Actual photo of MPU host financial records.

By Rebekah Kuschmider, MPU Co-host

All of us here at the More Perfect Union have spent the week reviewing our financial records to make sure we didn’t accidentally fail to disclose six figure payments to people with whom we had illicit affairs. We figure we need to get our paperwork in order before someone refers us to the Justice Department. Then we remember that we aren’t the president and no one at the Justice Department cares about our finances or our sex lives.

Too bad Trump didn’t think about that before he ran for president, huh? Coulda saved himself all kinds of trouble.

Now that we know that we won’t be fined for massive campaign finance violations, we’re getting ourselves ready for another fun-filled podcast. But until that drops, here’s the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

Gimme Shelter – Without Trump’s name On It: Possibly one of the most bizarre effects of the Trump presidency is the collision between the White House and the world of entertainment. Obviously, there have been presidents with celebrity connections before – JFK and Marilyn ring any bells? – but Trump’s relationship with Hollywood is somehow different. He’s not been a patron of the arts like the Obamas tried to be nor is he a true member of the Hollywood elite like Reagan was. Instead he’s somewhere between a starfucker and a guy who fucks with stars. You can’t tell if he loves celebrities or hates them.

Whatever the case, there are a lot of celebs with Trump stories in their past. Just look at Kanye West’s twitter feed for proof.

my MAGA hat is signed 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/DrDHJybS8V

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 25, 2018

But this week we got a celebrity Trump Tale that is pure rock and roll from none other than Kieth Richards.

In an interview with the BBC, Richards told a story about Trump being the promoter on a show the Rolling Stones did in Atlantic City in 1989. When the Stones got to the venue, they saw that Trump had given himself top billing on the marquee, with the Rolling Stones listed lower and in smaller letters.

That’s right. Trump gave himself top billing over the Rolling freakin’ Stones.

Richards told the BBC he was having none of it saying “I got out my trusty blade, stuck it in the table and said: ‘You have to get rid of this man!’”

He went on to say “Now America has to get rid of him. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” 

It’s Laurel, Dammit: In the history of the nation there have been many conflicts that divided our populace. The crown versus the revolutionaries. North versus South. Betamax versus VHS. Clinton versus Trump. But not since the blue dress/white dress debate of 2015 have we seen an internet phenomenon that has driven such a wedge through our society.

I speak, of course, of a bizarre sound clip that’s circling the internet globe featuring a robot voice repeating a word. Some people hear the world “Laurel”. Other people are wrong.

OK, fine, they legitimately hear the word “Yanny” but “Yanny” isn’t a real world, unlike Laurel, which is the name of a very nice town about a half an hour away from where I live.

OH COME ON NOW!

The difference has to do with pitch and how your ear perceives things. There’s science behind it. But people all over social media are lightheartedly arguing with friends and family over the whole debate. 

I expect that any minute we’ll find out that Kim Jong Un hears “Laurel” and he’ll finally cancel talks with the US after finding out that Trump hears “Yanny”. It’s that kind of phenomenon and it’s that kind of week.

Rhymes With “Smasmortion”: In a move typical of errant supply-side thinking, the Trump administration handed down a rule that forbids clinics that receive Title X family planning funds from performing or discussing abortion with patients in the same building as non-abortion services. Basically, if you say the word “abortion” in a building that houses an organization that receives grants from HHS under Title X, you lose your funding.

This reveals the mistaken idea that awareness of abortion is what drives people to seek abortions. In reality, people seek abortions because they want to stop being pregnant. It’s all about demand for abortions. There are proven ways of reducing the abortion rate but forcing doctors to stop telling people that abortions exist isn’t among them.

You know what does help? Providing a financial safety net for people considering abortion due to concerns about the cost of raising a child. So clearly, the Trump administration will be increasing programs that help with that concern, right?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  No.

