Democrats were already reeling because of the daily mental decline of Joe Biden, the whimpering word salads from Kamala Harris and RFK Jr choosing Nicole Shanahan to be his VP running mate. Nicole Shanahan is beyond rich; she was married to Google cofounder Sergey Brin. While it is unlikely she will help RFK jr. win, she has already been successful in pushing the DNC into full panic mode.

In the meantime, Trump has been having an incredibly good week. It was hard to imagine anything that could make the situation worse. But then we wake up to learn that the Francis Scott Key Bridge over the Baltimore Harbor had been struck by a freighter and it immediately collapsed. The video of this is beyond horrific. This obviously shut down the entrance to Baltimore Harbor. It has also shut down the bridge built to give trucks hauling high hazard materials a safer route through the area. Expect to get stories about world class traffic jams that will stagger the imagination.

The usual suspects, the politicians who always seize any opportunity to exploit an disaster have already shown up for the obligatory photo op to show they are important and in charge. Imagine living in Baltimore, understanding the importance of this bridge and learning that Pete Buttigieg is in charge of fixing this. Expect Baltimore to run out of alcohol within hours. Then imagine hearing Joe Biden reflect on commuting across the Francis Scott Key Bridge on his train before someone pointed out there were no train tracks on that bridge. Oops.

But the real pain has just begun. It will take weeks, maybe months, perhaps years, to just clear the debris out of the harbor. Then they can “start” to think about building a new bridge. The old one took five years to build and cost $110 million. This one is likely to take much longer than that and the cost will be in the billions, not millions.

In the meantime, all those people relying on the Baltimore harbor for their jobs are already researching how to collect unemployment and look at other harbors, anywhere, that still function. To give you an example of the cost, Carnival Cruise Lines just announced that they expect this to cost them at least $10 million.

Imagine the response when the environmental lobby realizes exactly what has been traveling across that bridge in a long, endless line of trucks. What if one of those trucks was on the bridge when it collapsed? Carbon emissions anyone?

Joe Biden is almost certain to demand that the federal government be involved in designing the new bridge and will arrogantly insist it be built solely with union labor. That will speed things up and it will absolutely reduce costs. Right?

Perhaps one of the local leaders will step up and fill the leadership gap, but it is still a really big gap. In the meantime, if they do everything perfectly, the results will be far from perfect. This is a hot, actually cold, mess and it is going to get even uglier the more we learn about it. The only thing absolutely certain at this point is that the double secret probation committee is working overtime to find some tiny ray of sunshine regarding this fiasco. Oh, I know, blame it on Donald Trump.

TDM