheer awfulness has provided James Buchanan's ghost the belated luxury of no longer being the worst president of all time, so Ryan Zinke's defilement of the Interior Department has done for the still-kicking James Watt.
14
Give me a break.
The obvious winner was Kellyanne Conway, who -- standing on Trump's shoulders -- has taken the art of lying into new places never seen before in the history of the world.
I suspect foul play by Putin in the counting of the ballots and am hoping Mueller will look into this matter post-haste.
21
This administration seems to have decided to re-examine every sin that the two former Democrat administration have committed and then commit them all ten times worse than their predecessors. All this in addition to a healthy number of original sins of their own.
7
All these Secretaries have one thing in common, they wouldn't be in these areas of responsibility if Trump had not appointed them. So although they all seem universally horrible for their policy agendas and their personal spending habits, taken together they all seem to be the worst Cabinet ever assembled by the worst President elected to office. All hail Trump.
27
Scott Pruitt is the worst, I agree. Mr. Pruitt should feel proud as it is quite a feat to rise to the top of this crowd. To be deemed worse than Kushner, Miller, Pence, Zinke, DeVos and Carson is impressive.
23
The only way these bozos will go away will be when voters 'turn them out' by sweeping out Congressional Republicans at the 2018 midterm election and by electing ANY Democrat for President in 2020 Presidential election.
No more hand wringing, get active, support the Democrats with money and volunteer time.
And YES, I know the Democrats aren't perfect angels...but we have a two party system, like it or not, and we must get rid of all of bozos disguised as Republicans.
32
Scott Pruitt deserves the Gail Collins WOBBLY (Worst of Bad Bunch Last Year) Award.
Pruitt is the kind of guy who strikes the observer as the type of public servant willing to do absolutely anything requested of him, if the price is right.
10
'She even came in behind Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a person whose only actual power is to be irritating.' To quote George Orwell '...you have to be really of the educated classes to make such a claim.' For this is a particularly un chivalorous remark and even anti women perchance? You see we call all play the victim card.
An observation from this side of a less biased ocean for 'Une femme d'un certain age' to withstand a veritable lions den of hostility on a daily basis is a remarkable feat of equanimity.
So why do I see it that way and you see conversely? I mean, who is wearing the blinkers, why is your utopia my dystopia? Is it culture, education? Or is it simply the Liberal voice wailing in a wilderness without power.
As opposed to the free pass given to Sean Spicer for his miserable performance? At least he had the decency to quit.
HUH?
2
The sad thing about all this is the Trump voters who stick with him due to stubbornness, delusion, hatred of the other (immigrants, elites etc.) or they hate America. Every week I go to 538 and hope sanity is returning. No fan of W, but how are his numbers worse than this freak show of a presidency? Sad!
10
This is a corrupt administration from top to bottom, and thank you for continuing to make this known.
27
Gail, going forward I will be pleased to be seated in coach. Thank you for highlighting the advantages of avoiding first class. Pruitt is as disgraceful as Georgia’s own Perdue. Don’t even get me started on the perceived entitlement of Ben Carson.These people can afford what they want but they want to stick it to the taxpayers. They wouldn’t hear a peep out of anyone if they paid for their own luxuries. That goes for donald too...mr. “I’ll be way too busy to play golf” trump. All this in the name of faux conservatism...
The public conversation is perverted by the media perception that republicans are conservative; it’s a pernicious lie. They are radicals in every respect. They are radical about not spending any money if a democrat holds the executive branch. They are radical about abortions, even those that save the mother when the child can't be saved. (Also see their Ayn Rand fetish even though she used abortion as birth control. And her books are garbage.) They are radical in running up the budget in spending frenzies that endanger our economy in order to reward their donors. They epitomize judicial activism.
And they lie. Donald is the biggest lie yet and he’s just getting started. Wait until he has no staff left. Wait til he's the only one between us and a senseless Korean War, or any war, really...This doesn’t end well no matter how it ends. We have squandered the good will we earned through our good behavior and the blood of our youth during WWII.
What a waste.
23
So many crooks to choose from. Can we have a similar contest among congressional leaders - Mitch, Ryan, Nunes.
18
Mitch number 1
1
The question that's plagued me from the beginning of this administration is whether we are witnessing incompetence or maliciousness. Normally, these two characteristics would make strange bedfellows, but Trump seems to pull it off. Unfortunately, for the health of our planet, Pruitt is just malicious, which definitely makes him the worst.
12
Give me a break.
The obvious winner was Kellyanne Conway, who -- standing on Trump's shoulders -- has taken the art of lying into new places never seen before in the history of the world.
I suspect foul play by Putin in the counting of the ballots and am hoping Mueller will look into this fixed election post-haste.
1
Well, not only is Pruitt the worst among really bad members of the administration but I would advocate he is also the weirdest. There has to be some kind of award for that achievement.
In addition, I think there should be an 'ensemble cast' award so the others don't feel slighted. When you are the dregs of an administration and all vying for the same award, it makes sense to recognize them equally.
Oh Gail, so grateful for the humor. It helps to laugh especially when you just want to scream.
3
Did no one nominate poor Wilbur Ross? He is pushing the Census Bureau to add questions about individuals' legal status on the 2020 Census, which will drive everything from Congressional delegation size to farm subsidies, and who knows what else in between. What's remarkable is that he appears to be asleep most of the time, so he should get some credit for that. Not....
6
As the former exec at the Cyprus Bank, Wilbur has some 'spain'n' to do to Bob Mueller, as most of the laundered money from the Trump machine and Putin passed 'through' that entity.
Gail, let's keep these Trump's Worst contests going. If you do it long enough, we could have a trophy like the Stanley Cup. Atop the trophy would sit a Trump bobblehead doll and, like hockey's famous cup, the names of the winners and the date would be inscribed around the pedestal. And each winner would keep the cup until the next contest.
3
I love Gail Collins!
She always gets it right, but I did think she left off another absurd defense from Sarah Huckabee Sanders annoying claims from Trump that he iwas just joking/isn’t really going to do that/was totally misunderstood...
and Obama did it.
6
Dishonorable Mention for every last Republican member of Congress for having decided to shirk their constitutional duties, chief of which is impeachment and conviction.
6
We could write a sequel to JFK's book. It would be titled Profiles in Cowardice. Of course it would have to be several volumes.
You could say that Russia’s wish was realized. The country is completely disfunctional. The news cycles are all about Trump and his attempts to discredit the former administration, his disastrous appointees (approved by Congress), a complete lack of foreign policy, his refusal to sanction Russia (who has now threatened to defend N Korea with nuclear weapons), a “brilliant” son-in -law whose inept business dealings required him to borrow from foreign investors (money paid after a trip to the White House), and a Hope Hicks who admits lying for Trump. Now to top it off - a First Lady (whose father is a Communist) obtained her Einstein green card under questionable circumstances when dating Trump - now there’s an investigation. Forget email servers when Trump advisors and family without security clearance were reading classified material. To all those voters who wanted something different - you have it - corrupt, dangerous to national security and to the economy.
6
Gail, please put your magic touch to this idea. Here is a simple approach to cutting down on gun violence.
Every gun in America must have a serial number and must be registered, just like every car, boat, and airplane. Failure to adhere is a felony.
Every gun owner must be licensed just like every driver and pilot in America. Failure to adhere is a felony.
When a gun is sold, the seller must record the buyer’s license number & report the sale to a federal agency.
If a seller fails to report the buyer’s information and the weapon is involved in a crime, the seller is charged as an accessory to the crime.
That's no different than a driver to a robbery. Drivers are charged with the same crimes as the stick up men.
These are federal law whose provisions are standard throughout all the states. There can be NO state reinterpretation of the statutes.
BTW, my vote was Pruitt.
8
AND Gun owners must buy liability insurance in case they and their gun are in an “accident” that harms a person and/or property. And no assault weapons or their ammo owned by private citizens. I call that a well regulated militia.
Nothing compares to the expenses incurred by ferrying Trump to mar a Lago every week or moving Junior around on behalf of Trump, Inc. It's a joke.
5
Another day, more corruption. No surprise, except Trump’s twitch on guns, which could change any minute.
4
If someone wants to follow Pruitt around and fly first class and insult Pruitt, I'll contribute to the price of the volunteer's tickets. If all it takes is a little constant insulting to get him out, it's worth the price. Then again, he'd go for the private plane option. Any pilots out there willing to welcome him on board with a special insult or two?
6
While I share a certain disdain for flying these days as the airlines make it so darned unpleasant at every phase of the experience, I accept the realities of my pocketbook and desire to visit children and heave myself into coach.
First class travel always looks way more roomy and comfortable as we lemmings have to walk thru it on the way to our sardine space, I guess that's the whole point.
Why is Mr. Pruitt flying all over the world for meetings in the first place? He is systematically destroying the EPA so why would any meetings be necessary?
He could just stay in his office with his special booth and conduct his private business and investments using his insider knowledge.
As for Mr. Zinke, his illusions of grandeur are comical.
Please, another competition soon!
4
I’ve been wondering about the White House chef. There must be a story there. What does this person do? Order Trump’s take-out? Go to the drive-through window? Cook for Melania, Barron, and the grandparents? Perfect take-out copycat recipes? Cook only when Trump has vip groups like Congresspeople in for lunch while he berates or cajoles them? This seems like a different gig under this president. Is this chef grateful he doesn’t have to worry about state dinners? Inquiring minds want to know.
5
The humor is welcome yet the hubris, the corruption and blatant incompetence of this administration is far from funny.A perfect example is how long it has been common knowledge about Kushner's financial and foreign bank ties gone ignored and his security clearance only now challenged.
Perhaps not since the court of Versailles or the more modern regimes of Juan and Eva Peron, Marcos or Idi Amin has such a band of evil been assembled.
The only antidote to this poison is to get people out there and vote their enablers out.
5
“I have the best people.”
Best at spending tax money on themselves.
4
May I get an early nomination in for the next round of voting?
I'd like to nominate Ben Carson for his taste in furniture and spokespeople. I'd also like to nominate him simply because his scandal highlighted for me the fact that, as a public librarian with a Masters degree (aka an actual public servant, unlike the members of the Grifter Cabinet), my annual gross salary is just enough to purchase one dining table and one "decent chair." (These are the types of real-world, real-money comparisons the Democrats need to hammer on loudly and relentlessly. Democrats, are you listening?)
I'd also like to point out that, as I live just east of Cincinnati, I could have driven Scott Pruitt to New York and saved the government the equivalent of my annual salary in one day. I would even have paid for the gas myself since it would have given me the opportunity to spend hours telling him just what I think of him and his agenda. Of course, he's far too sensitive to have to deal with something as unpleasant as hearing from the public he's supposed to serve. Who's the special snowflake in need of a safe space now, Scotty?
3
Commandering military aircraft and having taxpayers pay for your personal travel deserve condemnation, but flying first class to do the nation's business is a perk I don't begrudge cabinet members.
Jonathan: You're joking, aren't you?! You do know they're not doing the NATION'S business?! These guys are destroying the agencies they were appointed to destroy, they are devastating your once-fine country, uprooting democratic values (and decency), and impoverishing the good, decent, and hard-working citizens of the nation, while lining their OWN pockets. They're flying first class & doing their OWN business, on the taxpayers' dime. And laughing all the way to the bank!
