
We’re hearing that Donald Trump’s budget office rescinded the memo enacting an across-the-board spending freeze, but we’re also hearing, from Trump’s in-over-her-head press secretary, that the freeze is still on.
What’s really going on here?
Your guess is as good as anybody else’s.
Seriously.
“This is NOT a recission of the federal funding freeze,” the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”
ICYMI
- Trump orders pause on federal grants, loans, putting social safety net programs at risk
- Trump’s federal hiring freeze could delay benefits, healthcare for America’s veterans
- Trump federal-grant freeze will have impacts on hospitals, Medicaid recipients
- Judge issues stay to temporarily block Trump 2.0 federal-spending freeze
Now, it could be that Leavitt, the star of an interwebs selfie in which she is wearing a T-shirt with the message “Make America Blonde Again,” is just confused, or that somebody above her in the food chain wants her to be confused, which probably isn’t hard to achieve, from what we’ve seen from her thus far.
Whatever is going on there, the result of the former D2 softball outfielder (.201/.233/.326 slash line, three homers, 17 RBIs in two seasons at Saint Anselm, in 2016 and 2017) being confused is, we’re all confused.
The confusion has reached the point where a federal judge, John McConnell, in a Wednesday hearing on a request for a restraining order blocking the Trump administration brought by a group of Democratic state AGs, offered this soon-to-be classic in terms of legal observation:
“We don’t know, because obviously, we can’t cross-examine the tweet, we don’t know what Ms. Leavitt refers to.”
Add that one to the annals of American jurisprudence.
“(W)e can’t cross-examine the tweet.”
No, indeed, we can’t cross-examine tweets, the bottle-blondes who compose them are no help, the various people in charge of writing the memos don’t even know each other, much less what any of them are doing.
For anybody who has followed Trump over the course of his 50 years in the business world, this is all par for the course.
It’s not 12-dimensional chess; it’s not even checkers.
There’s a reason the Big Guy went bankrupt so many times; he’s not that bright, and he surrounds himself with people who defer to him like he’s the smartest guy in the room, which says a lot about their acumen, or lack thereof.
And when the stuff hits the fan, which is inevitable with this guy, he sends out another one of his low-rent Ditzy Chicks to distract the incel horndogs in the press gallery.
Anyway, bottom line here, let’s proceed on the assumption that the spending freeze is still on, because his press secretary seems to think so.