Predicting future Trump-trocities

I was surprised when our president pardoned those two turkeys, Wishbone and Drumstick, right before Thanksgiving. For starters, where were Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn?

And why didn’t he wring their necks (the turkeys)? That would have been the exact opposite of what former president Barack Obama did a year ago — and everybody knows that “Must Undo Obama” is the zombie-like mantra of the present administration.

Dispatching those big birds also would have appealed bigly to the president’s gun toting, coal-mining, hedge-funding base.

On the other hand, Trump may have wanted to send a signal to special prosecutor Robert Mueller, to wit: I can pardon any chalky birdbrain I want to (both gobblers were lily white, of course).

Predicting the next Trump-roar is difficult, much less his shenanigans for an entire new year. Will he insult more Gold Star parents, talk political trash in front an assemblage of Girl Scouts — or at the next G-20 summit rate German Chancellor Angela Merkel “a two-minus.”

The most predictable thing about our 45th president is that he’s unpredictable. He’s liable to do anything. He already has shattered countless barriers of presidential decorum, often mimicking the tin pot despots he so admires rather than the likes of Honest Abe, the purported father of the Republican Party.

But predict we must. What have we got to lose? Let’s give it the old Trump University try. Here are some candidates for TTTs, or Terrible Trumpy’Trocities, in the coming year:

• Running out of live targets, such as the Pope and African-American athletes, for his gratuitous pre-dawn Twitter storms, the leader of what’s left of the free world starts dissing dead people —like Mother Teresa, Nat Turner, and David Cassidy of the Partridge Family.
• To settle the 72-year-old divide on the Korean peninsula once and for all, our pot-bellied POTUS challenges North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to a pie-eating contest. Not to worry, our borderline obese champion wins going away (Trump’s weight has been estimated at 250 pounds; he is way better at avoiding taxes than Big Macs).
• In his 2,976th executive order (totally way more than Obama), the president proclaims the White House and its grounds to be a “clothes-optional” zone, pointing out that Obama and his fellow travelers always came to work fully attired.
• In yet another executive order (number 10,752), Trump changes the colors of Old Glory to red, white and orange.
• Trump delivers on his campaign pledge to “drain the swamp” by appointing a new cabinet member (by the end of his first term all of the originals have either resigned or are under investigation) who is neither a billionaire nor a multi-millionaire. Bye the bye, the aggregate net worth of his current cabinet of curiosities is roughly $15 billion — a figure that is 30 times richer than that of George W. Bush’s crew.
• Having failed to get Mexico or the U.S. Congress to pay for his beloved border wall, Trump announces that he is going to make Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) foot the bill.
• Trump invites Vladimir Putin to officiate at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, and the Russian strongman readily accepts, performing his fowl duties topless.

Tired of 2018 already? Let’s look even further into the future, shall we?

• At the beginning of his third term, Trump finally signs an executive order (number 1,759,231) proclaiming a Republican “Middle Class” Tax Cut, which in the interests of transparency will be titled: “The Middle of My Class Tax Cut,” meaning people with incomes from $50 million to a $1 trillion. The U.S. Congress doesn’t weigh in because Trump had closed the Capitol Building for renovations after the Democratic sweep in the 2018 midterms, and work is progressing extremely slowly (Steve Bannon is the construction foreman).
• The tax bill, of course, explodes the deficit, but not to worry: President Trump has a lot of experience with bankruptcies.

Any more good news? Sure, absolutely, believe me. In the middle of his fourth term (way longer than FDR!), Trump resigns, handing over the reigns to a Troika that consists of Vice President Eric Trump, Donald Jr., and Barron.

David Holahan is a freelance writer who lives in East Haddam.