I was speaking (or writing) generally. It would be OK with me if cabinet members from ANY administration flew first class.
I hear the Boluga Cavair is unlimited on that utterly exhausting flight between
Washington and New York is something every member of Trumps team simply must experience...and they Will!
1
These people do realize that they will be out of the Trump administration one day? Good luck flying coach when you a nobody.
2
They are nobody now, they just don’t know it.
1
Richard Mclaughlin: The only problem is: they'll have their OWN jets by then! Which they'll have gotten by lining their own pockets by impoverishing the hard-working taxpayers of the nation!
This contest was a bit like asking what form of medieval torture would you prefer. They are all so horrible that it comes down to who is in position to do the most damage. Unfortunately, it may be years after they are all hopefully gone to assess the full magnitude of their destruction.
4
I know the cabinet receives little or no attention---but, they are administration implementers----this is why day by day all the cabinet members resemble Betsy De Vos..so inept that any policy will never see the light of day. Now having been relieved from the possibility that this clown show could really damage the country, my new anger is how each cabinet is burning through tax monies pursuing their personal wants and needs.
2
When old white men are in complete control as they've been down through history, and (after the briefest of intermissions) as they are in the Trump administration, they quite naturally have little to do but party since, by design, the world we're all living in is already prearranged to suit their taste to perfection. Okay, Ben Carson doesn't appear to be an old white man, then again every rule needs its exception.
2
For all intents and purposes, Ben Carson is an old white man, no different than any of the rest of the clowns appointed by Trump.
This 'Awards List' is spot on @gailcollins. I wouldn't have cried foul if the surname "Mulvaney" had been uttered. Shameful cast of "leaders."
2
I don't mind that these guys take these trips out of town (DC). I do mind that they keep coming back.
It's bad enough that America's citizens continue to send their most egregious local citizens to the Congress in an ongoing parade of criminals that self-promote, self-pay, self-laden with benefits and collect cash for their continuance in office. And as much as they are out of the office for junkets, they also keep coming back. The only thing that they do well is cause traffic jams.
5
Actually for most of its existence, the GOP had a pretty good record on conservation and environmental protection with a few lapses. In modern times, one expects the party to be more business vs citizen/worker friendly, but usually the head of the EPA has been chosen for an interest in pursuing the agency's intentions to protect land, water, air and people from the worst excesses of mankind.
And then along came Scott Pruitt, a human, unnatural disaster. The man is a freak, an anomaly, a bringer of earthquakes and pestilence. He deserves this accolade.
4
Great insight, but where’s the humor? The clown car running this country is heading for the cliff after removing the brakes; we are in big trouble, but we have their “thoughts and prayers” to get us through it all.
2
Hysterical! We needed a laugh today, so thanks for this. While managing to be informative, you are always witty.
1
Some time ago I copied off the following quote from Ron Reagan, thinking it so apropos re: the Trump administration. I have now amended my view, in that I believe that these people know exactly what they are doing!
"It's remarkable to think that often history can be changed, and sometimes in very fundamental ways, by people who don't actually know what they're doing."
Ron Reagan, Jr. c.2017
3
It's 4:00 am here in New Mexico and I'm trying not to laugh out loud and wake my husband. Thanks, Gail.
2
Laugh out loud funny Gail. Thank you. But has anyone checked if the White House chef and maintenance crew are related to, or former employees of, the trump's?
Speaking about wasted taxpayer money, is it true the military parade estimate is up to $100 million? Perhaps the parade organizer can be included in your next poll, although beating Pruitt is a very high bar.
2
For all those who voted the choice was problematic in such a target rich environment. Thank you Gail for a bright spot of humor on what has to be the most disturbing group of individuals who appear to be incapable of thinking beyond their own desires, they do truly reflect the attributes of there boss, truly as parasitic a bunch as we have had in many a decade, amusment mixed with horror.
2
You forgot to mention Pruitt spending $25,000 to build a soundproof booth in his office at the EPA.
4
There's absolutely no reason I should be glad that I picked Scott Pruitt as 'Trump's Worst' -- because he really is.
I'm just satisfied that so many other folks thought the same thing. The man is a scourge.
And hopefully all Americans will come to realize this, and take the time to go out and enjoy the wonders of our national landscape ... before it's too late.
3
Congratulations to Mr. Pruitt. He really deserves to win this poll, probably every year: He works hard to do the wrong things consistently, and refuses to listen to reason. That is focus. That is dedication. That is a person destined to win all such polls.
Mr. Pruitt did have some strong and worthwhile contenders, like Dr. Carson and Mrs. DeVos -- they ain't chopped liver in a race such as this. But in the end, Mr. Pruitt just would not be denied. He came, he saw, he conquered.
Enjoy your big win, Mr. Pruitt. You deserve it.
3
What about who ever is telling ICE to separate mothers from their children??
Or another vote for Ms. Sanders for lying about it.
1
Thank you, Gail! Lots of laughs while watching Trump's IGs keeping his promise to "Drain the Swamp."
1
From Gail’s “gold medal” winner Scott Pruitt on down, we can take as a given that every member of Trump’s cabinet (and entourage) will exploit his/her office for all its worth, and well beyond any ethical and/or legally imposed spending limits. From gold plated travel, to gold-plated tables and chairs and state of the art “telephone booths” the profligacy of these “public servants” is without parallel.
It isn’t just Ryan Zinke who should fly a flag when he’s in his office, every one of these swamp dwellers should hoist “the Jolly Roger” daily, lest we forget their true mission in the Trump administration.
1
If the Eagle Scouts had some sort of Sith equivalent, all of Trump's Administration would have badges.
2
I've said since the Bush years that Republicans see government as a resource to be mined for personal profit, which is the same way they view the environment. This set of shameless grifters further proves my point. It will take a generation or two to fix this mess...unless Russia gives him a second term.
2
This isn't just a few unprincipled rich guys in positions of authority.
It's a "well-oiled machine" of corruption where decision making benefits the department chief both financially & materially! While we're finding humor with Gail and Bret, the total loss of civic virtue is disturbing--and unlawful.
Think of it: former industrial lobbyists in cabinet roles. Irresponsible oversight of public resources. Extravagant expenditures. Costly personal travel. Ridiculous office renovations. Staffers taking payments from foreign governments. Advisory councils with business owners set to profit.
Political fundraisers at the president's own properties.
And--bottom line--- as public officials continue to serve their own interests in an unconstrained way, the incumbent Republican party fails to address it!!
Their own tax law--written by lobbyists-- is all about self-dealing!
3
God bless your satire. (James 4:7) . Their tone deaf ineptitude will save us, eventually, in the end.
1
Re their penchant for first class air travel, in the biz jet marketing world it’s called ramp envy, the “mine is bigger than yours” ego boosting effect of having the better ride.
1
Perhaps you should have two categories of "worst" - one category for how the cabinet secretary is destroying the country by policy decisions and one category for ego purchases. This way Scott Pruitt wins for how he is eviscerating our environment and Ben Carson wins for his $31,000 dining room set which eclipses Scott Pruitt's $25,000 sound-proof chamber. Zinke gets a category of his own - pure ego.
1
The once Grand Old Party of Dwight Eisenhower is sadly now the ignoble party of Donald Trump. Republican collusion with the many "worst" in the Trump administration is disheartening. We the People should focus on the upcoming midterm elections and throw the bums out.
4
Didn't Charlie Chaplin already make this movie?
2
My signal phrase for the Time: Sometimes the sanest reaction to an insane
situation....is Insanity. Thanks, Gail, I need the levity to relieve the Gravity!
1
I'd laugh if I wasn't crying.
1
I am encouraged by the fact that Pruitt is too scared to ride in the coach section when he flies because people will be "mean" to him. (Yes--we're all back in pre-school, people.)
That means enough Americans are paying close enough attention that they/we actually recognize this swamp dweller when we see him.
How many previous EPA Administrators could that be said about? I remember Ann Gorsuch Buford's dreadful administration of the EPA. She also believed her job was to destroy the environment, along with the agency she headed; but I doubt even a tiny minority of Americans would have recognized her if they were seated anywhere near her on a plane.
So--good job, my fellow citizens! And I say that with no sarcasm what-so-ever.
485
The problem is that the destruction of the environment between Pruitt and Zinke continues at a feverish pace. Unless we have a revolution there will be no time to reverse what they are doing. I hate them all.
8
Pre-schoolers are actually pretty nice. This administration behaves as if they're in middle school and the country is being dragged down with them.
8
Unfortunately we all now recognize her spawn...
7
My votes helped pick the "winner" in your special election, Gail. I wish my vote in the 2016 election had. While Mrs. Clinton is probably shaking her head every day looking at what's going on in Washington, Trump and his cohorts are shaking us all down in more ways than one. Sad!
26
The Secretary of State, the Attorney General and the Speaker of the House, among others, do not have to fly commercial. They are high profile and often controversial. That's true of Pruitt too, and it wouldn't surprise me if flying in the cheap seats exposes him to a lot of ugliness. Whether you oppose his policies, as I do, isn't the point. The point is that he is being harassed for doing his job the way the President wants and as he was hired to do. He is a public servant even if you don't like him. If the problem is eased by his flying first class, that is a reasonable expense that should be paid for. Had Eric Holder or Nancy Pelosi been flying commercially, they may have had the same problem. Enduring constant criticism on business travel is not part of the job description for any public servant. Ms. Collins and anyone else who belittles the problem are simply wrong. A little common sense never hurt anyone.
4
You have missed the point, which also requires common sense
1
Dear michjas, A well stated and fair assessment.
I would take issue however with two points. First, the agency he was hired to lead is the Environmental Protection Agency. The ugliness that arises stems perhaps from his perception that it is instead the Environmental Destruction Agency. HIs tenure has displayed a keen eye for its evisceration. Second, and related, I would suggest that anyone who purports to be a servant of the public has an absolute inclusion in his/her job description of criticism. If his skin is too thin, then perhaps he would be better suited to another field.
Enduring constant criticism while on business -public service - travel may not be part of the job requirement. But since none of these "fine representatives" of the public deign to listen to input from we the people, then we the people must take our opportunities where we find them - even if that is at an airport or on a plane.
The Trump Administration and Mr. Pruitt need to understand that Nature rules the World, not Humans. They have not yet experienced a "real' climate crisis but the chances are they will.
This is the best contemporary political history writing in America. Keep it up.
12
It bears repeating that Ronald Reagan won the presidency on a platform that disdained the federal government as an instrument to solve national problems. Other Republicans embraced this notion, but we had to await the electoral triumph of Donald Trump to grasp the full implications of this new party doctrine.
Trump has tried with some success to convert his high office into a cash cow to expand his family's already large fortune. A man who visualizes the executive branch as a source of private gain will not seek to staff its agencies and departments with men and women who consider their appointment an opportunity to serve the American people. A pirate has invaded the presidency, and he has naturally surrounded himself with other buccaneers.
We can only hope that, when this administration leaves Washington, its members will leave behind some of the office furnishings for the next tenants.
17
Hoping Mrs. Carson can part with her $31,000 dining room set she purchased with our money for HUD's office.
