Is he normal?

This will be my last blog for a little while.

Donald Trump slammed reports questioning his mental stability in a series of tweets after the publication by Michael Wolff “Fire and Fury” about his first year as President put the White House into damage-control mode by saying “Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star … to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!” Or just luck.

Remember how Trump said he never spoke to Wolff? Records show he did speak with him during the campaign, around the transition time and in February 2016.

Trump continues to go after former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon as Bannon didn’t deny the comments made in the book by Wolff by saying that Bannon cried when he was told that he was fired and still calling him “Sloppy Steve”.

Bannon was only minutes away from attacking Wolff over quotes attributed to Bannon, but he decided not to do so after Trump attacked him after the release of excerpts from the book.

Bannon has since back peddled away from his comments in the book, he praised Donald Trump Jr. as “both a patriot and a good man”, this after describing a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York between Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” So why did he take 3 days to reverse things?

Bannon said his description was aimed at former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who also attended the meeting, and not Trump’s son. Uh huh. So it’s OK for his son to be at the meeting but not Manafort.

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said “I’m always amazed at the lengths people will go to, to lie for money and for power.” I guess she doesn’t want to upset fellow Republicans as she is rumored to be running for president.

Chief policy adviser Stephen Miller described the book as “nothing but a pile of trash through and through.” Right after it was obvious that Miller was torched by CNN’s Jake Tepper, Trump tweeted: “Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!”

White House press secretary Sarah “Simpleton” Sanders for saying people are “not entitled to their own facts” during a press briefing.

Trump has repeatedly invoked Ronald Reagan, tweeting that the former president “had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!” It was rumored that Reagan had Alzheimer’s disease while in office but doctors said Alzheimer’s was not to blame, noting the disease was diagnosed years after he left office.

But Bannon said he left by “mutual agreement” in August and was not fired. Trump said he was fired. So why did Trump say he was fired in August?

Bannon has stepped down from Breitbart, the far-right website he returned to over the summer as executive chairman after being ousted from the White House. After Bannon didn’t deny [most of his] his comments in the Wolff book, this upset those at Breitbart.

Trump has complained about the nation’s libel laws and tried to stop the publication of Wolff’s book by threatening to sue the publisher. He threatened but that went nowhere. And of course, if he can’t get his way, change the law to do so [and probably would do it retroactively to the beginning of the year].

The Trump administration has revealed its master plan for securing the border — and it’s going to cost $33 billion. Of that total, $18 billion will be required for Trump’s long-promised border wall, according to Customs and Border Protection documents. The document says the $18 billion investment will cover 722 miles of border wall with about 316 new miles of primary structure and about 407 miles of replacement and secondary wall. Unsure if $18 billion is enough.

Even after a bipartisan meeting on the future of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], Trump tweeted that he still wanted to see a wall on the southern US border as part of any immigration deal. But at other times during the meeting, he was looking at a stand-alone fix for DACA. At the end of the session, Trump suggested that ultimately, he would sign whatever he was presented with. Trump’s change of tone has angered some of the hawkish GOPs.

A district court ruling blocking the Trump administration’s wind-down of the DACA program. This may give the Democrats extra ammunition to keep the DACA issue separate from paying for the wall and could force a government shutdown.

Nearly one year to the day after the Russia dossier’s publication, Trump’s personal lawyer hit both the research firm that produced it and the news organization that released it with lawsuits, saying its allegations about him are wrong. Michael Cohen, a personal lawyer for Trump who is named in the dossier, says BuzzFeed and several of its staffers defamed him when it published the 35-page document and an accompanying article last January. He also says that Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson, its founder, similarly defamed him after it hired an ex-British spy to compile the document as part of its opposition research against the Trump campaign. This is Trump’s lawyer who has filed the lawsuit for himself – not Trump.

Trump claims there is collusion between the Democrats and Russia – but of course offers no proof of the claim. He meanwhile denies every collusion between his team and the Russians. Trump is also sidestepping any questions on what he will be asked by Robert Mueller.

“The single greatest Witch Hunt in American history continues. There was no collusion, everybody including the Dems knows there was no collusion, & yet on and on it goes. Russia & the world is laughing at the stupidity they are witnessing. Republicans should finally take control!” Trump tweeted. Take control of what?

Trump administration is ending Temporary Protected Status [TPS] for 200,000 migrants from El Salvador is also rattling nerves in neighbouring Honduras where there are more than 50,000 Hondurans living in the United States under TPS. With El Salvador, an untold number of their U.S.-born children — threatens to exacerbate already-grave problems like high rates of murders and other crime, political instability, widespread poverty and income inequality. In the US, who will take the jobs they had?

Last month Honduras was one of just nine countries to vote against a U.N. resolution condemning Washington’s decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. If Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez were to make a similar decision to move its own embassy, as neighboring Guatemala has already done, it could curry further favour with the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, immigration enforcement officers are making 98 7-Eleven stores a target in their crackdown on employers who hire undocumented immigrants. 7-Eleven headquarters claim these are franchises and have nothing to do with the hiring practices. This is part of Trump’s plan to “quadruple” the effort to find illegals.

Remember during the holidays, a white truck was moved in to block the view of CNN’s cameras who were filming Trump playing golf [again] at Mar-A-Lago? Well, new trees were planted to block the view now.

Trump backtracked by saying there will not be any oil drilling along the coast of Florida. Guess he still wants Florida’s votes.

Sarah “Simpleton” Sanders told reporters that Trump “believes in making sure that information is accurate before pushing it out as fact.” Sure Sarah…

Trump’s official schedule in the White House has gotten shorter since the beginning of his presidency as he often spends that time in his residence, watching TV, tweeting and making phone calls. More recently, Trump has often started his time in the Oval Office at around 11 a.m. or later and he has often tweeted from the residence in the morning and mentioned TV shows in some of those tweets.

Sanders said “The President is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen and puts in long hours and long days nearly every day of the week all year long.” Ya. When not golfing, tweeting, watching Fox News, etc.

When Trump visited Atlanta to attend college football’s national championship game, he may not remember just a year ago he described the city as “in horrible shape,” “falling apart” and “crime infested.” Various groups including Refuse Fascism ATL and the Atlanta chapter of NAACP will be protesting.