Welcome back to Barf Bag.
On Monday, Donald Trump will unfortunately be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. In what was set to be a perfect metaphor, Capitol flags were going to be flying at half-staff on Inauguration Day after the death of President Jimmy Carter. But Donnie got very mad about that fact, so his little lackey sprang into action.
The U.S. Code says flags should be lowered for 30 days after the death of a current or former president and Joe Biden‘s White House issued a proclamation to that effect after Carter’s death on December 29. Trump’s Inauguration falls within the 30-day period, and he threw a Truth Social tantrum falsely claiming this would be the first time a president would be sworn in with half-staff flags. (Not true! Richard Nixon‘s 1973 inauguration had half-staff flags because it happened within a month of Harry Truman dying.)
Trump wrote on January 3 that Democrats were “giddy” at the prospect. OK, maybe they were! But this is the tradition.
“Because of the death of President Jimmy Carter, the Flag may, for the first time ever during an Inauguration of a future President, be at half-mast. Nobody wants to see this,” he said, immediately after arguing that Democrats wanted to see it, “and no American can be happy about it. Let’s see how it plays out.”
On Tuesday, reporters asked House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) if he would be raising the flags next week and he nodded yes. Then he confirmed the change on Twitter, saying the flags would be moved up to full-staff for Inauguration Day only, then lowered back down.
“On January 20th, the flags at the Capitol will fly at full-staff to celebrate our country coming together behind the inauguration of our 47th President, Donald Trump. The flags will be lowered back to half-staff the following day to continue honoring President Jimmy Carter,” Johnson posted.
This is a deeply pathetic move to soothe Trump’s ego—he was desperate not to see the headlines and memes people in the U.S. and around the world would inevitably post.
But all this talk about staffs and height does make me wonder if Trump is concerned about looking, well, impotent. And he kind of is, since he can’t legally run for president again. His whole term will be a lame-duck situation and he has only the slimmest control of Congress to try to pass legislation. Still, he appointed hundreds of federal judges to help do his bidding and the next four years will no doubt be horrible and very, very stupid.
If you can’t look away on Monday, we at least made you Inauguration bingo cards.
Trump-related barf:
- Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi refused in her hearing to say that Trump lost the 2020 election. [The Hill]
- Some tech executives who will attend the Inauguration include: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and TikTok CEO Shou Chew. [NBC News]
- CNN wants to bump anchor and Trump foe Jim Acosta from a primetime slot to midnight. [Status News/Bluesky]
- People who attended a Donald Trump Jr. event in Greenland in MAGA hats were invited off the street and some were allegedly homeless [The Guardian]
- The Trump family is trying to reclaim its old DC hotel presumably for grifting purposes. [Wall Street Journal]
Non-Trump barf:
- Republicans say they want to put conditions on wildfire aid to California. Gross! [Washington Post]
- Even a stopped clock: Steve Bannon derided “White South Africans” including Musk and Peter Thiel as “the most racist people on earth.” [The Guardian]
- Musk criticized the sentencing of a U.K. neo-Nazi who received a seven-year prison sentence for inciting riots last year. [New York Times]
- Musk also wants NASA to stop giving a shit about the moon and focus on Mars. [Politico]
- A chart shown during Pete Hegseth‘s confirmation hearing decrying DEI in the military misspelled “military.” [Bluesky]
This has been your weekly Barf Bag, thanks for reading!
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