No. CXL: Weekend Update! Trump Hits Traffic Cohn?

WaPo: Trump confronts unprecedented public rebuke by Gary Cohn after Charlottesville (Paywall)

Cohn lashed Trump’s comments earlier this month blaming the violence in Charlottesville on “both sides,” saying in an interview with the Financial Times that “citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK.”

Be wary, Gary. Hold the phone, Cohn.
You're in a remake of Home Alone
with Bannon as "Harry" and Gorka as "Marv"
equally eager to have you dissolve.
Trump as "Buzz" now thinks you too surly,
so, as with others, he'll retire you early.

No. CXXXIX.i: EXTRA! Trump "Apologizes"

if oftentimes I sound ridic'lous
remember my brain's riddled with syphilis
back from the time in the seventies (eighties?)
I was involved with some "shady" ladies
I told Howard Stern I am what I am
the damned STD's were my Vietnam*
it makes no difference to my supporters
who still offer me their wives and their daughters
that black guy behind me, I call him [REDACTED]
and he still supports me, so GTF figger
___________________
*“It’s amazing, I can’t even believe it. I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world, it is a dangerous world out there. It’s like Vietnam, sort of. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider,” Trump said in the interview when Howard Stern asked how he handled making sure he wasn’t contracting STDs from the women he was sleeping with. —  People Magazine

He was, of course, lying. (A salesman's gotta lie.) It is also why he never released his detailed medical records. That and his cocaine addiction. But at least he wasn't born in Kenya and is not a Muslim, eh? (Or is he?)

No. CXXXIX: Today's Crystal Balling Appalling And Galling

not content with being third-rate
Trump's out to create a great big failed state
his how-to-repair-what-ails-ya
is like Maduro's in Venezuela
disband legislature co-opt the courts
(while he golfs at his resorts)
to renew the country remake it pristine
he'd make like Duterte in The Philippines
making America double-plus greater
shooting first he'd ask questions later
or never
whatever

like Best-Friend-4ever Tsar Vlad
those who oppose make him "so sad"
but unlike that cagey B-minus guy
Trump can't rely on his FBI
to fix things by bumping folks off
("my kingdom for his Kalashnikov")
if Vlad gifts Trump a gun
it's open season on everyone
Trump bold
with "Kalash"* gold
lots of luck
WTF

duck

one alternate fate
"evangelical caliphate"
setting Constitution aside
the Bible our infallible guide
kept as a remnant
the second amendment
or if Xi Jinping fails to prevail
upon North Korea to lower their sail
then avoiding a nuclear boom 
depends on sanity of Kim Jong Un
which means doom
I assume

you think things are bleak
just wait'll next week
debt ceiling/budget
fudge it
_____________
*Russian slang for Kalashnikov type rifles — Wikipedia

No. CXXXVIII: Is He Crazy?

New York Magazine: Trump’s Aides Tried to Conceal His Crazy, Racist Beliefs From the Country (Paywall?)

...Trump is a dangerous and erratic figure, and somebody needs to try to steer him away from decisions that would provoke unalterable tragedy.

is he crazy
or is it an act
can he distinguish
a lie from a fact
(Joe Stalin was paranoid
or so they say
and that did not ever
get in his way)
narsiscism plus grandiosity
adds up to extreme bellicosity
does he rant just on a whim
does he think it's about him
craziness maybe
but not to excess
helped contribute to his "success"
Good Lord what a mess
the grownups around him
without doubt
believe they can figure it out
getting on with "what needs to be done"
(were I in their shoes believe me I'd run)
so hard to imagine what lies ahead
and soon or late we'll all be dead
regrettably led by the oblate buffoon
it may be too late to not be too soon

No. CXXXVII: The McConnell And The Donald

NYT:  McConnell, in Private, Doubts if Trump Can Save Presidency (Paywall)

What was once an uneasy governing alliance has curdled into a feud of mutual resentment and sometimes outright hostility, complicated by the position of Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine L. Chao, in Mr. Trump’s cabinet...

This is not the War of the Roses, by Jesus.
It's a pissing contest between geezer Cæsars.
Donald's three-score-eleven, Mitch is seventy-five.
What have they in common? Younger foreign-born wives.
McConnell's second, Trump's third.
(Sanc-tit-y of marriage? Do not be absurd!)
Back in aught-eight, did not Mitch present
an argument for a one-term president?
That didn't work out, but it is clear
since that failed, he will now persevere.
(And damn it to hell,
let's, in this, wish him well.)

No. CXXXVI: The Great Game Encore

NYT: Angry Trump Grilled His Generals About Troop Increase, Then Gave In (Paywall)

On Monday night, Mr. Trump finally put forward a broader strategy for Afghanistan, one that would require thousands more American troops but place more conditions on the Afghan government....As a private citizen, he repeatedly called on Mr. Obama to withdraw the troops.

Foreign Affairs: Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires, November/December 2001, (Free registration or paid subscription required)

THE GREAT GAME
...This spot...has witnessed the traverse of the world's great armies on campaigns of conquest...All eventually ran into trouble...

Alexander the Great...ran into fierce resistance...Genghis Khan and the great Mughal emperors...a millennium later...established the greatest of empires -- but only after reaching painful accommodations with the Afghans...

In the nineteenth century...the Great Game, the contest between the United Kingdom and Russia for control of Central Asia and India...[saw]...[t]he first Afghan War (1839-42)...British commanders sent a huge army of British and Indian troops into Afghanistan to secure it against Russian incursions, replacing the ruling emir with a British protege...by January 1842 the British were forced to withdraw from Kabul with a column of 16,500 soldiers and civilians...only a single survivor...made it to Jalalabad...

...The British would repeat [their] mistakes in the second Afghan War (1878-81), as would the Soviets a century later...

If Afghanistan isn't the graveyard of empires,

perhaps it's the hospice where empires expire,

where aiming for victory, clean and complete,

in the end all anyone finds is defeat.

(Meantime: Bannon back at his old professions
contemplates corps of modern day Hessians

and Trump, as he views the eclipse with bare eyes,
says, "The sun never shines brighter than me!")

No. CXXXV: "Very Fine People"

They're fine? To you.

Okay. Name me two.

Name me three.

Name me four.

Name me a dozen.

Name me a score.

IF they are fine,

and not white supremacists

nor neo-Nazis

nor anti-feminists

nor antisemites

nor LGBTQ haters,

(indeed, if they never

fail to tip waiters!),

why DID they march

under Swastika banners?

That's not polite.

That's very bad manners.

Marched with folks screaming

“Land”, “Blood”, “Sieg Heil”.

You say they're fine.
Perhaps you mean vile?

They're fine to you?

Okay, name me two.

Then name me two more.

Name me a dozen.

Name a score.

Get them on camera.

Hear what they say.

If you still think they're “fine”,

resign, okay? 
Then go away.