1
Well, OK, but some of us who live in HUD senior and disabled housing look at Ben Carson's support for the billions to be taken out of our pockets and homes so the rich get unneeded tax cuts, and we wonder just how the 70 and 80 year olds are going to handle the quick pace working at McDonalds?
We wonder how we can possible pay the sky-high rents in our cities if we get tossed from our housing? If we lose our health care and food supplements, will we be able to be absorbed by the economy?
None of us have $31,000 tables, or ride horseback with Vice Presidents, that is true. But maybe we can spec up a flag. It would involve an image of a lot of pretty nice older folks surrounded by folks in wheel chairs, with maybe a finger or two raised in anger. Maybe next year, should he survive the debacle of the Trump White House, Carson gets his proper recognition as Trump's worst.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
26
Think of what all of the Cabinet members are doing for the economy. Especially the Airline industry.
5
Ms. Collins focuses on the insult rather than the injuries which are more profound.
The injury is the selling off to corporate interests, Americans' right to safe drinking water, clean air, for protection of wildlife and habitat and to be free from toxic chemicals in the land we live on, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the water we swim in, the chemicals that we're exposed to.
There used to be films about chemical companies dumping chemical waste in the rain forests, polluting the waters and sickening people in Latin American countries and folks took a mild interest because it wasn't in their back yard.
The US has now become those countries. Pruitt and Zinke don't make laws but the can refuse to enforce them and fire the people who are the guardians of our own health and safety.
As Ms. Collins points out, the gall is forcing taxpayers to pay for them to zoom around in luxury while they do so.
33
Mr. Carson, I bought my first and only desk for $149 from United Buy And Sell Furniture Warehouse- a simple Danish Modern kitchen table- and it has served my law office 34 years quite well. I know you can be frugal and efficient, yet not sacrifice timeless style, if you really try.
23
But that was 34 years ago--it's gotta be worth a lot more now! Call it Danish Antique.
How does budget director and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head Mick Mulvaney escape being one of the worst? The man flip-flopped on budget deficits and pretty much wants to wipe out consumer protections. He's quiet, but does a lot of damage.
17
As far as selecting the worst government agency chief, I am too overwhelmed, or should I say underwhelmed by the number of choices. I don't begrudge a top government agency official from using the quickest mode of transport and to be able to conduct business while doing so. However, I do begrudge and resent the sense of entitlement these cabinet officials have demonstrated. It is as if they have a government check book and just write a check for what ever is their desire, including the $31,000 table for Ben Carson's office.
14
Word on the street in Washington is that the dining room set will be used only once. Trump's last supper with his Cabinet. Undoubtedly one of the Cabinet members will be identified as the one who finally betrayed Trump.
19
Pruitt. Hardly a surprise. I want to propose adding the name of Jared Kushner to next competition for the worst cabinet member. After all, he is one of the several Secretaries of State and, he might be hard to beat giving his leadership in meetings with foreign governments mixing state issues with his personal pre-chapter 11 companies affairs. Muller has more clues after recruiting Gates.
13
Gail, I think you really need to have some kind of trophy to give to the "winner" of this competition.
But then when I started thinking about an appropriate trophy for Scott Pruitt, I was stumped. My first thought was a lump of coal, but I'm pretty sure Santa Claus already gave him one for Christmas. Then, I thought, how about a jar of recently melted ice from a receding glacier? But that water would be way too clean for the leader of the Environmental Pollution Agency. So the only thing I could come up with was a roll of toilet paper for his private phone booth (made of recycled paper of course).
Perhaps other commenters will be able to come up with better ideas for an appropriate trophy.
9
I always push for Rick Perry in these contests but he never seems to place in the Top 5. Guess he should be used to that.
Second-tier Stephen Miller might top your list for the B-team players although Mulvaney is right up there.
I light of recent events, can't wait for your next contest! Thanks, as always.
9
People, I can't emphasize enough how important it is to get out the vote in 2018 and 2020. Let's make America Great again - not a laughing stock.
24
It's interesting that an aide to Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, raises a rooftop flag featuring a buffalo and some stars whenever he is traveling. I wonder where he got the idea? The last time I was at Buckingham Palace in London, I was told that a raised flag indicated the queen was home but no flag meant she was out of town. Maybe Ryan thinks of himself as the King of the Interior. That would explain his extravagance when flying.
9
In line with the commenter who will help pay for a volunteer annoying first class companion for the winner's first class flights, I'd contribute to a new flag with a clear view of a departing horse to signal the secretary's absence.
thank you Gail for making me laugh about this Administration I didn't think anything could be said that would do that.
7
Pruitt has to fly first class for "security reasons". If I were him, I'd be scared to death too. But how many in his security detail? Do they also sit in first class? Do the fares cited include their costs? And are the cocktails Pruitt likely orders to calm his nerves after his encounters with the people who clearly are taking issue with his policies picked up by the taxpayers as well? How about this Scott. Listen to the American people. Change your policies. Then join the rest of us in the back of the plane. It's pretty safe back here.
10
These two were hoping their attacks on the environment and betrayal of the public trust would not be noticed as they garner political IOU's for their future political campaigns. They are going to find out that the public has a long memory. Malfeasance and misfeasance are crimes in civil service.
6
Let's all be grateful that trump committed to hiring the very best people for his administration, or it would have been a lot worse, believe me!
3
I agree with the selection of Pruitt. He is turning the Environmental Protection Agency into the Environmental Destruction Agency. Which seems to be why Trump appointed him in the first place.
10
Why is it that Wilber Ross gets a pass when he may be the worst of all? We don't know if he is but he failed to mention his Russian ties at his confirmation hearing He was (and may still be) vice-chair of the Bank of Cyprus, the money laundering bank of choice for Russian criminals and oligarchs.
Did he assist Manafort in his money laundering activities? Doesn't the Bank of Cyprus (or one of its lawyers or principals) have a large financial stake in Trump's Moscow developer?
Is there anyone who finds this interesting?
10
If Zincke wishes to familiarize himself with US transportation issues, he could easily do so by flying coach and going without the upgrades (pre-approval by TSA, a separate waiting area, etc.) he is no doubt accustomed to.
1
One of the best columns yet, although we must admit that she has a lot of material to work with.
73
If someone could keep Secretary Ross awake, he may be able to give them a run for the top spot. Has anyone seen or heard pf anything he has done?
23
Flying is the most effective way an individual can increase greenhouse gas emissions. A bigger seat means more emissions per person, and a private jet enormously more. Maybe it's part of the strategy.
97
I voted for DeVos not Pruitt because though the US is responsible for over 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is only one country not the world, and as I have been reminded by Mr Bloomberg writing for the NYT, US states and cities that care are still acting to cut emissions. Of course Scott is doing more environmental damage than simply reducing US efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the federal level, but Betsy seemed to me to be seeking to reduce the competency of Americans in general to do anything progressive and vital for generations to come. I'm glad to hear she is not succeeding at all significantly in her efforts.
Great work Gail. Thank you.
149
Betsey (Amway Pyramid scheme) DeVoss has not gone away, she continues to try to destroy our public education and replace it w/ for profit charter schools...a terrible idea that the radical far right has been working on for some time. She is a dangerous person, anti American as is her literal mercenary brother Eric. So much for their family values....of course they pose as Christians...LOL. What would Jesus say?
Laughter in midweek especially on a Wednesday will enable us to get through the rest of the week. Humor is so good for the soul.
187
I support Pruitt's victory, and even lived in his native state for two years when I was a kid.
Ever been to Oklahoma? It does not have a single natural lake in the entire state. The fishing is good, though- if you like the taste of carp, an invasive species that muddied the flat streams around Fort Sill. After growing up there, the inside of a discount shopping mall was an improvement for Scott.
Maybe he's jealous that the rest of our country contains much breathtaking scenery and wildlife, and decided to destroy it due to a grudge.
Or, (more likely), Pruitt is getting dark money shoveled to him on overseas accounts by the likes of Murray, Exxon, and Koch.
Sooner or later he will be arrested, but we'll have to wait for a Democratic Congress and Supreme Court. In the meantime, Pruitt will be getting medals, and delivering speeches (for a fee) to trade associations.
508
Trump's administration will, if there is any justice left in this country, look worse than Reagan's where the indictments came fast and furious, especially in the environmentally related departments.
Lock them up, just like Reagan's corrupt appointments!
1
The best estimates for 2017 are that world emissions will increase by 2%, while US emissions will reach 27 year lows. This doesn’t make Pruitt a hero. But it certainly suggests that emissions are far more related to the private sector than to EPA regulation.
7
Whose "best estimates"? (I'd really like a link, and promise to look if you provide one from a reliable source.) (Setting aside that information has been being removed as fast as possible from various government resources, and that in any case there is no possible "wall" preventing emissions from being global.)
I did a little looking around, and that was true in 2016, but is no longer the case. This stops at 2016:
https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine
I do remember that emissions got better before Trump took office but are now much worse, but can't recall the source, except that it was recent.
69
"It certainly suggests that emissions are far more related to the private sector than to EPA regulation."
Due to tax incentives for renewables (which Trump wants to eliminate), and natural gas displacing coal (a trend that Trump wants to reverse.) The sacred "private sector" responds to government policies, including those of the Obama administration that got us to those 27-year lows.
25
Remember that the transition to natural gas is a two edged sword. While it results in lower CO2 emission than the coal it replaces, methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas. I believe the EPA has cancelled Obama-era rules requiring stringent limits on leakage rates. Anyway, CO2 is the dominant greenhouse gas, but it is important to keep an eye on the more powerful greenhouses gases that we produce, such as methane and even the present generation of refrigerants. We need a rational EPA to keep track of the details - and apparently none of the current administration know enough details to keep track of them or would have the motivation to if they did.
2
I just read the editorial about Jared Kushner defrauding the United State. Is it too late to change my vote?
264
Well, Linda, Jared is a special case, being family -- "Family". ["Connected" - now that includes connections to Russian gangsters as well as American politicians.]
1
Live and learn.
1
Yes it is! Vote against these liars in November 2018.
1
At the rate Trump's appointees are jumping ship, there will be nobody left in his administration soon. We'll all breathe a sigh of relief when that happens.
180
I fear the B team will likely be worse, after all , he wants his personal pilot in charge of the FAA.
2
Don't breathe too deeply when you sigh: the air may be so polluted by then that you could have respiratory problems.
1
Oh my God, if all those people who have quit were trump's A-Team, can you imagine what his B-Team is going to be like?
Oh, that's right, trump's nominating and the GOP is confirming them to lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary.
1
Can't spell his AGs name, and his doctor (perfect health) can't spell his own name. The N. Koreans are probably worried he going to order new missions to send them, and spell it "missiles". They should be.
60
Well done, Gail. Pruitt is definitely the best choice for worst member of the Trump administration (other than Trump, as you noted). Pruitt sold his soul (and mind) to the fossil fuel industry years ago, has the vision of a mole, and continues to plod down his climate denying course that even my alaskan malamute knows is absurd. Yes, Zinke deserved to be in the discussion for moron of the year, but Pruitt takes the title by the combined length of the coasts. And I don’t see anybody edging him out next year. Nothing will improve until all these folks are gone, and I’m just hoping the electorate comes to its senses in three years so that happens.
