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I can't see how any of this will make the generals happy. First, there was the Trump tweet about how Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski's face was "bleeding badly from a face-lift" during a visit to Mar-a-Lago, the Winter White House. This caused a considerable shit storm on social media and all the major news websites—save, of course, Fox News (which is still going on and on about Hillary this and Hillary that).

Then this morning, Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed on MSNBC that Trump used the National Enquirer, which he basically runs because of his close friendship with its owner, to blackmail the Morning Joe hosts. They were informed by top aides at the White House that if they did not call Trump and apologize for something or other that happened in the past, the tabloid would run a hit piece on them. Mika Brzezinski even claimed that the National Enquirer harassed her children and close friends. Joe Scarborough claimed he has tapes (or at least text messages and records of phone calls from the White House).


In a normal world, this would be a big deal and likely explode a president's political career. But this is not a normal world. You have the NRA basically declaring war on cities. You have senators lying about Trumpcare with no fear. You have a president who can boast about grabbing pussy and still be elected. This blackmailing business will be water on Trump's back.


But there is one thing I want to share before ending this post. It is a paragraph in Naomi Klein's new book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, that provides a little history of Mar-a-Lago, the Winter White House that's open for big business...

Trump's ownership of Mar-a-Lago is telling in itself. A decade before Trump purchased the property in 1985, the owner of the estate, socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post, had bequeathed it to the US government in the hopes that it could be used as a presidential retreat or a "Winter White House." But no president used it and it was eventually returned. Long before the 2016 election, Trump had enjoyed boasting about the fact that he lived in a house intended for presidents. Indeed, in retrospect it is as if he was playing at being president for three decades. And now, with the 2016 elections, that fantasy has become a reality or is it reality that has been swallowed whole by Trump's fantasy? As with all things Trump, it's genuinely difficult to tell. Trump may call his Palm Beach estate the "Winter White House," or the "Southern White House," but it is, of course, no such thing. The White House is a public institution; Mara-Lago remains a private, for-profit, members-only club with the proceeds flowing directly to Trump and his family.