Seventeen days. That’s how much stamina flinty-eyed deal master Donald Trump, sober policy knower Paul Ryan, and all the Republican Party had for a health care overhaul they’d been promising for seven years, before the work of negotiating amongst themselves overwhelmed them and they retired to their fainting couches. You can’t close on the sale of a fucking townhouse in 17 days. Holy hell, what a bunch of losers.
Don’t get me wrong! Literally all decent human beings can be glad these incompetent featherweight sacks of crap couldn’t get the job done: If their efforts were shabby, their goals were vile, the stuff of paranoia thriller villains. In all the particulars of their vision the public got to see, it was a pathetic hackwork, an agglomeration of cheap-shit piecemeal bullshit, managing the mean feat of being both a half-assed half-step—when measured against the tenor and substance of the seven years’ worth of caterwauling these creampuffs mounted against the ostensibly socialist evils of Obamacare—and a savage and heavyhanded assault on the well-being and security of tens of millions of vulnerable people. The unintentional consequences would have been surpassed in cruelty and destruction only by the intentional ones. Seventeen days of negotiation is 18 more than it deserved.
But still. These fucking amateurs! These butter-soft babies. These utter, utter fucking frauds. Let us clown them for all eternity; let us never forget what a bunch of unserious cosplaying shit-for-brains they are, each and every one. Choose your own favorite from among the smorgasbord of humiliating anecdotes to emerge from the past six days’ politics reporting; here’s one of mine, from a terrific recap by the Washington Post’s Robert Costa, Ashley Parker, and Philip Rucker, concerning Trump’s effort to persuade individual (friendly!) legislators to back the doomed bill:
When [Republican Texas representative Joe] Barton told Trump that he could probably support the bill, with a few changes, the president smiled and winked at Vice President Pence, who stood hovering over the Resolute desk, and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who leaned forward to listen. As Trump wrapped up the call—“Talk soon,” he told Barton—Pence and Price silently punched their fists in the air. Barton was not an absolute yes but, for the moment, it was good enough.
Then the president was on to the next call.
Some master deal-maker! Get a load of these mayo fuckboys punching their fists in the air and winking at each other because one of their most ideologically sympathetic allies in Congress gave them a wishy-washy “probably” in return for unspecified “changes” that almost certainly would alienate any number of other representatives whose support they’d also need. This is like a car salesman calling over the manager for a high-five because a customer said he’d talk to his wife and come back. Your local used-car lot at this very moment contains no less than three divorced alcoholics in sweat-stained shirtsleeves who would not accept—much less celebrate—that lukewarm shit in lieu of a yes.
Here’s another fun one, from Mike Allen of Axios, describing Dark Lord of the Alt-Right Steve Bannon trying to break bad on a room of fellow insane right-wingers and getting duffed in the face in response:
When the balky hardliners of the House Freedom Caucus visited the White House earlier this week, this was Steve Bannon’s opening line, according to people in the conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building:
“Guys, look. This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill.”
[...]
One of the members replied: “You know, the last time someone ordered me to something, I was 18 years old. And it was my daddy. And I didn’t listen to him, either.”
Great job, Wet Bag Of Cigarette Butts That Thinks It’s Judge Holden. You really cracked the fuckin’ whip, there. The New York Times reports that even after the bill’s failure became clear, Bannon wanted the vote forced at all costs on Friday afternoon so that he and Trump could compile an “enemies list” of Republican legislators who refused to support it. Ha! What the fuck would this inept shit-heap have done with it? You don’t want to make an enemy of the least popular president in American history, my friends. He might, uh, campaign for your reelection.
(Spare a moment also to appreciate the unnamed Nobody Tells Me What To Do Guy, who picked a really hilarious moment to encapsulate why everything is broken: Because for this bunch of entitled piss babies “No one tells me what to do!” is the total sum of Liberty and Adulthood.)
Hear me, Americans! Savor this world-historic self-own by the soft-ass imbeciles currently running our government, who had at least a year to overhaul a spectacularly unpopular healthcare system against which they’d been campaigning for the better part of a decade but bailed on the effort after 17 days because their diapers were leaking down their legs. Carry your glee out into the world; do the Booty Scooty in your dipshit MAGA-hat uncle’s goddamn face. It’s going to be a really long four years, and these clumsy, cruel, craven, cannibal bozos are coming for the tax code next; we will have to take our joy where we can find it.