636
I think Budget Director and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau destroyer, Mulvaney ,also its new director, should get an honorable mention. The CFPB saved consumers $11 in fraud from corporations, banks and pay day lenders.
His proposed federal budget cuts billions from Medicare and the poor. This is, of course, after giving the 1% of the richest 83% of the benefits of their recent tax cuts, by adding 1.5 trillion dollars to the national debt.
79
Even comes to its senses this year would be a big help.
Nope. Can’t wait 3 years. In 9 months we get enough ammunition for impeachment. (Sorry for the metaphor, but, hey, it’s just a metaphor.)
These guys are DISGRACEFUL! What more can one say. Our nightmares have all been realized and we haven’t struck bottom yet.
246
Can't wait for Trump's second term, assuming Mueller clears him, and the 30 odd per cent support of staunch Republicans zooms up with skeptics finally buying in, or just giving up. Never the less, reporters will be busy. Assuming there is a genuine public service applicant crisis in this country, a serious shortage of eligible and experienced applicants for high level jobs in the government is going to get worse before it gets better. The opposition party does not stand a chance once momentum sets in. If a strong economy stumbles into recession in 2019, administrations would change, out of selfish voter preservation - not the determined search for good government. The swamp is here and not going to get drained any time soon, even if Mueller reels in some big fish.
47
yikes that is gloomy - NEVER TRUMP ever again is the battle cry of resistance. He is not, never will be our President.
3
Excellent comment but unfortunately irony washes over most NYT readers like the incoming tide over the mud.
1
Thanks for that outpouring of gibberish.
I am a Texan at heart, so I have to go with my boy Rick Perry, head of the Oops Department.
183
And who may be on the verge of giving Saudi Arabia nuclear capability. That may be part of Jared's plan for 'peace'.
Oh yeah, I second the motion.
You mean the guy that didn't even realize his Dept. was in charge of the nukes?
Yeeha!
Remember when the GOP claimed to care about government spending?
124
Only when the president is a Democrat.
96
Only the spending on "those people". You know, the ones who feel entitled to getting something, a whole lot, for nothing.
1
Don't look now, but if this American were asked what is going on in our Country, I would come up short, and pause, while the March Hare comes roaring in.
This is not a serious Administration; it is dangerous. Fortunately some, make that many of us are going about our daily business in conformity with our nature. Hopefully the rest of us will never catch on that this was all about The Art of Damage-Control.
It is not these political dimwits that one should remember, but the commentators who never gave up, and gave a leg up, to those who want to plunge our heads in the sand. They are able to keep focused on the matter at hand. Here it's blind man's bluff.
This is one movie I would have walked out of long ago. How this House of Cards collapsed, leave it to others more informed, more enlightened, to find how it panned out.
America, navigating without a real president, no stability, no clear governance, no steady hand at the helm of the ship; we might just pull though on sheer luck.
'Zinke', with a small letter zed, might be useful for a scrabble game. Is Rex Tillerson still with this White House? No sign of Pence these days; a last photo of him seen in Korea attending the Olympics. Wait, he's going horseback riding with Zinke before he becomes the next President.
How many Americans care about the Environmental Protection Agency? An acquaintance, an environmentalist and water engineer, a public health expert wants to learn about 'Law and Order'. Go for it!
22
I caught a glimpse of Mike Pence at the free-wheeling 'gun control' meeting yesterday. He gave a little speech about 'due process' and then Trump immediately said, "How about we take the guns first and then do 'due process'. Mikey did not look happy! For once that smarmy sneer that is supposed to be a smile didn't appear on his face. No due process? Grab guns first? He was flabbergasted. If it all wasn't so scary, that would be funny. A president who doesn't even understand (or care about) Due Process! Yep, Mikey, he's that stupid. And he's YOUR president. You and the R's made this monster. I hope he grabs ALL the guns in America. Now that would be great.
1
48 evangelical leaders formally endorsed 2016 Scott Pruitt's EPA nomination.
This is the equivalent of the Union of Concerned Scientists formally endorsing the Southern Baptist Convention President for his lifelong record of denying science, reality and evolution.
Pruitt is an environmental 'dominionist' member of the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, a deeply conservative evangelical church that believes the Earth is here to be organ-harvested, pillaged, plundered, and profited from by mostly white mankind.
In an interview this week with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Scott Pruitt said this:
“The biblical world view with respect to these issues is that we have a responsibility to manage and cultivate, harvest the natural resources that we’ve been blessed with to truly bless our fellow mankind.”
“I spent a couple years just earnestly praying, asking the question that I don't think we ask enough: ‘God, what do you want to do with me?’” said Pruitt.
Pruitt and his evangelical religious nuts believe in Genesis fairy tales and don't give a damn about science:
“God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
These are the kind of people who not only actively pray for the end times on Earth, but who also actively bring about the end times.
We are in BIG trouble.
Vote on November 6 2018
1235
The uses these gangsters put their fake religion to are not the least bit spiritual. My opinion, Genesis "Dominion" is commonly used by what Michael Moore called "Stupid White Men" to justify a world of evil. These guys have confused the voices in their heads with "God". Utterly corrupt ...
218
I am surprised that he wasn't at the prayer meeting blessing an AR-15 that was in the news today. Good grief. And every day Little Marco is tweeting a quote from the bible. It is creepy. Nothing against religion of course, but where is the division between church and state? Is Pruitt a creationist?
150
One thing I am sure of, very,
The Flintstone's is a documentary!
26
Pruit will use your column to justify his private jet now. Dang, it will cost us.
47
pence,miller and jared
40
Assuming students in America survive school, they will go into an uncertain future poorly educated (thanks Ms. DeVos) and a certain future of a environmentally degraded environment (thanks Mr. Pruitt).
So the two winners so far is not surprising.
72
The only silver lining of this train wreck of a presidency is that sensible voters will be so outraged that the mid-terms will be devastating for the GOP. Take the House and the Senate back, and put a stake through the heart of this malignant administration. If we fail to do that, we deserve what we'll get. Too bad I'm too old to be a viable immigrant to Canada.
123
You are assuming of course that the reported votes equal the actual votes...and that those eligible to vote CAN vote. Sorry, I don't buy it. I no longer trust the integrity of our voting system. Without cheating, republicans simply can't win - because they have no ideas for we the people - only for themselves or the uber rich.
3
I'd suggest moving to Antarctica because tied as we are to the land mass of No. America, Canadians are all too conscious of what is going on in the USA. It's like living next door to a noisy, disheveled neighbour with rusted cars in the front yard and all night parties. I hasten to add the previous tenant was very civilized and polite.
1
"Everything that happened before will happen again."
~ Battlestar Galactica, reboot
"Thieves who steal private property pass their lives in chains; thieves who steal public property in riches and luxury."
~ Cato the Elder, 2000 years ago, at the beginning of the end of the Republic
107
Yeah, a poor person robs a brick and mortar bank of a few thousand dollars (or less) they get a long prison sentence, years. A person who steals from all of us taxpayers on a daily basis, for millions, why they get bonuses!!! And a first class seat on an airplane because they're scared of us taxpayers. As well they should be, because it is all going to blow up at some point. Perhaps some of these scoundrels will go to prison, but I doubt many. As Cato said, those who rob from the public coffers are rewarded.
1
Pruitt is the worst of the worst. But I would have considered Mick Mulvaney for honorable mention. He is cruel, arrogant, dismissive, a smooth liar, and his tenure at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has been intended to destroy its effectiveness. When the payday lending industry loves you, you know you've done something pretty sleazy, Mick.
327
It is Very hard to choose. Each head of an agency has been carefully chosen to wreck it. Evil is not too strong a term for this. Gratuitous cruelty also.
4
In September 1972, a young unknown artist tried to throw Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense, off of the Martha's Vineyard ferry.
Ah, the good old days.
80
"I laugh," declared President Lincoln, "so as not to cry. That is all."
And in all candor, Mr. Lincoln--your jokes, your stories were FUNNY. VERY funny sometimes.
But these guys?
Ms. Collins--I expect (like our revered sixteenth president) you laugh so as not to cry.
But these guys? These guys aren't funny.
They produce (in me anyway) a desire not to LAUGH. But to SCREAM. And tear my hair out. And bang my head against the wall.
But I should stop and recollect.
There was nothing funny about the Civil War.
Guess I should count my blessings. There's something else I'm counting too.
I'm counting the days (whether three years or--God forbid!--seven years) until this crew. . . this pitiful crew. . . .fawning and cringing before their scowling master. .. .
. . .is GONE GONE GONE!
And when THAT glad day comes. . . .
. . .my laughter--loud, soul-refreshing laughter--will ring out all over these United States. Peals of pure joy. I won't be alone, Ms. Collins.
Millions will be joining me.
I expect you will too.
Thanks for your piece. Loved it.
97
Dozens if not scores of his type have preceded him, and generations to come will have their own versions. Maintain hope eternally, and a positive mental attitude. Humanity will always face adversity.
Me too.
I'd like to know why Pruitt has to fly all over creation to carry out the mission of his agency, which he's pretty much destroyed.
Or is THAT his mission? To fly and fly and fly, polluting up the sky so he can stick it to East and West Coasters who don't like breathing smoggy air?
Because all he seems to do is roll back EPA regulations--that takes maybe 5 seconds, to click "delete--who is he meeting with, and why? To discuss downsizing plans and exit papers? To schmooze with oil executives celebrating yet another win?
Or maybe to high-five the recent announcement of the man whose company befouled a West Virginia river with coal deposit, unleashing the worst fresh water disaster (before Flint, MI) that he was running for Congress?
For a man who's main performance metrics are the number of environmental safety rules he's rescinded, it just strange he travels so much.
Unless his remaining staff is so eager to see him go that they keep him perpetually up in the sky, in a sort of inverse version of the Tom Hanks movie, the Terminal.
103
RE: "why Pruitt has to fly all over creation" - it is easier to go somewhere and make an appearance than it is to do something constructive. And, it works for Trump.
Unfortunately its just too easy for him to do something destructive.
6
Pruitt is diligently ensuring his environmentally destructive edicts and regulation rollbacks are being carried out without exception - while partying along the way with his polluting constituents and funders. That secure phone booth in his office must enable secure bitcoin transactions from them.
4
(This was before we learned that Carson’s signature achievement has been buying a $31,000 dining room set for his office.) Well Gail maybe this next item will get Ole Ben a leg up on the next contest. Seems the $31,000 dinning room set was just a small part of the either, $135,000 or $161,000. depending on how complete the set is, lounge set for important lounge style HUD meetings. Must have a certain "swag" element in HUD meetings. I mean after all this is not brain surgery here.
61
What we really want to know is if Carson has commissioned any oil paintings of himself with Jesus to hang in the dining room at HUD. Apparently he has two such paintings hanging in his McMansion back home, along with other self-congratulating mementos in his trophy room.
I do believe that the number one common denominator in all of Trump's appointees--to parallel Trump's own--is Self Regard. It always comes down to Me, First. Not America. Just Me.
Ego, ergo sum.
