Eenie Meenie chili beanie, the spirits are about to speak!

Last Week(s) in Weird

Sequence break

It’s a true fact: this week’s column was meant to begin with my snotty Memorial Day entry, which you’ll find below. Then I was going to segue into Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride and go from there. It really just ate away at me, though, that I had the weirdest authentic Trump moment of all time and I was going to bury it halfway down the article. And with that image! That amazing, iconic, unedited, un-DC-Funk-Parade-foam-fingered image. So we’re doing things a little bit out of order, because, my friends, on this roller coaster that is life, the weird is in the driver’s seat, and all the rest of us are being pulled along remorselessly, with our hands and feet firmly secured inside the carriage at all times.

So what we see above is — and I swear I’m not making any of this up — president Trump, king Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, and president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt in a darkened room surrounded by fascinated onlookers, placing their hands on, um, a magical glowing devil orb as part of a ritual to end all terrorism forever.

No, that’s true.

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The First of Trump’s Wars

Making political predictions is easy. Here’s the rule of thumb: whatever is the worst possible outcome, that’s what they’ll do. The entire body of optimism I was able to muster for the Trump administration was, as I said many a time, predicated on the slim hope that maybe — maybe — he’d be less of a warmonger than his predecessor. There was some campaign rhetoric to that effect, and, while believing campaign rhetoric is a singularly silly idea, it was just enough to prop up a distant hope that the United States could indeed decide that not every event in every country is our business.

So much for that.

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