Gail Collins is my favorite columnist at the New York Times. She recently wrote something about President Fucktard Trump and his fucktard friends.

Wikipedia - Gail Collins

Collins joined The New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board, and later as an op-ed columnist. In 2001, she was named the paper's first female Editorial Page Editor, a position she held for six years. She resigned from this post at the beginning of 2007 to take a six-month leave to focus on writing her book When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, returning to the Times as a regular columnist in July 2007.

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New York Times - Trump’s Toxic Friendship

Politics 2018: the wives under the bus.

By Gail Collins
Opinion Columnist

August 24, 2018

Do you think there’s anything worse than being a Friend of Trump? Almost everyone he’s attached to seems headed south in the most embarrassing ways possible.

Take Representative Duncan Hunter, a big Trump supporter from San Diego who made news this week when he was indicted for using campaign funds for personal expenses. And then made more when he tried to pin the whole thing on his wife.

Hunter was the second House member to endorse Donald Trump when he ran for president. The first was Chris Collins of New York, who was recently indicted for insider trading. This is not something we would normally blame on the president — except that Collins orchestrated the alleged crime over a cellphone during a picnic on the White House lawn. Maybe there’s just something in the air there that makes everyone who sniffs it want to commit the sleaziest crimes possible.

And Hunter, too, seems pretty … special. Over the years, plenty of elected officials have been charged with using political donations for personal goodies. But has anybody else ever been accused of buying clothes at a golf club shop and then billing them to the campaign as “balls for the wounded warriors”? That’s pretty much the bottom of the heap. Except maybe for the $204 round of golf and drinks that he referred to as “a Christian thing.”

Maybe the president’s pals and admirers get into trouble only because they’re trying to be like the Big Guy. Hunter’s friends might want to note that a certain president had a charitable foundation that once spent $10,000 on a painting of Trump to hang at his golf course. (Have you noticed, people, how frequently golf comes up in these stories? Just asking.)

Maybe Hunter’s donors didn’t care whether their contributions were actually going to pay for 30 tequila shots at a bachelor party. But you the concerned citizen have a right to be ticked off as hell, especially since Hunter is a self-advertised fiscal conservative who spends a lot of time whining about deficit spending. While managing, according to the indictment, to have overdrawn his personal bank account 1,100 times over seven years.

It’s a metaphor for all the members of Congress who vote to reduce taxes for rich constituents, pile up pork for their districts, send military spending through the roof and shovel crop support payments to sugar barons while demanding an end to food stamps. We could go on and on, but it’s actually more fun to return to the sins of Duncan Hunter.

Who, on Thursday, hit a new high by blaming everything on his wife. And, um, his military service. “I’m saying when I went to Iraq in 2003, the first time, I gave her power of attorney, and she handled my finances throughout my entire military career and that continued on when I got into Congress,” Hunter told Fox News. “Because I’m gone five days a week, I’m home for two.”

Way too busy to wonder where the money for that trip to Italy came from.

Later, just to drive the message home, he pointed out that Mrs. Hunter was his campaign manager: “Whatever she did, that will be looked at, too, I’m sure. But I didn’t do it.”

Really, I’m not sure even Trump would throw his wife under the bus so eagerly. Although Rudy Giuliani has been caught peddling the idea that those hush-money payoffs were just to protect Melania from heartbreak.

And by the way, remember when I told you Hunter was the second House member to endorse Donald Trump, behind the recently indicted Chris Collins? No. 3 was Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, who managed to get through the last two years without being indicted for anything. Although we do feel compelled to point out that DesJarlais was one of those right-to-life politicians who took an entirely new look at abortion when a woman he was committing adultery with told him she was pregnant.

No. 4 was Tom Marino of Pennsylvania, who Trump rewarded with a nomination to be the country’s drug czar. That didn’t work out after reporters documented Marino’s efforts to hamstring the Drug Enforcement Administration’s war against the opioid crisis. Which followed the arrival of nearly $100,000 in donations from the pharmaceutical lobby. No indication, however, that any of it went to tequila.

And by the way, do you remember who the first Republican to endorse Trump in the Senate was? Yes! Jeff Sessions!

We were reminded of that just this week, when Trump — so ticked off at the Department of Justice’s failure to protect him from justice — gave an interview to Fox News in which he said the fact that Sessions was first to put his hand up was “the only reason I gave him the job” of attorney general.

And do you know who Hunter originally blamed for all his troubles with the law? Yes! Yes!

“This is the new Department of Justice. This is the Democrats’ arm of law enforcement,” he told reporters. “That’s what’s happening right now, and it’s happening with Trump and it’s happening with me.”

If only Trump had made Hunter attorney general instead. There’d be no Mueller investigation, but the F.B.I. would have one heck of a good time golfing.

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Gail Collins is an Op-Ed columnist, a former member of the editorial board and was the first woman to serve as Times editorial page editor, from 2001 to 2007. @GailCollins • Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 25, 2018, on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump’s Toxic Friendship.

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FSM = Flying Spaghetti Monster

An excellent comment at this New York Times article:

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Oh Gail, oh Gail.

Why are you so worried about such trivial matters? Haven't you heard? Theft, adultery and lying about both are trending!

The party of "family values" has redefined law and morality. We are liberated from the old Christian playbook! Now all you have to do is say you hate Pelosi and claim you go to church and you are checked in - boarding pass to Heaven on your phone!

It's all OK as long as you are not a Democrat or, FSM forbid, a "Liberal". They are a bunch of commies - oh wait, the Russians are better than patriotic Democrats - Putin is better than Hillary - I am so confused.

Who is the enemy today? Ahhh, it's Jeff Sessions. But tomorrow is another day. Probably be that Trump org CFO dude. So exciting. Confusing, but exciting, eh?

Those Obamas were so dull - with their clean lifestyles, raising those kids by setting moral examples. BORING.