FLIP, FLOP

Ok, Paul Manafort folded. He cut a plea deal with Mueller and is now ready to sing like a canary. This is it, right? This is finally the missing holy grail that proves there really was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, right? I mean, after all, that was the whole point, right? Mueller was on a mission from God, ok maybe not God, but on a mission. He was there to find the Russian collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia that CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and CBS knew was there. It had to be there. How else could one explain the unexplainable. I mean, come on, this election was in the bag for Hillary. Yes, she was an old gas bag, with an awful personality and the most padded resume in the history of mankind, but hey! She was a woman, she was a liberal and it was time to break the glass ceiling once and for all, right? It was her turn. And she was running against Donald Trump!

Donald Trump? Are you kidding me. The loud mouth on Celebrity Apprentice with the world’s worst combover hovering over the world’s worst spray tan. The guy famous primarily for bad jokes and insults? Yes, Hillary had her faults, but DONALD “blankety blank” TRUMP. Seriously? No self-respecting person would vote for this guy to be Commissioner of Sanitation, right? He is the world’s most obvious bad joke. Hillary is outspending this guy by like 2 to 1. Every TV network, including FOX is warming up for the coronation. Fireworks have been ordered for her victory party in Manhattan. What could possibly go wrong.

But it did go wrong. On election night, state after state that should known better voted for Trump. Hillary lost in states that hadn’t voted for a Republican since Noah was working on his boat thingies. It wasn’t even close. By the time the vaunted anchors on CNN were sipping their second cocktail, the world turned upside down. The impossible, the unthinkable, the unimaginable, was actually happening. Donald Trump was really going to be the next President of the United States. Perhaps Rachel Maddox put this best when she said: This is not just a bad dream, this is not a nightmare, you’re not imagining this, this is real.

There had to be a mistake. This couldn’t possibly be true. There must be another explanation. Any other explanation. Hillary blamed it on the Russians and suddenly it made sense after all. It was Putin, over there in Russia. He hacked the DNC e-mails and in one of the dirtiest campaign stunts in history told the world the truth about Hillary Clinton. He published real DNC e-mails and let the entire world see the real Hillary Clinton: a loathsome hateful plastic imitation of a human being who came perilously close to losing the DNC nomination to an aging irrational socialist from Vermont or where ever. This, and only this, could explain the unexplainable. This and only this could make sense of the madness of Donald Trump being President of the United States. They had to believe this, because the alternative was to accept the cold hard truth that Hillary really had lost. Not just lost but lost to a clown. Not just any clown, but Donald “blankety blank” Trump.

And then the skies opened, and Robert Mueller descended from heaven to save the day. He would be given unlimited power to slay the dragon. To prove to the world that this was all a big mistake and it was not our fault, it was Russia’s fault. The fire breathing dragon, ok, clown with the poorly died red hair combover, would be forcibly removed from office and peace, love, happy days and sanity would finally be restored.

Except that Mueller didn’t slay the dragon. He didn’t find a hint of Russian collusion. Instead he was confronted with the obvious, that this was all BS created by bumbling amateurs at the FBI, DOJ and the CIA. Seriously? Even if Donald Trump wasn’t guilty, these guys should at a minimum been able to do better job of framing him.

At each step, they kept waiting for that masterful secret witness. The one who saves the day, in Perry Mason style, and forces the obviously guilty Donald Trump to sob his way through a tearful resignation. But, that never happened. Instead Trump just kept on tweeting insults and Mueller delivered nothing other than a handful of meaningless confessions by people who can’t even spell collusion. These are pathetic sideshows that wouldn’t warrant anyone’s attention unless they were brief stops on the way to impeachment.

Then, the greatest of them all, Paul Manafort, is finally intimidated into pleading guilty and, wait for it, he is going to cooperate with Mueller. The national nightmare is finally over. Birds are starting to sing again. The clouds will roll away and the sun will shine again. There’s a new day dawning. Happy Days are right around the corner.

Except, wait, there’s a problem. Yes, Manafort is singing, but he’s singing wildly off key. He is, gasp, singing about people like Tony Podesta and the Clinton campaign. He is talking about collusion, not by Donald Trump, but by Democratic fat cats and not with Russia, but rather Ukraine. Didn’t Mueller get the memo? Yes, Manafort bought politicians, but they aren’t Republicans, they’re Democrats. The guy even arranged a meeting between the Hapsburg Group and President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. What the heck is that? Who cares if those guys colluded with a foreign power to influence an election. Why would that matter? This is not about them, this was never about them. What is this crap?

Alcohol. More alcohol. It won’t change anything, but it will lessen the pain. The world looks better after alcohol. That is why God, if one believes in God, invented the stuff. Alcohol doesn’t change the world, but it does a great job in changing how one views the world. Never more necessary than now.

The flip, flopped.

TDM