Love Those Cabinet Meetings!

Julie Hirschfeld Davis has a delightful piece in the New York Times describing the somewhat surreal circus that took place at a recent cabinet meeting. I highly recommend the whole article.

Our president started out with a tribute to Aretha Franklin, noting that: “She worked for me on numerous occasions”.

Pivoting to the California wildfire crisis, the Donald opined: “We’re spending a fortune in California because of poor maintenance and because, frankly, they’re sending a lot of water out to the Pacific to protect the smelt.” Yes, the president of our country actually said that.

Calling on the estimable Ryan Zinke for back up, Mr. Trump said: “Ryan was saying that it’s not a global warming thing, it’s a management situation.”

Thereupon, ever the helpful boy scout, Mr. Zinke boldly floated the hypothesis that Canadian lumber imports were hurting the American timber industry, thereby causing trees to go unattended, fall over and die, thus becoming fuel for the fires.

Such is the present state of The Great American Experiment.