According to the Washington Post, the US currently ranks third to last among developed nations on anti-poverty spending for children. And the House is trying to make it even harder to get safety net services. The Farm Bill is loaded up with all kinds of new obstacles to obtaining SNAP services. No food for you, poor people! Stop being poor if you want to eat!

Welcome to America in 2018, folks. we’ll force you to have an unwanted baby but we won’t help you feed it.

Note: The Farm Bill went down in flames in the House today because the Freedom Caucus wouldn’t get in line and support it. They wanted to get to immigration first. Since they didn’t get what they wanted, they embarrassed their own leadership by killing a bill in a recorded floor vote. Ok, then.

Harry and Meghan Menstrual Heroes: I wasn’t going to say anything about the royal wedding here because I thought that literally everything has already been said. I mean, until we actually see the dress, it’s all just hot air and fancy hats, right? But then a fascinating tidbit came across my feed.

It seems that Harry and Meghan have asked guests not to bring gifts, instead directing them to donate to a few charities they have selected. The only non-UK charity they chose is the Myna Mahila Foundation, an organization in India that provides menstrual supplies to women.

What’s that? Some of you are guys and you don’t want to be thinking about menstruation? Gosh. Must be nice to go through life being able to not think about menstruation.

Women in poverty-stricken part of India don’t have the luxury of not thinking about menstruation because many of them have to menstruate every month and lack access to supplies for keeping themselves clean during their periods. According to CNN, the Myna Mahila foundation “employs 15 local women to make the pads, providing them with stable and safe work, while busting myths and taboos. Another 50 women distribute the pads in the slums.”

Women without access to feminine hygiene products use whatever is at hand, such as rags or paper. In many cases, the lack of menstrual supplies combined with lack of toilet facilities can mean women cannot attend school or work during their periods. It’s a significant barrier to equality in India.

The other charities elected by the couple are Chiva, the Children’s HIV Association; Crisis, which focuses on ending homelessness; Scotty’s Little Soldiers, a charity for bereaved children of the armed forced; StreetGames, which brings sports to disadvantaged communities; Surfers Against Sewage, a conservation charity working to protect oceans; and the Wilderness Foundation UK.

So thank you to Meghan and Harry for making your special day that much more special. I’m sure Harry’s famously compassionate mother Diana would approve.

I’m sure there will be more exciting news to discuss by the time the gang gathers to record. Until then, you can catch up with The More Perfect Union at our website!

A photo of dedicated MPU listeners watching their screens, waiting for a new episode to drop.

By Rebekah Kushmider, MPU co-host

We’ve had another week of groundbreaking hard news. From the release of hostages in North Korea to the release of Michael Cohen’s shady financial dealings, there’s all kinds of important stuff to discuss when we get to our recording session. But that’s days away and no one wants to wait, do they?

So in the meantime, here’s a taste of all the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

Call 1-800-799-SAFE: If there has been a motto for women in 2018, I would have to say it’s “Fine. I’ll do it myself.” Podcast listeners have heard me say this before but I think there is a subset of women who walked away from the 2016 election with a new and clear awareness that no one is going to ascend to the top of the power structure and fix things for us. We don’t get our knight in shining pantsuit after all.

In response, many of us have pulled up our socks and said “Fine. I’ll do it myself.” From the Women’s March to record numbers of women running for office to the #MeToo movement to Emma Gonzalez standing silently on a stage in DC and daring us to deny the gravity of her movement, women are standing up for ourselves and each other in a more organized and determined way than we’ve seen in perhaps a century.

Podcast listeners have also heard me say that my hopes for the #MeToo movement are not that it takes down every prominent predator in America but that it changes behavior at the grassroots level. Today I saw an article that makes me think that’s happening and it’s happening hand in hand with the gun violence prevention movement having its renaissance right now.

According to USA Today, calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline were up 75% in 2017 over 2016. And in particular, calls about a violent abuser having possession of firearms was up dramatically, increasing to 12,000 in 2017 from 6,800 in 2016.

