The news this week threw The Buzz into a bit of a panic — by which we mean we hope those June 12 airline tickets to Singapore are refundable. Here’s a look at the week that was.
Not worth the pot metal they’re printed on: President Donald Trump on Thursday called off his planned June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, citing the “tremendous anger and open hostility” in a recent statement by the isolated communist nation.
Much like earlier abrupt actions by Trump rattled the stock market, this announcement triggered a panicked sell-off of those really weird commemorative summit coins the White House had issued a few days earlier.
It’s back to “lock her up!”: The summit cancellation means it’s curtains for Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize aspirations, which were fanned by chants of “Nobel!” “Nobel!” at his pep rallies.
It’s just as well, because some puzzled Trump supporters were asking each other, “what’s the problem with bells? Do immigrants like them?”
Ghostwriters: Trump aides tasked with writing his tweets purposefully mimic POTUS’ signature style — grammatical errors, random capitalized words and unrelated subjects grafted together — but refrain from purposely misspelling words and names.
Turns out they’re complying with the Presidential Tweets entry in the White House Manual of Style, which reads: “Grammatical errors, OK! Spelling errors, SAD!”
Speaking of Twitter: A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Trump violates the First Amendment when he blocks his critics on Twitter, because he is attempting to silence his detractors on a public forum.
An alarmed nation reacted to the decision by asking, “but we can still block him, right?”
Holy FICO score: First son-in-law Jared Kushner got his security clearance back Wednesday, several months after it was downgraded by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
Still no word on whether the very-leveraged Mr. Kushner’s credit rating will be upgraded to “Guess the oil sheiks can spot you a few million this month” from “Pay up, or some Russian guys are gonna come see you.”
Dodd-Frank done in: Continuing his quest to undo everything Barack Obama ever did, Trump on Thursday signed legislation that loosens restraints for banks that were put in place after the 2008 financial crisis.
It was unclear whether the rules were made so lenient that American banks can loan money to the Trump Organization and Jared Kushner.
He goes to Iowa for the waters: Gov. Jay Inslee this week spurred talk of a possible presidential bid when it was learned he’ll be headed to Iowa soon for a party function. The American political calculus goes like this: Ambitious politicians + visits to first-presidential-primary-in-the-nation Iowa = they want to run for president.
Now, politics are a business — just ask the consultants and messaging gurus who make millions off it. But if it were run like a business, the first primary would take place in Hawaii. Or maybe Florida (it’s winter, after all). Really, anyplace where you can golf in January.
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