2
The NYT has provided a tremendous public service in documenting the miss-administration of the disgraceful Mr. Trump. But it gets very wearying after a while. So its really helpful to have columns like this, that give readers a brief respite by allowing them a moment to step back and just laugh at these malicious buffoons. Thank you, Gail.
75
Why trivialize Pruitt's Polluter Protection agenda? His EPA has announced its priorities: rollback of Mercury and Air Toxics rule, tailpipe emissions rules, America's Clean Power Plan, a two year delay of ozone regulations, ending methane standards...the list is devastating. The travel scandals are minor by comparison. This isn't a joke, people. Pruitt is by far the most effective of the Koch's cabinet appointments--and that's the most awful thing about him.
32
Oh come on - this column is sad! Really - really sad. We were told the swamp would be drained - and that he would surround himself with all the best people - the very best...only the best!
The country - well, those of us with the sanity and clarity and self confidence to recognize the utter ineptness of the buck naked emperor - surely can't take any more of this winning, can we?
The naked emperor and his followers surely must be among the most self-loathing collection of characters in history.
17
If this is winning, then absolutely - I AM TIRED OF WINNING!
5
The best would never want to work in a Trump administration.
2
Thank you, Ms. Collins. I was hoping someone would nail a description of Sarah Huckabee [Huckster] Sanders one day. You just did it!
... Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a person whose only actual power is to be irritating while claiming the president was just joking/isn’t really going to do that/was totally misunderstood.
81
Soul less creature.
2
I wish I had known there was a vote going on -- I would have cast mine for Zinke. His plans will cause death and suffering for untold numbers of wildlife, will wreck our public wildernesses, and will bring pain to Native Americans whose holy places he wants to despoil.
Zinke's ideas would have their evil effects much sooner than much of Pruitt's. But if Zinke didn't win this vote, Pruitt is an appropriate choice instead.
We are fortunate that Carson isn't any brighter, or he would be doing a lot more damage.
31
Yes, and the power deal for Puerto Rico also.
2
Pruitt: 'Breathable air and potable water have always been over-rated'.
27
Ms Collins's list of Trump's henchmen/sycophants/fellow-travelers who want to be in power to enrich themselves reminds of the call of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, as Emperor Napoléon III, to the French, "enrich yourselves!". Well, the current inhabitant of the White House may reflect on how Napoléon III ended in his office.
18
Rest assured, history will be written by the survivors. Won't go to well for these folks...
11
Amazing. Such a great piece of black humor, darker and funnier than the winners and runners-up. I will share this. The longer it went, the better it was. And I too have had a long day. Does making art contribute to the country's well-being? Is it at least a buffer for the bad?
12
Now here's my plan. When we get a Democratic administration back in charge, we invent the position of Permanent Observer of the Federal Government with all power to publicize whatever foolishness is found going on in Washington (and elsewhere). The position is akin to a SCOTUS or an IG--cannot be fired. The first person to hold this position, for as long as wanted, will be Gail Collins!
15
They fly the royal standard at Buckingham Palace only when the monarch is in residence. I guess they could lend it out to Mr Pruitt, whilst at Balmoral. But this is no "swamp." This is the choicest hunting preserve in the English language.
2
Bad move on Pruitt's part. He should have said that his bone spurs require him to sit in the front of the plane - the walk is shorter from the gate. The boss would be proud.
18
Ms. Collins, I truly don't know how you do it, but I am so happy you are taking these competitions seriously. How you keep all the players straight -- with a straight face. And minute by minute, anyone in trumpworld could win. My head spins just thinking about what you must go through -- all those votes to count! Please continue to keep us posted on who wins tomorrow! Or next week. Or next month. Or in the next hour. This is important stuff, and you should be named patriot of the year! Thank you so much.
6
Oh, I so long for the old days when you used to write about Mitt Romney's dog on the roof of his car. Like that was pretty much the worst you could call him on---that and his 47% comment. I was outraged then, but it seems so mild now compared to the utter destruction of our country by our current crop of hand picked apprentices under the leadership of a man who just makes our jaws drop each and every single day. Can it get more outrageous? Tune in tomorrow for a new episode of America's nightmare.
686
To be fair, you can't know how awful Mitt would have been in office. Hard to imagine he would have been as bad, given his record as MA gov. But don't forget, Mitt was just as much in favor of giving corporations (hey, they're people my friend) huge tax breaks to offshore American jobs (his function at Bain Capital), and take away resources from the 47% of "takers" like those greedy people who actually thought they were entitled to the Social Security and Medicare they had paid into their entire working lives.
6
Mitt will be back, helping Trump trample.
2
Very well said.
Listless, not very bright, but pompous!
My pick would have been Wilbur Ross, the endless grinner, but this contest is like picking the worst of the House leaders.
Thankfully, they're all bureaucratic inepts, unlike Cheney, for example.
26
I absolutely understand the need for gallows humor with this current "administration."
And yet, I wonder what we will think, a decade from now, of columns such as those written by Ms. Collins, that are simply written to entertain -- to give us a few laughs, to give us a few minutes of escapism. An award for worst member of the Trump administration? Such a column would have been unthinkable two short years ago.
We now live in a nation where civil rights and civil liberties are being dismantled before our very eyes. We have a president who boasts of sexually assaulting women. He tells us that neo-Nazis and KKK are "some very fine people." Hate crimes against religious and ethnic minorities have skyrocketed this past year.
And we have the most corrupt, unfit administration we have ever seen in this country. Trump and his cronies have clearly conspired with a foreign power, and there is now no doubt that he and his family have profited mightily from their relationship with Russia, to the detriment of our democracy and every citizen in it.
Our nation is in tatters. More than half of Republicans would have no problem if Trump were to suspend elections in 2020. We will look back on these times and understand that we were holding onto the last shreds of our democracy, before it was stripped from us.
And I will be looking for the humorous column by Ms. Collins when Trump declares martial law and suspends our Constitutional rights.
109
Mr. Dodgson, I take your point. But each of us must speak with the voice we have and upon the platform available to us. In the tradition of great satirists that have gone before, Gail Collins uses her substantial platform and visibility to ridicule and thus to call out and criticize the follies and pomposity of Trump and his preposterous administration. With a tip of the hat to Twain, Rogers, Voltaire, Beaumarchais, and so many others, ridicule is what pompous autocrats most fear. They have no sense of humor, especially about themselves. I would argue that calling them out for ridicule is the best thing a writer or artist can do. You can be sure Trump doesn't like it. And that makes me smile.
40
But maybe a new tone can engage new participants? Draw in some people who were checked out from the straightforward negative coverage? Maybe it can make avid followers of the news think in a different way? Plus, humor can be a very effective device for pointing out absurdity, so perhaps this column will change a few minds?
6
Hang on - before 2020 comes the midterm election this November. Get yourself and everyone you know to the polls. Vote the bums out.
17
There doesn't seem to be much reason to keep ranking the bottom feeders, since they are dropping like flies. The turnover rate in Trump's White House is ridiculous. And it seems like only the worst of the worst remain.
Quality people aren't going to work for a low caliber individual like Donald. M
29
Last gasp gallows humor. Today CNN featured a teaser headline:
Scaramucci comments on the Hope Hicks resignation.
Satire is outdone by this lot, nobody needs Saturday Night Live to parody the Trump Administration. They just do their thing and your jaw drops until you think it can't go lower and then it does.
1
Gail, has Prince Jared garnered any appreciable votes in your "competitions" to date? I assume not, as there was no mention of him at all in this column. Between the constant vacationing with Ivanka and revising security clearance forms, there hasn't been much time available for him to cause a new Middle East intifada or meet with the new Russian ambassador in D.C.
In the next edition of the Worst Member competition however, keep your eyes on P.J. to surge to the top of the pack. Judging from recent press reporting, it seems that he may be taking a number of "perp walks" in the future. These will, of course, have nothing to do with any exercise regimen, either on or off one of his father-in-law's golf courses.
21
Pruitt's undoing of EPA regulations will kill our children...consider that criminal activity.
141
Pruitt is complicit in more murders by proxy than Osama bin Laden.
Pruitt may have one this round, but Jared will take the Grand Prize.
23
Well, it's certainly one round, but I don't think he won it.
1
Has it been verified that these election results are undefiled by Russian interference?
Did Pruitt win the popular vote, too?
When I feel I have absolutely nothing to do, columns like this are a godsend. Sometimes I find myself too proud to resort to solitaire.
18
As I finish reading this informative but depressing column, the crawl at the top of my computer screen explains that two businesses loaned Jarhead abut half a billion (!) $ after meeting with him in the White House. None of this should surprise anyone, much less Trump voters and the utterly corrupt Republican congress.
113
There has to be a crime there.
Please refrain from using the term Jarhead for Jerod.
It is a term usually used to describe a U.S. Marine.
Someone he has little in common with.
Does the White House chef hate his job forced to serve cheese burgers all day? Perhaps the White House could save some money hiring a short order burger man from McDonald's if the chef decides to resign from his place flipping burgers. In any case he or she would follow the rush to the door that is wearing a hole in the White House carpet.
If the Trump cabinet weren't so bad at their jobs I would almost feel sorry for them, but if they jumped into the fire in the first place they deserve each other. But Pruitt is not just bad. He the Darth Vedar of environmental destruction policy.
62
He's WORSE.
6
Ever seen the movie "The Help?"
6
What's most dominant characteristic of the Trump administration -- the corruption, the hubris, or the stupidity?
That's a hat trick if there ever was one.
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Ah, Ms. Collins: here's a quick update. Hope Hicks could be in deep stuff if she coached the president when he drafted Donald Jr.'s response to the Russian meeting at Trump Tower in 2016 while on the plane back from Germany. And those "white lies?" How does a "white" lie differ from one of another "color?" You can't color dishonesty as anything other than it is. She may have spent 10 hours behind closed doors negotiating a plea deal. Why the abrupt departure?
And, this just in, Jared Kushner had White House meetings with lenders who did business with his company. After the White House meetings. Scott Pruitt and his predations of the EPA and the natural landscape? Hah! Betsy DeVos? Gentle Ben Carson? Please; they're all amateurs compared to the Trump family members who have done nothing but profit from their time in office. They're getting fat off the public dime and of course the "president" knows naught about it. None of this just simply looks or smells bad. It *is* bad. And I thought Donald Trump would "drain the swamp" much to the delight of his elite-hating base. This administration's scandals are just beginning.
I suggest you hold off on a Worst List. The winners aren't anywhere near close to being decided. You might wait long but I'd love to see your Armageddon piece on All Things Trump The Worst after Robert Mueller's done with his probe(s). Until then, enjoy!
33
Jared may be getting fat off the taxpayer-funded deals but Scott Pruitt is ruining our environment. They're both evil, but I still believe in my original vote - Scott Pruitt literally has the potential for deaths from the poisons his buddies are spewing into our air and stealing/owning our water (and also poisoning water!).
It makes my brain hurt, actually, thinking about all of these cartoon character evil spewing Trump minions. May it turn in November 2018.
1
Hey,Gail- nice wry work- for some reason I don’t recall you pointing out how Bill Clinton did in the popular vote ... how did he fare?
3
Jim, let me help you out: Mr. Clinton won a plurality of votes in a race that included a strong third-party contender. Not clear? Let me try it another way: Mr. Clinton - like his wife - won more votes than any other candidate in the race.