“Many survivors feel like they are alone,” Hotline CEO Katie Ray-Jones says.  “When they hear stories in the media, they see reflections of themselves and want to chat.”  Along with reporting threats to themselves and their children, women are “calling to say, ‘My husband may be capable of a mass shooting,’ ” Ray-Jones says. 

There is a direct connection between domestic violence and mass shootings. In the most technical sense, a mass shooting is defined as a shooting for four or more people. More than half of the mass shootings from 2009 to 2016 were family violence situations. Moreover, many shooters in dramatic cases like Las Vegas and Parkland have a history of domestic violence. We are learning that the person who harms his family can easily escalate to killing them or harming and killing others. These calls to the domestic violence hotline reflect that knowledge.

So thank you to the media for reporting on these serious issues. Thank you to the women of #MeToo and the #NeverAgain movements for standing up and speaking. And thank you to all the women calling the hotline to get help leaving your abusers. Thank you for learning that you’re not alone and gathering the strength to say “Fine. I’ll do it myself.” You are strong and you are brave.

Match Made in Cable News Heaven: Donald Trump Jr. is off the dating market again. Eight whole weeks after announcing his wife’s intention to divorce his elephant-shooting ass, leading real-estate wunderkind the heir apparent to the Trump fortune Ivanka’s brother has been romantically linked to FoxNews’ Kimberly Guilfoyle. No explanation needed for how the two met, honestly. I’m sure we can look forward to many photos of the two of them romantically standing over the bodies of slaughtered wildlife together. 

@DonaldJTrumpJr @seanhannity @realDonaldTrump #MAGA this is a pic of trump jr holding the severed tail of a baby elephant. He kills them for fun. The tail is the trophy. pic.twitter.com/cswDCvq8IC

— Peter Hall (@peterhallcomedy) May 6, 2018

This Is America: If you have an internet connection, you have no doubt heard the buzz about Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino’s music video “This Is America”. The four minute film is a masterpiece of musical and dance styles. It’s also one of the most disturbing and unsettling pieces of art I’ve come across since the first time I saw a piece by artist Damien Hirst.

The video features Glover dancing through a barren warehouse, sometimes accompanied by teens in private school uniforms, as chaos seethes around him. There is violence and bloodshed at every turn but you have to force yourself to look away from the dancing in the foreground to see what’s going on just outside of the camera’s focal range. The rioting is blurry and sometimes indistinct but it’s also ceaseless and unforgettable.

Experts in dance, Jim Crow history, music, and history and pop culture have dropped legit knowledge about this video. I’m hesitant to offer my own thoughts on it because, frankly, I feel lost in the imagery and unable to take it all in. Watching it is like staring at the Guernica canvas. There’s too much to take in and, while you know that you’re looking at something with indisputable artistic merit, you also want to look away. But you can’t look away.

And given the message Glover is trying to send, you really shouldn’t look away.

Book Club: Anyone who knows me knows I am a voracious reader and have been since I was a little girl. The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder were my childhood favorites and I read them all over and over again. So the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Wlider and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane is a perfect read for me. Prairies Fires by Caroline Fraser offers nostalgia for my favorite books, with additional details about people I feel like I already know, and incredible historical context for the stories of the lives of the Ingalls and Wilder families.

And then it offered this passage:

This discussion of aid for farmers came in the wake of four consecutive years of locust infestations that left entire regions defoliated. The bugs arrived in swarms so thick, they inhibited trains from moving. One of the infestations was literally the largest in humans history, resulting in damage to plants across one quarter of the United States.

But offering direct aid to farmers would be demeaning and contribute to “suicidal indolence” and “[weaken] the habit of sel-reliance”.

And here I thought Reagan had invented the idea of the Welfare Queen.

It’s shocking but not surprising to see that America has never been eager to offer unconditional aid to people, no matter how desperate their straits. In the years that followed these events, the country would start to cobble together different supports for farmers, realizing that they weren’t just rugged individualists but were in fact becoming the very life-force of a population that would turn from growing food to buying food, even if we never got quite good enough at giving food to the needy.

