Let's see. Over the weekend, there was a mass casualty terrorist event in London. Londoners responded in the kind of calm, rational way familiar to any of us who have watched World War II movies. (Even their banter was up to snuff.) In response, the President* of the United States leapt onto the electric Twitter machine and ridiculed the mayor of London for something the mayor had not said, made an incomprehensible statement about gun control, and then spent the next two days pitching his TRAVEL BAN!—thereby undermining that proposal's legal position in any federal court not presided over by dead people.

Recall that the lower courts have tossed the idea in part because of things the president* said on the campaign trail that indicated (oh, hell—things that said out loud) the proposal was an unconstitutional ban based on religion. Now, the White House wants the Supreme Court to rule on it, so, early Monday morning, the president* takes phone in hand and, employing the ultimate Twitter weapon of ALL CAPS, submarines his own lawyers.

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People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

Later Monday morning, and all this happened before breakfast, Kellyanne Conway re-emerged from her perch in a cave on Crete to explain that presidential* tweets do not speak for the president.

Elsewhere at Camp Runamuck, we discover that the president* gobsmacked his national security team in his speech about NATO, and that he might have decided to pull the country out of the Paris Accords on the basis of an argument you can hear from the dumbest drunk at the clubhouse bar.

Happy Monday. It's chaos in America.

There are only a few ways to interpret what the president* did on Monday as regards the TRAVEL BAN! First, he's cracked like an egg under the pressures of the job. Or he's supremely confident that new Justice Neil Gorsuch will give him the majority he needs for his TRAVEL BAN! Or, and this is the worst alternative, he and his team are prepared to defy an unfavorable Supreme Court ruling and initiate the TRAVEL BAN! unilaterally, essentially following the precedent set by his purported idol, Andrew Jackson, as regards Worcester v. Georgia.

The sudden re-emergence of Steve Bannon, surviving heir to House Harkonnen and noted admirer of Old Hickory, as a power within administration makes me wonder if this isn't the most likely alternative. After all, there's no institutional will to stop him. The Republican majorities in the Congress are supine and the Department of Justice is under the control of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, who's a proven tool. All SCOTUS has is moral suasion and institutional tradition, and we've all seen how far those go with this crowd.

Of course, it's possible that the first alternative—that the presidential* trolley has left the tracks—is also true. Again, there's no apparent solution in the government as it is presently constructed. Mike Pence as the leader of a palace coup against the man who saved him from the obscurity he'd have earned by losing re-election as governor of Indiana is a laughable notion. Again, the Congress has proved itself worthless in this regard. And, if the McClatchy folks are to believed, the president*'s party is preparing to run a Trumpist campaign in the 2018 midterm elections.

But interviews with Republican strategists and party leaders across the country reveal that what started as genuine anger at allegedly unfair coverage — or an effort to deflect criticism — is now an integral part of next year's congressional campaigns. The hope, say these officials, is to convince Trump die-hards that these mid-term races are as much a referendum on the media as they are on President Trump. That means embracing conflict with local and national journalists, taking them on to show Republicans voters that they, just like the president, are battling a biased press corps out to destroy them. David Woodard, a political consultant for South Carolina Republicans whose clients have included Sen. Lindsey Graham and Reps. Trey Gowdy and Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, recalled the old adage often quoted by politicians: "Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel." That's dead now. "If you pick a fight with them, I think it kind of helps you, and I don't think many people care," Woodard said.

Oh, and by the way, over the weekend, there was a rolling mass casualty event in the city of New Orleans. From The New Orleans Advocate:

A total of 13 people were shot in Saturday's 24-hour span: five victims in the 3700 block of Tulane Avenue in Mid-City, one victim each in the 2200 block of A.P. Tureaud Avenue in the 7th Ward and the 2100 block of South Liberty Street in Central City, four victims in the 6600 block of Foch Road in New Orleans East and two victims in the 2900 block of Upperline Street in the Freret neighborhood. According to New Orleans crime analyst Jeff Asher, that made it the most violent day in New Orleans in 2017, topping the previous high of 8 people shot in one day.

Things aren't too good in Baltimore, either.

But, as the president* tweeted in the aftermath of the London attacks, we're not having a debate about gun control, so everything must be cool. Hey, Republicans: Not even tax cuts are worth all this.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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