May you live in …..

The old Chinese curse said “May you live in interesting times”. Well the Trump era certainly qualifies. We awake each morning to see “what now”.

Just this week alone the President has taken on the most popular sports league in the country. Who does that? Then he fought with yet another senator from his own party. Who does that? Then he took on his own appointed secretary of state. Who does that? Then, even with his own issues, he commented extensively on Harvey Weinstein’s escapades. Who does that? In between he took on North Korea, ISIS, and the mayor of San Juan. Just another week.

Now interesting is only so, if you emerge from the situation better. The President’s defenders say will. The detractors say, he is so out of control that there is a constant baby sitting at the White House, and it may lead us to world war three.

The Chinese called it a curse — “May you live in interesting times”.

Some More Thoughts

One outcome of all that going on is the undoing of Obama initiatives and activity. Every week Trump undoes another Obama order and program.

All the noise about cabinet members using planes did you hear these numbers for the first eight months of their Presidency?
Obama administration 94 flights. Trump administration 66.
Where was the coverage then? What cabinet member did Obama fire?

Some more on costs:
Judicial Watch said the total travel expenses for President Obama over eight years was $105.7 million. That’s $13.2 million a year.
So far President Trump has spent slightly over $5 million on travel. If he keeps up that pace, his travel costs will be about $9 million for the year.

Some more details:
A trip Michelle Obama took to Morocco cost $128,108 in hotels, $88,726 in car rentals, $1,476 for gasoline and $972 for cell phones. No word on the cost for security, but the Secret Service would have been paid even if she stayed at home.
Her trip to Liberia cost a total of $107,000; Spain, $166,000; a trip to a Hillary Clinton campaign event in November 2016 cost $271,000 (why didn’t the campaign pay for that?) and a trip to LA to appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” cost $127,000 — etc., etc., etc.
Coverage of this?

On North Korea:
The U.S. asked countries to shut down businesses owned by the North Korean government, remove North Korean vessels from ship registries, end flights by the country’s national air carrier and expel its ambassadors. The WSJ reports that “the year long effort at the State Department is starting to bear fruit”.

The same is true about ISIS, who is being devastated by this administration. Coverage?

The President promised some action this week (via his pen) on healthcare. Outside of allowing cross state coverage we’re not sure what he can do.

Harvey Weinstein.
Really Dems, liberals and Hollywood, knowing this and your silence on it, you still went after Trump and Republicans?
Hillary, you “the champion of women” and it takes five days to comment?
BTW, the money he gave the Clinton Foundation and you what about it?
President Obama did you not know this when you got your daughter an internship with him?

Here’s a link to the New Yorker article that broke it wide open yesterday if you want to read it:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories

Tax cuts:
The President goes on the road tonight to sell this. He has to do a lot of this with no support in congress for him in either party.

The Ratings:

Last week Fox won every night with its new primetime schedule. Hannity won the nine o’clock slot over Rachel Maddow. In two weeks Laura Ingraham joins (at 10:00) and it will interesting to see her numbers.

For the week because of the baseball playoffs and football the top cable cables changed. Take a look:

Basic Cable Top 5 – Prime Time (total viewers)

1. ESPN (3,744,000)
2. Fox News (2,451,000)
3. TBS (2,382,000)
4. FS1 (1,618,000)
5. Nickelodeon (1,528,000)

Basic Cable Top 5 – Total Day (total viewers)

1. Fox News (1,611,000)
2. ESPN (1,118,000)
3. Nickelodeon (953,000)
4. MSNBC (897,000)
5. CNN (893,000)

Over the weekend Fox dominated as normal doubling up CNN and MSNBC in total viewers.

This week started out with a Fox win on Monday night, though narrower.

Total Viewers (Live +SD) MONDAY

• Total day: FNC: 1.707 | CNN: 826 | MSNBC: 1.207 | HLN: 200
• Primetime: FNC: 2.267 | CNN: 964 | MSNBC: 1.982 | HLN: 193

	4p:	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:
FNC	Cavuto: 1.638	Five: 2.223	Baier: 2.413	MacCallum: 2.002	Carlson: 2.461	Hannity: 2.623	FNTonight: 1.717	Carlson: 1.171
CNN	Tapper: 955	Blitzer: 1.044	Blitzer: 1.120	Burnett: 1.000	Cooper: 1.043	Cooper: 886	Lemon: 962	Lemon: 776
MSNBC	Wallace: 1.103	MTPDaily: 1.166	Melber: 1.257	Matthews: 1.700	Hayes: 1.651	Maddow: 2.417	O’Donnell: 1.874	Wlms: 1.486
HLN	MichaeLA: 116	Hunt: 107	Hunt: 123	S.E.Cupp: 79	Banfield: 149	Hunt: 144	Files: 285	Files: 362