20.9 - Clown Award: Mick Mulvaney

Clown Award: Mick Mulvaney

[Note: Due to time constraints, only Mark Green and Mick Mulvaney were included in the program as broadcast.]

This was a tough week. I felt overloaded with clowns. I kept having more and more clowns and there were simply not enough red noses for all of them. But a choice had to be made, so I did. So first, our runners-up.

The first nominee is former US Rep. Joe Walsh - that's the bad Joe Walsh, not the good Joe Walsh. After Jimmy Kimmel's monologue about his newborn baby needing open heart surgery, which concluded with an appeal for affordable healthcare for all Americans, Walsh took to twitter to say:

"Sorry Jimmy Kimmel: your sad story doesn't obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else's health care."

Which is bad and cruel enough and was roundly condemned on Twitter, but Walsh's nomination is based on the fact that a few years ago he was the nation's most notorious deadbeat dad, owing, his wife charged, $117,000 in child support payments. He himself admitted that at one point he didn't pay child support for over two and a-half years.

They reached a settlement in 2012, the details of which are secret, but at the time, his Congressional pay was being garnished for child support to the tune of $2,136 every month.

Care about other people's kids? Why should he when he didn't care about his own?

Our next nominee is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Mark Green

Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday before an audience that had each paid a minimum of $12,500 to be there, Ross described how TheRump told visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping about the cruise missile attack on Syria on April 6 while the two were have dessert.

The news of the attack, the news of a military assault with all the destruction, death, and risk that involves was, Ross said, "in lieu of after-dinner entertainment."

Okay, I don't need to go on with that one.

Let's not forget Tennessee state Sen. Mark Green, TheRump's nominee for Secretary of the Army.

Green maintains that the purpose of the Second Amendment, despite what it says about being to intended to maintain a militia, is actually about the citizens being able to overthrow the federal government. He's not the only to operating under that particular delusion, but give him credit, he at least is willing to go the whole way, insisting that, quoting:

The citizenry should be allowed to maintain whatever weapon the federal government has. If they can have an aircraft carrier, I ought to be able to have an aircraft carrier.

So that backyard nuke you wanted to build? Totally cool according to Mark Green.

Mick Mulvaney

Oh, by the way, he withdrew due to opposition but not over this - over the fact that he is not only an extreme gun nut, he's also a raging lunatic on LGBTQ issues, including opposing transgender restroom rights because he has a mission to "crush evil."

Much offensiveness and inanity there, but for outright dumb, they all got beat. So this week the winner of the Big Red Nose is Budget Director Mick Mulvaney.

On May 2, he gave a press briefing on the current state of federal budget negotiations, where he spent most of his time talking about the border wall with Mexico even though that amounts to - literally - 0.035% of the budget, during which time he showed a picture of wall construction and then immediately admitted he didn't know where the picture was taken.

But what sold his nomination for me was his statement that, referring to the TheRump administration, "We are competent and we know what we're doing." Which is much like saying "I am not a crook" in that if you feel it necessary to say it, it's really, really, really not a good sign.

Except, that is, a sign that Mick Mulvaney is a clown.