You can see all of this playing out again this year. The House Committee on Agriculture has a draft of a Farm Bill out and while it continues to support farmers, it adds a controversial and work requirement to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance for Families. In the words of Ranking Member Collin Peterson (D-MN), “This really isn’t about training anybody. They’re going after the old Republican talking points that there’s a lot of lazy people,”

It is an old talking point. Older than probably even Peterson knows. It’s long past time to retire it.

There’s lots more to discuss in the news this week. Tune in to The More Perfect Union podcast to here what we have to say!

by Kevin Kelton 

Rep. Adam Schiff and others in the Democratic party have argued that talking about impeaching President Trump would only “normalize it” as a four year ritual, and running on it in the midterms is a sure path to defeat for the Democratic party. They reason that the political issue should be back-burnered for now while Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation continues quietly without comment. Some assert that even if crimes are found, Democrats should not follow through on impeachment because it could result in Trump being emboldened if acquitted, and that every presidency will be living under a cloud of impeachment from here on out.

But the problem isn’t normalizing impeachment; it’s normalizing presidencies such as Trump’s. If Democrats simply settle for winning the midterms (if they do) and turn their focus to 2020, they will be rewarding Trump for his alleged crimes and obstruction of justice, as well as his atrociously non-presidential behavior. That is the existential danger to our democracy, not the idea of impeaching a president who deserves it.

by Kevin Kelton

Last week, NBC News broke an exclusive report that Robert Mueller’s special counsel office had “wiretapped” Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime attorney. As NBC later acknowledged, Mueller’s team did not wiretap Cohen. They had merely monitored the log of calls coming in and out of Cohen’s phone lines, without actually listening in.

While Trump and his supporters have blasted NBC for its sloppy reporting, the mistake actually helps Trump and his cohorts.

Before the revelation of the pen register mistake, whenever a witness came before the Mueller grand jury to testify, the prosecutors could blindside them with a question such as, “On this date, did you receive a call from [insert name] at 12:52 p.m. that lasted 19 minutes?” The witness, surprised at the level of detailed the special prosecutors were displaying, might naturally assume the call had been tapped or someone else had testified about it already, giving prosecutors the specific content of the conversation. That might lead a nervous witness to be more forthcoming with facts and details than they otherwise might.

Now, with the revelation that Mueller’s office was only monitoring phone logs, not tapping calls, the same witness might not be as candid about the conversation.

Indeed, this exact scenario might have been waiting for Don Trump Jr., especially regarding his June 9, 2016 mystery call from a blocked number moments before his meeting with a gaggle of Russian agents. The same would be true for Trump pal Roger Stone’s suspicious phone call to Julian Assange in August of that year.

In that way, the NBC blunder might inhibit key witnesses from giving detailed testimony that would help Mueller build a case against Trump. So while NBC’s error might have given the network a black eye and given Trump a talking point, what it really did was hamper a criminal investigation and maybe let some bad guys get away.

So when Trump rails about NBC’s “fake news,” take it with a grain of salt. The most fake thing about this story is his faux outrage itself.

by Kevin Kelton

I keep hearing wizened political pundits saying that no matter what President Donald Trump says or does, “his base” will not abandon him, and therefore he is immune from the forces of political nature. Those sage experts are wrong, wrong, wrong.

Because a political “base” is not a monolith. They do not all think alike. They do not have meetings and vote to cast their support as a singular unit, like a labor union or congressional caucus. A base is not an it. It is a populaion of many its. And a population can expand or contract.

Right now, Trump seems to enjoy a 36-44% base of domestic political support. (Frankly, I think that’s high. I suspect his real base tops out at 40%.)

Of course, he’ll never lose all of that base. Even Richard Nixon, on the day he resigned in disgrace, had a 24% approval rating. But that was down from the 62% of the vote he received in his 1972 reelection, and the whooping 66% who seemed solidly with him after the announcement of the Paris Peace Accords officially ended the Vietnam War in January 1973. And, of course, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush both saw their popularity dip into the 20s at the low point of their respective presidencies – with Bush scraping 25%, down from the 90% he achieved post 9/11.