23
This question makes no sense given the content of this article. Thank you.
11
Didn't you hear, Jim? He won the popular vote twice. Just like Obama did. And Hillary did most recently. (Those were the next people you were going to bring up, right, Mr. Seeman?)
13
I'm 62 years old. The first time I voted was for Nixon's second term. We all know how well that turned out. I really felt that I was somewhat responsible for the disgrace that was Nixon and what happened to the country. I didn't venture into a voting booth for another 36 years. I was proud to end my hiatus with a vote for the class act known as Barack Obama. I wasn't disappointed by his 8 years in the Oval Office. To all you folks who put Trump in office: I can only hope you're paying attention and realize what you're responsible for. Please follow my example and stay out of the voting booth for the next 36 years.
365
You can't be responsible for something you had no idea was coming. My first vote was also for Nixon's 2nd term. McGovern's 100% estate tax seemed loopy, unfair and unrealistic, while Nixon's negative income tax proposal seemed an intelligent approach to income inequality. And Nixon did many good things in office, like starting the EPA and his overture to China, starting nuclear arms control, having a population policy, proposing an universal health care plan which was torpedoed by Edward Kennedy as not being good enough, etc. etc. His tragic weakness led to Watergate, for which he is justly reviled. We have since learned about his lying before election re: Viet Nam negotiations and undermining Johnson's attempts to end the war, which was also despicable. But you knew of neither when you voted for the man.
The deplorables, on the other hand, knew exactly what they were getting when they voted for Trump.
8
I am surrounded in my neighborhood by Trump supporters. (California!!) They all think he's doing a great job. I was talking with one man who is a college educated computer programmer. I expressed my disgust for these vile people. His response? "Well, at least you have must be happy about all the deregulation."
I don't know what happened after that. I think I became catatonic. It seems to happening so often now! LOL through my tears.
I'm terrified that Democrats won't get out and vote. I truly believe American will not survive two terms of these monsters.
6
I was so disappointed when Pruitt didn't win the first vote, but I had hope that this time he'd rise to the top, like an 'oil slick on the Gulf Coast'.
46
Who are these people? They can't be Americans can they? I thought America was about love of country and sacrifice. Am I naive or what? Please where is my Tardis, Dr. Who?
23
"The Apprentice: Presidential Edition."
How many more episodes are left in this bad reality show?
46
I sure hope this bad reality show gets cancelled for poor ratings in sweeps week, November 2018.
3
Way too many!!
1
I love you, Gail, but some days I just can't muster up the mordantly jolly spirit required by/for your columns. Some days the hideousness of it all simply overwhelms me, and I guess today is one of those days. I just can't help crying.
45
What do these "best of the best" executive leaders actually do? Well, HUD Secretary Ben Carson decorates his office for exorbitant cost at taxpayer expense. So, do we own that $31,000 dining room set, and why does an office require a dining room set in the first place? We taxpayers have purchased Scott Pruitt his own private telephone booth. Perhaps he missed the memo that telephone booths are about as up-to-date as 8-track tape players.
Ryan Zincke cantered into Washington on horseback. Now he enjoys a taxpayer-financed private helicopter so that he can again go (get this!) horseback riding again. Poor Tom Price led the parade of self-indulging taxpayer abuse and was canned for what the rest of the Cabinet now adopts as routine practice. Will they also get the boot? If not, they may join the White House exodus of their own accord. As it is, the president seems to be getting lonelier by the day.
20
Gail
One day Trump will no longer be President, and we will have in the office one who follows the law, who understands the law, and follows the norms of society and of government.
There will be the usual platitudes to "my honorable opponents from the other party" and words like that.
How will we adjust, what will take the place of scanning the headlines of the day for the latest outrage? If this weren't happening in real life, no TV series based on a President and administration like this one would make it past the first season, It's would be too far fetched to believe.
19
Maybe you should start doing awards by categories, like they do in the Oscars and Golden Globes.
How about:
Most Incompetent Cabinet Secretary- given to the Secretary who demonstrates no understanding of what his Department does.
Most Unethicl Cabinet Secretary: given to the Cabinet Secretary who treats the Government as his or her personal ATM.
Most Tone Deaf Cabinet Secretary’guven to the Secretary who doesn’t have a clue how most Americans live and doesn’t care.
20
Remember Rick Perry? Mr. Glasses and hair ... no brains to be found anywhere nearby?
Remember that Rick was going to eliminate three cabinet-level agencies if he became president, but he couldn't remember which three?
Commerce, Educatipn and ... uh.
it was Energy. And now he is Secretary of Energy.
13
This is a terrific suggestion, Rita. It would let us give all these idiots their due.
I second your motion.
What about Father Pence? (If the Mrs. is Mother Pence, well then.) He wants to end family planning clinics, insurance coverage for birth control, and a woman's right to choose. Yikes!
63
You mean the Stepford husband?
11
A guy with his views on family planning should have 15 kids.
13
Ms Gail Collins, I am afraid that for President Trump, Mr. Pruitt is the best and when Mr. Pruitt will have finish to destroy the EPA, he will put him in charge of another department to be destroy.
51
Actually, Pruitt's double security detail is probably warranted. The man is hated by tens of millions of people, and for good reason.
283
True, but how many of us could pick him out of a line-up?
11
I could. I'm the American Person he fears speaking my mind to him. And I guess that would make him melt or something? Such snowflakes these Trumpistas are. Can't even handle negative words. They protect themselves completely - or so they think.
2
How can Pruitt work for the American people when he is literally afraid of them and avoids them? Same w/ Betsey DeVoss who feels threatened by the students and teachers (who do not tote guns) that is is supposed to be helping? All of these Trump admin people are totally unqualified for their roles.
White House budget guru Mick "The Razor" Mulvaney was asked to explain how he could justify slashing funds for Meals on Wheels, the National Endowment for the Arts and similar programs. His answer:
"I think its fairly compassionate to go to them [taxpayers] and say 'Look, we're not going to ask you for your hard earned money anymore... unless we can guarantee that money is actually going to be used in a proper function. And I think that is about as compassionate as you can get."
So then. According to the Trump White House:
-- Providing hot food to elderly shut-ins, providing de minimis support for the arts, restoring environmental damage in Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes and Puget Sound waterways: not "proper functions" and thus it is not "compassionate" to use my tax dollars to pay for these programs.
-- Spending about $200 million per year to shuttle Trump back and forth for long weekends playing golf, watching television and tweeting at Mar a Go Go; funding first class travel and a soundproof room for Scott Pruitt (so no one will overhear him cutting deals with his petro and mining industry pals); buying Ben Carson a $30,000 dining set for his office; spending tens of thousands to make sure Ryan Zinke isn't a few minutes late to go horseback riding with Mike Pence... that's compassion I can understand!
Welcome to the Donald J. Trump Funhouse Hall of Mirrors.
1789
By using our money for a proper function he means a house on the Cote d'Azur for executive management at Exxon.
15
The Funhouse Hall of Mirrors is actually the (White) House of Horrors. I spend my days shaking my head in continuing disbelief. Vote, Vote, Vote people
10
well one does have to have their priorities on a budget - and there are so many other good choices one can make you see. Send it back to the taxpayers locally to support truly concerned about the people government. Otherwise go away and leave this current governing ? administration alone with its "party" philosophy.
1
As a proud Oklahoman, we will be more than willing to send the federal government more of our atrocious politicians. Our governor will be looking for a new position next year after a successful 8 years of cutting our education budget more than any other state and implementing a 4 day school week.
209
How on earth can they justify a four day school week? Why aren't people revolting?
13
@Matt - Ever ponder why Okla., Tex., Kan., and La. keep functioning as crackpot GOP'er dogma laboratories, which time after time proves unworkable, yet our local GOP'er varmints keep getting promoted to D.C. to prove (on a still larger scale to a still larger audience) that their dogma is utterly bankrupt, creating yet more massive wreckage ?
At what point will the GOP'er tribal faithful ever abandon their lemming traits ?
27
Maureen, there is no debate about how revolting people are.
9
Only the best people... only the best. Duh!
18
It is disappointing you choose to provide another intellectually shallow attack on the Trumpians. I guess it is to much to expect incisive wisdom, when taking cheap shots is so easy.
Pretty funny that you just dish out insults and fail to back up your claim, while others have taken the trouble to clarify and support theirs. For "shallow" look in the mirror.
23
Lightening up isn’t a strong point of yours, I take it.
12
Incisive wisdom is there in the sarcasm. Straight talk, to call a spade a spade would be simply to say this Administration is an incompetent mess.
22
Pruitt got my vote for worst but the entire Cabinet should get a special place in the National Index of Secretarial Slime.
35
All I can say is, Gail, you're the best! :)
33
Too bad the news on Ben Carson's dining room furniture had not been in the news in time for the vote.
22
Pruitt would probably still win. He's doing more damage than squandering a few grand on furniture.....he's willing to let our air and water be polluted.
13
I figured that photo of Steve Mnuchin and Cruella DeVille showing off one dollar bills would have clinched it for him.
2
Jared might be the grand prize winner after all.
The son-in-law falls.
72
Jared looks reasonably likely to end up in jail. It's an open question at the moment about Jared and his dealings. It's worth remembering that Jared and Little Donnie are the ones who knew Manafort, were in business with him (at least according to the New York Tabloids), definitely the ones who brought him into the Trump campaign.
If Manafort cuts a deal it will almost certainly be Jared he fingers, and if Jared goes down on money laundering or tax fraud Ivanka could be charged.
Remember that Mueller charged and convicted Fastow's wife in the Enron case ... AFTER Fastow provided testimony against KennyBoy.
8
If Jared ends up in jail, there's a possibility of a father-son reunion. So, win-win!
2
Article was written before the $31,000.00 dining room table.
10
yes--she said so in the article
6
Gosh, Gail - maybe if we verbally assault Trump's horrific department heads, they will all go away! Heck, Scott Pruitt isn't the worst! They all tie for worst - Sessions, DeVos mugging during Parkland students' meeting with Trump, Zinke, Mnuchin and his Missus, they're all rotten apples, and as soon as the barrel is overturned the better for all of us who await new distracting events from Washington, D.C. every single day since Donald Trump became olur 45th President. We are all barking at the Trump caravan and it's stuck in the sand...and it's not moving on.
19
It was probably past the deadline, but Ben Carson deserves to be moved up the list for his badly needed office upgrade escapade. I can only imagine the shambles the departing Democrats left behind.
7
Poor Ben is confused. He thinks the 40 billion is just for his own housing.
19
Pruitt was third on my list, after Huckabee Sanders. First:
Stephen Miller, who smug supercilious rage is nauseating. But Pruitt may ultimately do the most damage, and his first-class travel expenses are a complete outrage. I doubt most American travelers would recognize him, so if a few have, he's elevated that to a security menace. Don't know whether to laugh or cry.
33
Agreed – it would be a lot cheaper for him to just sport a wig and fake beard.
Asking Scott Pruitt to protect the environment is like nominating Donald Trump for a Nobel peace prize.
Oh wait, somebody did that.
35
Yup – and that somebody was probably John Barron.
