Trump: one and done, and so is the House

By BRUCE LOWITT

Donald Trump, already steamed when 221 Republicans didn’t vote for him as Speaker of the House of Representatives, threw his cheeseburger, golf shoes and a folder of classified documents out a Mar-a-Lago window during a tantrum when Matt Gaetz, after initially nominating and voting for the former president, changed his mind and supported Jim Jordan.

Gaetz, R-Promdate, one of Trump’s most vociferous supporters since being elected to the House in 2016, said he planned to continue nominating Trump but switched his support to Jordan, R-Molester, after being offered a part-time job as assistant coach of the Elyria (Ohio) High School girls soccer team when Congress is not in session.

The voting went through a 13^th ballot with Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Handout, still failing to get the Speaker’s gavel he has yearned for since kindergarten.

While the Republicans have been splintered, the Democrats have voted as one on every ballot for Hakeem Jeffries, with no defections. “We are the textbook definition of unified,” Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Shalom, said. “Then again, there’s a textbook definition of putzes, but I’d rather not go there.”

Trump received one vote, Gaetz’s, the fewest votes of anyone ever nominated to become Speaker of the House. “I thought Gaetz was going to be the guy to start the wave to sweep me into the speakership, and to be my vice president when I’m re-elected president in 2024,” an angry Trump said later while stuffing unsigned presidential pardons into a Mar-a-Lago toilet. “But then this poodleskirt-chasing weasel turns around and votes for the Ohio gym rat.”

On the 11^th ballot, Trump finished 18 votes behind Byron Donalds, a one-term Florida congressman best known for being called Ducky and Quackers. Trump also finished 200 votes behind McCarthy, expected to become the House’s Most Emasculated Speaker ever.

Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, R-Ammo, Paul Gosar, R-Unscrupled, and several other members of the House GOP who have squeezed every bit of respectability out of McCarthy are in a position to shoot down anything he or the rest of the House proposes, save for those coming under their banner of vituperation.

“Now,” Trump said, “I realize I don’t want to have anything to do with that job. I’ll have enough problems raising millions of dollars from my millions of supporters for my legal defense without having to be associated with anyone or anything having to do with that crowd of clowns.”

Until a Speaker is elected, House Republicans are prevented from acting on their agenda, which includes establishing a House Committee to investigate the House Committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, impeaching President Joe Biden, launching investigations into his son, Hunter Biden, and Anthony Fauci, the president’s former chief medical advisor, replacing the Pledge of Allegiance with the Lord’s Prayer, cutting off military aid to Ukraine, increasing military aide to Texas and Florida, getting rid of the First, Third and Eighth Amendments to the United States Constitution, ending funding for infrastructure, prohibiting abortions after conception, eliminating the Affordale Care Act, making English the official and only American language, strengthening and expanding the wall at the Mexican border, making Southwest the official U.S. government airline, eliminating the Internal Revenue Service, funding to develop coal-powered cars, putting the government into default for the first time ever by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, eliminating the Thirteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, arming teachers, janitors and all other public school employees as well as religious leaders in churches and synagogues (but not mosques), annexing Canada, and writing legislation to pardon every insurrectionist who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6.