“If there is one law of Trump’s presidency, it’s that every day is a little bit worse than the one before it.” - Alex Shephard
Let’s just bullet out some of the “highlights” from this past week(ish).
* Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May met, held hands, and word got out that Trump is frightened by stairs. Perhaps he is actually The Stig.
* During Holocaust Remembrance Day, the official White House statement made no mention of Jews. The State Department tried to, but was denied. This is almost certainly a bit of gleeful trolling by Steve Bannon, who has a history of anti-Semitic statements and, by all accounts, just wants to watch the world burn.
* Trump signed his now-infamous travel ban, which stranded hundreds of people at airports around the country and resulted in impromptu protests at many of them. The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, declared the order unlawful and refused to enforce it, so Trump fired her. Over 100,000 visas have been revoked in the past week--an unprecedented mass revocation. Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed it wasn't a "ban," even though the word "ban" was used by the Trump administration (and Spicer himself!) in the run-up to its signing. Just this morning, a federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order preventing implementation of the ban. It is unclear how this affects those who have already been deported or had their visas revoked. The Trump administration has vowed to fight the ruling.
* On Tuesday, Trump had a phone call with the President of Mexico, and threatened to send in our military to deal with their "bad hombres." He then got into a phone argument with the Prime Minister of Australia, attempting to out-racist each other ("I hate immigrants more!" "No, _I _hate immigrants more!") until Trump hung up on Turnbull.
* Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's seat, which has been vacant for almost a year now. This is easily the most Presidentially-normal thing to happen during the week.
* Trump renamed "Black History Month" to "African-American History Month," and at the breakfast held to celebrate it, rambled about how black people have done great things for this country (he did not specify which things), complained once again about how unfairly the media treats him, gave indications that he has no idea who Frederick Douglass was, and finished by assuring everyone that he has black friends, like Dr. Ben Carson and Omarosa.
* Reports emerged of a botched raid in Yemen, in which a US Navy Seal was killed, not to mention a number of civilians including an infant and an 8-year-old girl. True to form, the White House called the raid "successful," and also blamed the Obama administration for having greenlit it before Trump took office (spoiler: they didn't).
* In: Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. Out (maybe?): Public school hater Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.
* On Thursday, Spicer said Iran attacked one of our ships. The attack was actually by Houthi rebels from Yemen, and it was on a Saudi ship.
* Also on Thursday, Trump Counselor Kellyanne Conway claimed the media didn't properly cover the Bowling Green Massacre, supposedly carried out Iraqis. No such massacre ever took place. The grain of truth in her mendacious claim is that two Iraqis were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky on terrorism charges, accused of trying to send both weapons and money to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Both had also used IEDs in Iraq. But neither was ever charged with attempting to plan terrorist attacks in the US.
Here’s to another week in Trump’s America.
Sources: Wikipedia, The New Republic, Mediaite