1
Funny . . . and pathetically likely.
We need to demand that at least one toxic waste site be named in honor of Pruitt and another for Zinke.
350
Better yet, put 'em in their dooryards.
1
Soon there will be many more of them to choose among.
1
No shock. Could there be anyone worse for any job ever than Scott Pruitt? The proverbial fox in the henhouse.
24
One new late-breaking contestant for the race to the bottom of this administration - - Hope Hicks !!! Maybe she will make it into your next column on the worst of the worst.
7
Not to worry - she's leaving. Just announced her intention to resign
3
Here’s a brain teaser...who associated with Trump is not corrupt, incompetent or simply deranged? Barron?
55
Wait! Hold on! Let me get this straight! The secretary of the interior has a flag raised when he is "in." Like Lucy from Peanuts when her sign says "The doctor is "IN" or like Queen Elizabeth when she's somewhere and they raise a flag to announce "Queen's here, y'all." OK, I think I got it.
41
Trouble is, Zinke charges a whole lot more than a nickel.
Gail, you are a national treasure. The NYT should fly you for free to Lima, Ohio.
12
Vote. Them. Out.
248
The worst is Kirstjen Nielsen who is taking immigrant kids from their parents to to strong-arm families into accepting deportation to get their children back and to discourage parents from seeking refuge in America.
43
Makes one wax nostalgic for the days of the Soviet Union, doesn't it?
Indeed. That is Nazi stuff. And no I don't think it's an exaggeration. This is what we're becoming and it's horrifying and we must stop it.
1
Pruitt's level of paranoia is really bizarre.
I've been reading about the guy for years and think he is a terrible person, but I seriously doubt I would recognize him if he were walking past me in an airport with a baseball cap on as his sole disguise. And I sincerely doubt anyone would risk getting thrown off their flight and arrested on federal charges just to tell him off even if they did recognize him.
So I would say that if he is being honest about his security concerns, then he needs a psychiatrist. And if he isn't being honest, and is simply flying first class to avoid sitting in a seat that he looks perfectly sized for, then he needs to face the EPA inspector general and Congress about this.
56
From time to time, I wonder how those who supplant humans on this planet will come to think of us. Will they need our DNA to survive? I don't think so. Will they value the material objects we leave to them? I really doubt it. Will they cherish the morals and ethics we lived by? Oh, please.
So here is my question: What were we good for, in the final analysis? I don't have an answer to that one. But I'm hoping that perhaps you could help, Mr. Session, whoever you are?
14
Easy, Moon. Just as the earthworms left us with arable land, people critters will leave a dramatically warmer planet, no doubt important to its next inhabitants. We may yet get some credit.
5
"We may yet get some credit."
Prescient. A warmer surface means more energy for the machines to exploit. I agree with you.
2
"What is it with these people and travel?"
Billionaires don't fly coach. Neither do wannabe billionaires. It just isn't done, okay? Trump has more in each category in the administration than any president in history. Give'em some slack. (Well, no, don't. They will just book more private aircraft on our dime.)
The whole mess of government provided aircraft needs to be examined, by the way, why does any prez need to fly around in a 747? The excuse is the possibility of nuclear war or some similar crisis requiring the president to be in command from the air. Remember, that's what G.W. Bush was on 9-11, 2001, flying around the country, like a lost child, while Darth Cheney tried to call the shots from the White House. ("I don't believe you are in my chain of command, Mr. Vice-president," he was told by Colin Powell, then secretary of defense.)
We never want to cheap out essential capability, particularly in times of crisis, but it all seems to have gotten massively out of hand. Come on back to coach, fellas. You'll be surprised how bad it can be.
20
Don't forget that two more "modern" Presidential jets --Boeing 747-8s are on order for the bargain price - negotiated by our Pres, who was congratulated on his acumen - by Boeing - - both for only 3.5 billion. Our pols are being treated more and more as superstars - but we pay all the bills.
11
When I get to be president, I will insist on flying around in a mere Gulfstream V or perhaps the latest, a 650, saving hundreds of millions per year. I am also going to ground every other aircraft that might be used by cabinet officials unless there is a very, very good explanation as to why they need them. "Convenience" doesn't count.
When my daughter was a baby, my wife and I found ourselves seated next to senator John Danforth of Missouri, a really kind and decent person who left the Senate sometime ago. Yes, coach. Real men do it. He is too decent, I think, to want to play in the befouled DC sandbox at this point.
7
I'm hoping and expecting that by the time these planes are actually delivered (I'm assuming they will be at some price) Trump will not be president so at least he won't benefit from being able to use them.
2
Of course the Secretary of the interior is anti tech and uses the environmentally unobtrusive flag system to communicate! He's affirming to the public that there is still a lot of wind left in Washington. Besides if it's good enough for the pirates, (Jolly Roger) it's good enough for the Trump cabinet.
I know, you think I'm equivocating, but if you're not in the top 1%?????
96
Yes, and make a big show of riding to work on a horse on your first day at the Dept. of Interior. Does Uber provide equine service? Next, we will have horse drawn carriages with footmen! Low tech, baby!
1
Yea! I voted Mr. Pruitt "Worst" in your very first poll. Was, and still is. Let's hope he is the next one to exit this sad group before any more damage is done. It's up to us (with your nudging, Gail) to continue to speak up against this sorry mess. Stay the course!
18
How long are we going to continue to allow this to go on? I don't know about you, but I've had more than enough.
And I just got the alert about Jared new loans..... Oy vey!
15
Perhaps that latest information will rid us of sweet Jared, at least. We shall see.
8
With all the craziness that is going on in the Trump administration all I can say is the wheels are coming off the Trump bus.
6
I’m happy to see that my vote(s) counted in this election and wasn’t/weren’t canceled out by the Zinkie Twinkies. Democracy FTW!
Will there be midterms for the Worst? I’m sure they will be hotly contested.
4
We are breaking new ground, we have invented a fourth world administration. History will be fascinated and appalled at how far our democracy has fallen.
15
Gail, re: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, somehow you omitted her fourth mantra, "The president has been very clear on that, and I'm not going to go into it..."
65
I have to ask -- did I pay for that $31,000.00 dining room set? Because if I did, I'm no longer going to pay tax.
21
Why can't we just allow Cabinet-level officials to fly first class, without carping that they're being bad public servants for doing so? Anyone occupying a position of similar responsibility in the private sector would surely be flying first class or on a private plane. Of all the criticisms that can be made of Trump's cabinet officials, this is perhaps the most trivial and least meritorious. It comes across as a cheap shot and I would drop it.
65
Those "Anyone" salary isn't being paid by tax payers. So, it is not trivial. I would drop it.
32
Ah, a member of the base weighs in.
14
They are not merely flying first class. Some quotes:
"We the taxpayers paid for a $36,000 military flight to get Pruitt from Cincinnati to New York on one occasion."
"Zinke, whose department is considering a plan to more than double the entrance fee to the Grand Canyon, spent $6,250 to helicopter back from a meeting in Virginia so he could make a date to go horseback riding with Mike Pence."
"Pruitt felt compelled to spend $1,641 of public money to sit up front on an exhausting one-hour flight from Washington to New York."
These amounts far exceed first class fares.
18
When Trump was filling out his cabinet last year, the great Monty Python comedian, John Cleese, said “it looks like Trump is outfitting a pirate ship”.
386
The single most important characteristic for any candidate desiring a position within the Trump administration is to be willing to embody the exact opposite values undergirding the current social ethos of any federal agency. Given this trend, perhaps Trump should hire Stormy Daniels as his chastity director.
23
Is anyone still insisting Ben Carson is a such a wonderful and heroic American hero? Anyone? He should be higher (lower) on the list.
9
There have been rumors that Carson is again cheating on his wife. Hey, it's the TRUMP administration. Since she is alleged to have demanded the expensive dining room set when the law only allowed up to $5,000 without the consent of Congress, maybe she was setting him up.
10
Scott Pruitt was not my first choice, but I am OK with it. One thing is definite. People really do despise him as witnessed in his complaints about his fellow passengers. Instead of avoiding them, I suggest he sit with them and listen to their complaints, and save us taxpayers some money at the same time.
This could be considered his "listening" session. He should use this "fact-finding" trip to gather information to relay back to the Great Trumpkin.
20
cl, your suggestion suggests to me that the real reason for Scott Pruitt's $25,000 sound-proof phone booth is that it keeps out the voices of decent people.
By the way, if the numbers are true, Dr. Carson's dining room set cost even more than Pruitt's phone booth.
14
The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is ensconced in its name - to protect the environment. That's what the American public wants it to do.
But Pruitt doesn't get it, has no desire to get it, and faces no consequences for not getting it.
DeVos does not get the fact that most Americans support public education, and hate the fact that Republicans tell us we must pay our tax dollars for private school education for people who can afford it, in schools that teach the world is 6,00 years old.
Carson is a joke - if only he were really the head of HUD. All he has done since taking over is try to remove people from their homes because they were too comfortable, and order obscenely expensive furnishings for his office - lest he get too comfortable.
Sessions? When will he get it that Trump is not loyal to anyone, and his turn under the bus, like other loyal supporters like Christie and Giuliani and Spicer
just blazed the trail.
Turn on the man. Give your testimony. Mueller is a much more reliable friend than Trump.
23
Pruitt Pruitt and Zinke are immobilizing their agencies. Sessions is pushing the Justice Department back to the 1940's.
19
Where did these people come from? I don't think Americans have seen the likes of these disgusting types of people since the 1920s when the robber barons were in charge of the largest corporations, but at least they had some class [unlike Trump]. Zinke takes the cake hands down and the EPA should now be called the Environmental Poisoning Agency. Good thing I don't travel because I'm afraid I would do far more than simply yell and scream at him.
31
We had their ilk during the Ronald Reagan years. Industrialists who ran the country with at least a more likeable idiot as president.
1
I totally agree with the voters. Pruitt and Zenke are truly toxic individuals, based on their personalities, their conduct and the lasting damage they will inflict on the world. They could only get worse if they insisted that Betsy DeVos and Ben Carson start insisting that lead based paint be used in all schools and HUD housing.
To the lead lobby, you might be able to buy off these grifters. The oil and chemical industry appeared to be able to own them without breaking a sweat. A couple of first class airline upgrades should easily buy them off.
17
I have been wrestling with this stuff since the last contest (a very morbid way to live...), and I have arrived at exactly the same conclusion. Pruitt is not only corrupt, but he seems to be drawn to the wrong conclusion on every single EPA issue just like a fly to you-know-what. His latest bumbling, nonsensical statements on climate change phenomena have clearly demonstrated that he is just too dumb for the job.
18
How fun! Really, this group is so pathetic and so corrupt that it is becoming a necessity for us to smile and laugh. We have to in order to survive. Please, please do this again soon. We have some strong contenders now who just may knock Scotty and "Slinky" Zinke into second and third places. Hint: One was a former "reputable" surgeon who is the head of HUD. Under his direction, his office is now furnished better than my entire house and more of the poor and struggling are using orange crates or card board boxes for dining tables. Another candidate hint: He's good looking, has no specific title, but pretty much is the Trump version of Wonder Man (although in his case, Wonder Boy). Now there is a real dude who needs watching, hopefully by Mueller.
