Try to Remember...

The tsunami of disasters that is the Trump administration is SO overwhelming that it's easy to forget news stories that would have sunk any other administration at that instant.  Sure, it helps having a complicit Republican Congress that is will to overlook obstruction of justice, abuse of power and conspiring with foreign enemies in order to enable him, but it's oh-so-much more than just that.  Even a story like yesterday's about Trump ordering the Department of Justice to investigate itself for their investigation of him is merely just "one of the latest," not even the otherwise Banner Headline of the Year.

And make no mistake, the DOJ's investigation is an investigation of Trump.  His own lawyers have said that the Special Counsel called him a "subject" of the investigation.  And you'd generally think that the subject of an investigation shouldn't be allowed to investigate their own investigators.  Well, okay, I think that, but maybe "law and order" Republicans think differently.

But that's just yesterday's news.  As is -- sorry, was -- the story of yet another Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr. and Erik Prince (who lied to Congress about not being there), along with representatives of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates during the campaign.  And we know how stories like those push others out, like last week's high school massacre in Texas and Trump's bizarre near-silence on it (old news), Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen laundering hush money for a porn actress and the Russians (old news), the missing SAR bank files for those payments (old news) which now seem to have been restricted by the Treasury Department, and the Senate Intelligence Committee issuing a report that confirms the intel services findings that Russia did try to influence the election ordered by Putin (old "fake" news).  And those stories pushed out the story of Trump's staffer who "joked" (supposedly...) about John McCan dying -- with no public apology yet, despite one being promised.  And that pushed out the many stories of the seemingly-unending scandals by EPA Director Scott Pruitt...

And on and on and on.  Pushing one Trump administration disaster out of the headline for the next one.

All of which made me realize a story long-since forgotten which is one Democrats should continue to be pounding on, since -- although it's not a "scandal" in the non-stop salacious or criminal Trump meaning of the word -- it's one which has had direct and profound impact on the public and will have even far-more down the line.  Yet it's one that has been largely overlooked because it's been relegated to Way Old News -- which in this administration is usually anything more than five days ago.  And this is ancient, almost prehistoric, all the way back in 2017.

And no, I'm not even talking about how the "tax cut" for the richest Americans added $1.5 trillion to the national deficit over the course of 10 years.  (Quick side note on that:  I Remember that photo op Trump took with Harley Davidson motorcycles? (VROOM!) Well get this -- the company took their big corporate tax cut and are closing a U.S. factory & moving it to Bangkok, Thailand. AND they used their tax cut to buy back stock for themselves! But it gets even better!  Harley Davidson is based in Milwaukee, WISCONSIN. The home state of...yes, Paul Ryan,  the sycophantic Speaker of the House who enables Trump.)

No, no, not the massive debt issue of the "tax cut," I'm referring to another result entirely of that "tax cut" -- which is so easy to forget since it was a give months ago, another lifetime in Trump Years.  It was how when Trump and the Republican Party voted for that "tax cut" bill to get rid of the individual mandate which gutted the Affordable Care Act.

That's how disastrous the Trump administration has been.  That SO many awful things have happened SO often and SO regularly on a near-daily (sometimes hourly) basis that it's easy to forget that in the midst of one of its most harmful actions -- adding $1.5 trillion to the national deficit -- even that wasn't bad enough, and they destroyed health care. 

And the reason it's especially easy to forget this is because the removal of the individual mandate, which among other things will cause 13 million Americans to lose health coverage, is because that action doesn't take effect until 2019...after the mid-term election.  (Republicans were very smart and even more cowardly about making sure of that.)  So, most Americans at this point have probably totally forgotten all about that.  Forgotten that in the GOP's unending effort to "Repeal and Replace" the program, they not only weren't ever able to figure out how to "replace" it -- but couldn't even properly "repeal" it.  And so, they just shredded the thing.

Shredding is easy.  Replacing is hard.  As we've seen, since Trump and his GOP band of merry men (robbing from the poor to give to the rich) STILL haven't come up with that Trump-promised "better, cheaper, beautiful health care" replacement.  Or...well, ANY replacement, for that matter.  

It's my hope that when it comes time to campaign in earnest for the mid-terms and Republicans try to make the "tax cut" their one and only notable "achievement" -- assuming that adding $1.5 trillion to the deficit can be considered an achievement -- that Democrats themselves try to remember to remind the public that along with that gift of a $1.5 trillion deficit comes a bonus, the forgotten, upcoming destruction of health care.

​Cheers.  To your good health...