PANIC LUNCH

| 5:50 pm EDT October 24, 2019
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For me, a “panic lunch” would be if I left the house intending to eat at a great seafood place, but then suddenly found myself at Red Lobster instead. But I’m not the one being impeached, and so accordingly, Donald Trump has a different definition. For him, it turns out a “panic lunch” is what you do when you’ve angrily lashed out at members of your own party, and then you realize you need to quickly try to do damage control.

In the two days since the State Department’s Bill Taylor gave impeachment testimony that by all accounts was devastating to Donald Trump, we’ve seen various Republicans in the House and Senate start to back away from Trump slowly – under the premise that if he’s going down, they don’t want to go down with him. Yesterday the pressure got to Trump, and he lashed out at unnamed Republicans as being “human scum” for not supporting him.

This didn’t go over particularly with the media, or with observers on social media. We’re guessing it didn’t go over too well with Senate Republicans either, because according to CNN, Trump tried to make nice today by inviting a number of them for lunch at the White House. The list of invitees gives away at least a little bit about what Trump was aiming for.

The list of Senate Republican invitees included Donald Trump’s favorite cheerleader Lindsey Graham, along with apparent Ukraine scandal co-conspirator Rob Portman, as well as pliable stooges like John Kennedy. But also included was John Thune, who yesterday admitted that Trump was in trouble. Trump also invited Tim Scott, the only black Republican Senator, just two days after Trump’s racist “lynching” meltdown. Trump is panicking here. He’s alternating between alienating the GOP Senate, and begging them to save him.