Any one else from any other readers? We'll help you with this, Ms Collins. We need your humor and satire!
10
My impression of Dr Ben Carson was that, outside the operating room, he seemed kind of adrift. So disappointing to find he is kind of corrupt in the spending of taxpayer money.
12
Possibly what you see "as adrift", is really someone still looking for his luggage, here in Detroit.
6
Crooks, all of them. But hey, they've all learned from the best of 'em. Water seeks its own level.
15
Between the environmental destruction, the court packing, and the general immorality and unethical behavior of this administration, we can be sure Trump’s #1 status as worst president ever won’t be challenged for many years.
32
@John M: I sympathize with your thinking, but as every Republican President (leaving aside Bush Sr.) has been substantially worse than the preceding one for several decades, I think your sureness is premature.
16
Pruitt and the Republicans (not to be confused with Jerry and the Pacemakers, or any other benign band of fellows) are treating the environment the way they treat poor people. Trees and bogs and chasms are the moochers and takers of nature. They can't take care of themselves. It's take, take, take, and what do they give back? Oxygen? Water? All highly overrated.
In looking over the cast of this dismal administration, I've come to suspect that the government is actually a movie that's being made by David Lynch. It's just the sort of thing he'd do. The president is clearly Eraserhead personified, and he's building an Inland Empire that's weird, confusing, and really unpleasant.
The best part of this entire experience is going to be the closing credits.
The End.
1088
gemli,
With Pruitt at EPA, maybe Jerry and the Pacemakers could do a remake of Ferry Cross the Mersey: something like Walk Across the Love Canal.
18
Two cents - Light My Fire (on the Cuyahoga).
5
Yes - you nailed. This administration does have the feel of a nightmarish David Lynch production. I can see Jeff Sessions as the backward talking dwarf.
4
Trump is his own worst enemy! Keep the light on him! Stop treating this sick man as if he has substance! We cannot know his head--but his words show us his heart: dark, void, dangerous, a hollow space of fake outrage and piety, told to us by grieving widows and wounded teens, by immigrant families attacked for calling out his disrespect, by a body language seething with anger and evil as Washington's governor expressed his direct disagreement with Trump's new formula of love and death.
This man has created love as a reason to take lives, yet he ignores measures well within his grasp (but absent from his heart!) that would prevent the risks of death. He acts as if guns are the only deterrent to guns. His solutions assume guns as a given!
A further review of context shows the engulfing power of violent fantasies on his thought! From full page Times ads, calling for the death penalty for innocent teenagers (whose innocence he has never acknowledged), to calls at his rallies to hit, punch, and knock “hell” out of protesters, to his removal of blacks and Muslims from his crowds (in GA, black students were removed from a rally held on their campus; in FL, his campaign's minority director was asked to leave), he went on to attack the Dean of Civil Rights, Congress member John Lewis on twitter—after a legacy of attacking women in media. (Katy Tur's articles and books makes plain her real fear at angry crowds whipped into frenzies as she was called out by name.)
(Part 2 below.)
87
Trump has a list of crimes against humanity.
He attacked London's mayor as he expressed admiration for every dictator who kills their own citizens outside of the law. He told cops making arrests to “rough 'em up.” Then he says, it's a joke, he's the victim. The constitution is in his way, he says.
The man who would “run in”? His first big military bombing was a fake--not a plane, munitions storage area, or runway was struck by the 62 missiles fired at a Syrian airbase. Military-released photos show the great accuracy of US missiles, each which missed a vital target but struck the base.
A man who instructed the military to miss vital areas of non-human targets, now wants “adept” teachers to aim center mass, when the accuracy of trained officers is only 25 to 35 % from 7 yards away in live simulations.
Death is not only a mission he urges as a domestic/global solution, it is a weapon he deploys in his politics. He exploited the death of Dwayne Wade's niece. He gleefully disparaged Puerto Rico and has abandoned its cause of recovery. He offers teachers a bounty. He violates civil rights and divides families.
His empathy for violent abusers leads us to consider his passion: death is the centerpiece of his policies (increased by his plans for healthcare and safety nets, his military budget; his lower air and water standards), and his solution to threats, real or imagined, in words and deeds.
79
Walter Rhett, your comments are cogent, these no less than usual. But I think we are all distracted from the true lesson of Trump, which is that Trump has discovered the short path to success, for those willing to ignore any incentive towards good. Many classical writers have talked about it: Goethe's Faust, Milton in Paradise Lost "Evil, be thou my good, Virgil in The Aeneid (the road to death is short and easy). In our age of skepticism, I don't think we should ignore the classical characterizations of evil personified, the world's wisdom, because it was written in other times under other constraints. Perhaps in your history there is more about this, but the problem of pure evil is fairly straightforward.
By encouraging the worst in others, by taking the short path, he is creating chaos. But we must not make excuses for him and those profiting, by dwelling on his minor evils and ignoring the theft of our country's soul, and his enablers, manipulators, financiers (Congress, the Kochtopus, the Mercers, etc.), and dupes.
I know I've become repetitive about this, but we are faced with historic, with classic evil. It's a hard road, but it is our task to survive it if we can.
22
Spot on, Mr. Rhett. Donald is a disgrace in every imaginable way. When he accused Hillary of anything at all it was because he was doing it himself. All his accusations have been confessions. Projection at this level is almost performance art. How could anyone want to watch?
The destruction left in his wake will take who knows how many years to repair if it can be done at all. We are at a tipping point environmentally. The majority of the earth’s population have been convinced to try to reverse course. Some of our most beloved species are dying out and will be lost to future generations so the money hoarders can get a little bit more to hoard. Raw greed.
Our own military views green energy as imperative to our national security but donald wants to follow in Saint Ronnie’s footsteps. Remember he had Carter’s solar panels removed from the White House? That was a big wet kiss to fossil fuels.
Every time I see a picture of a desperate polar bear I want to cry.
15
Sadly, Pruitt will be proud of such an honor, maybe even post a copy of the results of "Trump's Worst" in his sound proof chamber.
The damage he has already done will far more costly in environmental terms than any other Cabinet Secretary, though it is worth noting that Tillerson's gutting of the State Department could lead to a future war, like the 1940s purge of the US Foreign Service in Asia led us to blunder tragically into Vietnam.
Pruitt's EPA will face far more litigation than any other Agency, as state Attorneys General beef up budgets to sue the Federal government, along with environmental organizations.
Some of Pruitt's moves are just stupid, like lifting the methane leakage rules. Drillers are now figuring out that recapturing methane pays for itself in additional revenue, while preventing huge climate harm.
So thanks to Pruitt, more carbon will be emitted into the atmosphere, more streams destroyed by mine waste and more people will be harmed by toxic pesticides, air and water pollution, intense coastal storms and flooding.
I am glad that the readers prioritized the environment as most at risk from the Trump debacle.
347
I agree, but with the one reservation that the Vietnam war was not a blunder. It was useless and stupid but it was the natural outcome of the fanatical anti-Communism that guided American foreign policy due to fear that capitalism (and profit) could be overturned.
17
The "blunder" was the US mistaking Ho Chi Minh's nationalism for international communism because of our lack of knowledgeable Foreign Service officers in Asia.
Vietnam today looks more capitalist than Communist and has a cooperative relationship with the US.
2
Ben Carson is getting off light
He hasn't done anything right,
Thirty thousand to dine
The new table's just fine
HUD's budget suffered a big bite.
His Wife ignored the 5K bar
Unsuitable for the HUD Czar,
The Unsuitable's suited
Complainers are muted
For Trump's Cabinet this is par.
613
Carson and Thomas have a lot in common. They both remain blissfully ignorant of how lucky they were. They both think that being poor is a choice. And they have no compassion for those who, due to events beyond their control, cannot succeed. Neither one of them should have been selected for the position they occupy. One has been called "the cruelest justice". The other one seems to think that poor people shouldn't have decent comfortable housing. Their ignorance is nearly as vast and deep as Trump's.
Sessions is a good ol' boy in the worst way. Pence looks like he's swallowed whale. And the rest of them strut around wasting our money. Winners they are not. But we the people are the biggest losers of all. We're losing our country to people who have no interest in sharing the prosperity with anyone but themselves, who care nothing for the country unless it serves them, and who would sell us out in a New York minute if they thought there was a better deal somewhere else.
31
Can we all get behind nominating Mr. Eisenberg as America's Poet Laureate?
13
You always make me smile, Larry Eisenberg.
5
Well, I'm sorry that people missed that Jeff Sessions is not only in favor of the new Jim Crow (putting kids in prison if they get uppity) but also deeply opposed to recognizing our environmental crisis.
He feels it's disrespectful to the creator (the one who gave us "dominion" in Genesis) to imply that we have any influence on the planet if we pollute and destroy our earth, air, and water.
http://www.ontheissues.org/Domestic/Jeff_Sessions_Environment.htm
Those voices in his head are causing all kinds of harm behind the scenes. They're white, male, and racist and that, he says, is the voice of ... throb throb throb ... God!
It's enough to turn one atheist, the Republican views of god's willingness to encourage us to destroy "his" creation.
435
Have you noticed how many more white atheists and agnostics there are these days? The only thing the right wing seemed to learn from the political action of African American churches is the way to use church as a weapon. They failed to detect that African Americans have stuck with the New Testament when outlining their values. White evangelicals regularly claim to own Christian values but none are detectable.
Since white churches were taken over by Ayn Rand fanatics (irony alert!) decent people have left their former churches in droves. What decent person would associate with white supremacist environmental terrorists who haunt first class on flights throughout our fair land? Evangelicals don’t have the common decency to be stewards of the earth. They speak of taking our country back or making it great again but their impulse is to pillage and plunder it. They are Vandals.
25
It is a small glimmer of hope that a lot of state Attorneys General are working (together) to try to force Sessions and the Justice Department (DOJ) to take a proactive approach and rectify the environmental and human health damage that Sessions (and Pruitt) are doing. In this sense, concerned citizens ought to keep corresponding with state Attorneys General to keep the pressure on to counter the policies of the DOJ and EPA.
27
This is a first rate comment.
12
I'd pay $3.6 million to see Trump and his entire cabinet and the GOP exit DC for eternity. And I'd consider the price worth it just to have some peace and quiet in terms of politics. Or maybe a semi-functional government without the blowhards, liars, and preening peacocks that currently inhabit it alongside the incompetents.
421
Don't forget Pence.
30
I keep on trying to but I can't. His most serene countenance only flinches when he contemplates the idea that he's supporting Trump in the hopes of replacing him.
25
If we started some crowd-funding, how much do you think it would take to buy off both of them (can't even stand to type their names any more)? A couple million each? If we got it in writing that they'd go, we could probably have it collected by the weekend. I'm in!!
18
Gail, before this is all over, we still maintain this administration will go down as the most corrupt since Teapot Dome - maybe ever.
887
I remember reading about Teapot Dome in history class, and wondering how those grifters thought they could get away their dastardly acts. Now, sadly, I understand it all too well.
54
Teapot Dome? Pah. Amateurs.
21
Clean the cesspool of Donald Trump and of those in his administration.
Clean The Cesspool !
Clean The Cesspool !
Clean The Cesspool !
17