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“Does anybody want a pen?”: Trump evades tough questions and the Constitution at laugh-filled presser

“Does anybody want a pen?”: Trump evades tough questions and the Constitution at laugh-filled presser

Does it seem to anyone else that Donald Trump’s latest stunt of holding press conferences at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey is a prelude to a strategy of setting up a government in exile once he is cited out of office in an enormous landslide in November?

If so, we got a chilling glimpse into the dystopian future when the president took to the podium for the second day of his self-declared three day weekend to hold his bizarre cross between a press briefing and a campaign rally on his own property rather than in the proper confines of the White House.

Self-declared was the order of the day, as Trump decided to announce his end-run around stalled negotiations with Democrats who are holding out for comprehensive relief for unemployed Americans and financially insolvent state and local governments and the parsimonious — and suddenly fiscally sanctimonious — Republicans who are suddenly checking their wallets after giving all the money away to billionaires and corporations with their ill-conceived tax cuts.

In declaring his own relief plan by executive order, Trump is further undermining the constitutional order using the exact same method that he and the Republican establishment constantly called unconstitutional when Barack Obama used it in his executive order establishing the DACA program for undocumented immigrants brought into the country as children.

It wasn’t the only thing that Trump tried to steal from Obama, as these clips gathered by the intrepid Vox reporter Aaron Rupar demonstrate.

Add your name to demand Congress reject Trump’s dictatorial call to delay the election!

This is not a good look for someone whose main campaign thrust so far has been that his opponent isn’t up to the intellectual rigors of the presidency,

Trump is trying to combine his usual staple technique of projection — where he accuses Democrats of engaging in things that he himself is already doing — with his new preparations to denounce the elections he now knows he will likely lose as illegitimate.

It is clearly concerning when a president criticizes the media for not reporting on his hallucinations.

It must be allergy season in New Jersey, given the sniffles and snorting the president exhibited to the press and any passing members of his golf club who were treated to the spectacle of an unwitting comedy lounge act as a bonus to their golf privileges as Trump peddled his lies about the Democratic platform.

That Trump is willing to singlehandedly destroy the financial underpinnings of Social Security and Medicare by waiving payroll tax deductions — even temporarily — may prove to be the stupidest thing this mentally-challenged president has ever done to alienate the seniors who helped elect him.

Almost as stupid as his insistence that 160,000 dead Americans is an impressive scorecard for his pandemic response.

That last video hints that adding an audience of wealthy golfing Trump supporters at every press briefing going forward — or at least a laugh track — may be in the cards going forward.

Trump proves that he’s either never read the United States Constitution — or that he holds it in the ultimate contempt — as he usurps the power of Congress with his executive orders.

One practically expects the server to tell you that it’s the last call as the president jokes to an appreciative audience that has already paid thousands for the privilege of being at the Trump resort, yet he fails to realize that his own actions are most likely the leading cause of depression in America at the moment.

Trump then signed the executive orders while handing out the signing pens to his customers like promotional swag, before reporters were allowed to start asking questions.

Now, this is the part that should be getting laughs from the audience as Trump tries to convince Americans that the $400 in unemployment insurance supplements he signed off on are better than the $600 that they were receiving previously.

Of course, one thing that Trump doesn’t like is when reporters fact check his lies in real-time as CBS’s Paula Reid tried to do when she attempted to ask him why he keeps claiming credit for passing a law signed by Obama years before the nightmare of a Trump presidency was even conceivable.

When Trump couldn’t get Reid to stop repeating the question he quickly declares an end to the briefing and walks off stage without answering. (Please exucse the double posting due to the vagaries of Twitter threading.)

There you have it. Another ridiculous Trump lie-fest.

Expect to see this scene again and again after the Biden inauguration as Trump established his Vichy government in exile, at least on the days when Trump isn’t in court attempting to stay out of prison.

Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.

Original reporting by Aaron Rupar at Vox.

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Vinnie Longobardo
Managing Editor
Vinnie Longobardo is the Managing Editor of Occupy Democrats. He's a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music, and art.

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