Presidential predictions (and nicknames) for 2018

It’s official: everything is in play with President Pumpkin Head in the White House. My prediction for the remainder of 2018 is more chaos and more nicknames from (and for) our Name Caller-in-Chief.

About the only person that Fake Hair hasn’t bestowed a demeaning moniker on is Czar Vladimir Putin. How did he miss that one I wonder?

Yes, things are getting pretty squirrelly in our nation’s capital, but I believe the worst is yet to come. Brace yourself for the following:

·     Trade wars
·     Actual wars
·     Government shutdowns (threatened and real)
·     Rambo-educators
·     A cage match between a sitting president and a former VEEP
·     More musical chairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as cabinet members tiptoe in a circle to keep their jobs while the band plays the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”
·     What Robert Mueller is learning about collusion, corruption and obstruction of justice

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg that America is steaming toward like that doomed ocean liner of yore. My prediction is that all of this insanity in high places is not going to end well.

In 2016, the Heedless Horseman — who now gallops about insulting our allies and former presidents, as well as Tweet-firing people he recently hired (Anthony Scaramucci lasted 10 days) — he somehow managed to convince enough voters (roughly 46 percent) that things were so dire in this country that we should give chaos a chance.

And while our Orange Oligarch has broken or failed to deliver on most of his campaign promises, he steadfastly has provided pandemonium on a daily, if not hourly basis. He can turn a news cycle on a dime, for example, shaming congressional leaders for cowering before the NRA one day, while he shamefully kowtows to the gun lobby the next.  Or threatening to veto a “ridiculous” spending that bill he signs a few hours later. It’s hard to keep up with all of his nonsense.

In the interests of chaos, Landslide Donnie and his Republican enablers took his election as a mandate to overturn the applecart, to try to erase as much of what his predecessor did as possible.

The 180-degree swerve that is underway is curious when you consider this: As President Barack Obama left office his approval rating was 53 percent, while at the same time, Comb-Over’s handling of his presidential transition got a thumbs up from just 42 percent of Americans. Since then the performance review of Potbellied POTUS has hovered in the 30s, at times as low as 35 percent. Now there’s a mandate.

It’s not like we were blindsided by our Dishonest Don. For example, during the campaign he was being sued for fraud by thousands of Trump University students and settled with them after the election for $25 million.

And that was merely one of a stunning number of litigations over the years. USA Today reported in June 2016 that some 3,500 legal actions had been filed by and against the Chaos Candidate and his various companies.

And since October 2016, when a 2005 tape surfaced of Small Hands bragging about groping women, nearly two dozen women have come forward, some before the election, charging that he misbehaved with them.

Besides all that: did anyone really believe that Mexico was going to pay for his wall? Can you really get away with piling it that high, even during an election? Our 45th —and, I submit, our worst president ever— can’t even get his own Republican Congress to foot the bill.

So is anyone tired of winning yet? Or perhaps you’re tired of waiting for him to carry out his preposterous pledge to repeal Obamacare “immediately” and replace it with “something terrific” that covers “all Americans.”

Let’s face it, enough of us voted for chaos, and that’s exactly what we got. Who can forget the Republicans’ Sub-Standard Bearer’s stirring pitch to African-American voters: “What have you got to lose?”

I predict all of us will find out this year exactly what we have to lose under the “leadership” of this madcap administration; and I don’t think we’re going to like the answer.

The silver lining is that we hold regular elections in this country: I predict that this November the people who have produced this embarrassing and dangerous sideshow will be held to account.

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