Called to the principal's office

 

May 21, 2025 (121/1461)

Uh ohhh. Someone got called to the principal’s office. “With President Donald Trump’s multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package at risk of stalling, House Speaker Mike Johnson and conservative Republican holdouts are heading Wednesday to the White House for the last-ditch talks to salvage the “big, beautiful bill.” But for every faction of the slim House majority that Johnson appeases, he is losing others. A tentative deal with GOP lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states to boost deductions for local taxes to $40,000 alarmed the most conservative Republicans, worried it will add to the nation’s $36 trillion debt.

Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., the chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, said he did not believe the package could pass in a House vote, but “there is a pathway forward that we can see.”

This is NIMBY at its finest. The R’s are allllll about TOM and his slashing and Musky’s chain sawing…..until they come for their people and their trees with the chain saw. We’ll see how that Mem Day deadline of Johnson’s pans out. I see a whole lot of people who want to get out of Dodge, grill some burgers and dogs and forget about Washington.

Any world leader that now gets invited to the Oval should already be on notice that they are about to be dressed down. I’m not sure if they think that “their meeting” will be different or they relish the verbal swordplay but yet again, TOM has sucker punched another President. “President Donald Trump used a White House meeting to forcefully confront South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, accusing the country of failing to address Trump’s baseless claim of the systematic killing of white farmers. Ramaphosa pushed back against Trump’s accusation. The South African leader had sought to use the meeting to set the record straight and salvage his country’s relationship with the United States. The bilateral relationship is at its lowest point since South Africa enforced its apartheid system of racial segregation, which ended in 1994. Trump has falsely accused the South African government of rights violations against white Afrikaner farmers by seizing their land through a new expropriation law. No land has been seized and the South African government has pushed back, saying U.S. criticism is driven by misinformation.” Humiliation and debasement are two of TOM’s only weapons. And they are getting old, dull, and rusty. Time for a new trick, TOM.

And the Big Beautiful Plane is on its way to US. “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has accepted a luxury Boeing 747 jet from Qatar for President Donald Trump to use as Air Force One, the Pentagon said Wednesday, despite ongoing questions about the ethics and legality of taking the expensive gift from a foreign nation.

The Defense Department will “work to ensure proper security measures” on the plane to make it safe for use by the president, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said. He added that the plane was accepted “in accordance with all federal rules and regulations.” Really? The man who uses Signal Chat to send state secrets vows he’s gonna make sure this plane is safe. If I were TOM, I’d be doing a second check on the diligence of Hegsloth.

The D’s did fight back on this one with a play from the R book – holding up confirmation votes. “This unprecedented action is a stain on the office of the presidency and cannot go unanswered,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “Until Americans get transparency on this shady deal, which apparently includes a corrupt plot for Donald Trump to keep the plane at his library after leaving office, I’ll continue to hold all Department of Justice political nominees.”