Trump was four years of storm and strife,
With crimes large and small his term was rife.
With a last fake simper,
Not wth a bang, but a whimper,
The 45th President said, “Have a good life.”
“Joe Biden has a real shot at being a boring president. It will require constant work. Many forces of commerce and human nature are arrayed against him, and countless obstacles stand in his path. But if the country is lucky, entire days will pass without the president’s activities agitating the public mind.”
“Particularly when you’re in the situation of almost being in a crisis with the number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths that we have — when you start talking about things that make no sense medically and no sense scientifically, that clearly is not helpful.”
— Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN that the lack of truthfulness from the Trump administration regarding the Covid-19 pandemic “very likely” cost American lives.
“We all know Ted Cruz is sort of a political force of nature. He is what he is. You either hate him or you hate him. And he is a guy who went so far over the edge, not just to appease Donald Trump and Trump’s base, but because he felt like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) had gotten out ahead of him on it.”
— Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson said that now that former President Trump is out of office, he intends to turn the super-PAC’s attention to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), The Hill reports.
“I want to thank your families for the sacrifices, but I’m not joking when I say this. If you are ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot. On the spot. No ifs, ands or buts.”
— President Joe Biden, quoted by ABC News, swearing in his senior staff.
“A large space was built for an audience that the White House had invited to see the president off. But for a man obsessed with crowd size, only about 300 people showed up, filling roughly a third of the standing area. … For several days, aides had tried to corral officials to come to the departure, and to bring guests. But several who remained working until the president’s final day in office said they were worn out and deeply angry over his behavior since Election Day, as he spread falsehoods about the race being stolen from him, overshadowing whatever substantive achievements they might remember. Some of his aides who had been with him the longest said they did not even watch the send-off on television.”
An NPR analysis has found that nearly 1 in 5 people charged over their alleged involvement in the attack on the U.S. Capitol appear to have a military history.
“Another 900,000 people filed new unemployment claims last week, President Donald Trump’s last in office, a snapshot of the significant labor market challenges facing President Biden,” the Washington Post reports. “An additional 423,000 people in 47 states filed new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the program created to help gig and self-employed workers. … Altogether, nearly 16 million people were claiming benefits as of Jan. 2, the last week available for that measurement.”
Playbook: “We knew Democrats and Republicans were ready to turn the page on Trump ASAP — we just didn’t realize how quickly. We’ve heard from multiple Hill sources that lawmakers have privately discussed the possibility of a three-day impeachment trial for Trump, which would be the fastest of any such procedure for a president. (Past presidential impeachments have ranged from as short as 21 days to as long as 83.) Of course, Trump is an EX-president, so ….”
Politico: “Thirty-two percent of Europeans say that after electing Donald Trump president in 2016, Americans can no longer be trusted, according to a new poll. … Germans were most distrustful of Americans, with 53 percent of respondents saying they either strongly agreed or agreed that a post-Trump America couldn’t be relied upon. Only Hungarians and Poles were significantly more likely to disagree with that statement than agree with it.”