The best example is George H.W. Bush. In February 1992, on the heels of his success in the Persian Gulf War, Bush had a record 89% job approval rating in the Gallup poll. It would have been intuitive to think his core base had to be fifty or even sixty percent. But that intuition proved wrong, as his approval rating in the same poll was down to 29% just sixteen months later, sowing the seeds for his disastrous reelection bid. Even the now-revered Harry Truman spiraled down to 22% before leaving office, a crash of 65 points off his all-time high of 87% following the end of WWII.

What goes up, must come down. And the down can come fast and hard, especially where integrity and honor are concerned. Just ask Bill O’Reilly or Bill Cosby. If you think a lying, morally bankrupt, con man like Trump is immune from the same political physics that kneecapped both Bushes and Give ‘Em Hell Harry, guess again.

So no, Trump will surely never lose his entire base of support. He doesn’t need to to fail big league. If he hemorrhages just 5-10 points from where he stands now, he’s a goner. 

Which brings us back to the myth of the monolithic base. Sure, there are diehards who just like the guy and don’t care what comes out about him. What we’ll call the Fifth Avenue crowd. But somewhere in that current 36-44% of professed Trump supporters are other, more reasonable, more swayable voters – the people who truly love his policies or truly detested the Democratic alternative, but are not blind to his character flaws or impervious to proven criminal misdeeds. 

As Trump’s crimes, if they exist, are laid out by the Special Prosecutor and proven in the eyes of the reasonable-minded public, his 40% will contract to 35% and then 32% or less. 

And in politics, when a politician’s “price” drops to 32%, sell! 

Trump may enjoy a dead cat bounce in the polls if he succeeds in arranging the release of the three hostages held by North Korea and negotiates a successful nuclear disarmament agreement with the Kim regime. So did the Bushes after their stunning foreign policy successes.

Trump’s base is not a silver bullet or impenetrable fortress. At best, it is a porous dam of false security holding back the flood of bad news that’s no doubt surging his way.

And when the subpoenas start flying and the criminal targets start flipping, it may end up being as helpful as the Maginot Line.

By Rebekah Kuschmider, MPU Co-Host

Actual footage of Kevin and D.J. preparing for the podcast.

We here at MPU are hard at work analyzing the serious news of the week. With all the research we’re doing on based on the happenings in the (shoddy) defense of Donald Trump by his various attorneys, we are all basically qualified to practice law in our various states. In fact, we might be more qualified than Rudy Giuliani who seems to have forgotten the part of client defense where you don’t confess to your client’s misdeeds on tv.

Meanwhile, there are a zillion other things happening in the news that won’t make it on to the podcast. Here’s some of the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

Scouts, Not Boys: Conservative Twitter is is quite outraged that the Boy Scouts are dropping the word “boy” from their program name starting next year.  This name change follows on the heels of a decision in 2017 to allow girls to join Scouts. The organization name will remain unchanged, as will the name Cub Scouts. But the signature program for middle and high school kids will be called Scouts BSA. I’m sure everyone will just shorten that to Scouts…the same way many of us currently involved in scouting talk about the organization now. I’ve had a kid in a Cub Scout troop for several years and I’m not sure I ever use the words “cub” or “boy” when I talk about it. I also only say the word scout when I talk about the Daisy Girl Scout Troop I lead. So this branding change won’t affect me.

But for people who make their living generating outrage on Twitter, this is tantamount to a Handmaid’s Tale situation for boys, wherein they will be oppressed by the loss of the moniker Boy Scout and they are suggesting that full gender based subjugation is clearly the most logical and likely outcome. Just look at what Twitter shock jock Matt Walsh has to say about it.

I won't let my son anywhere near the "Scouts." I want him to grow into a man, not a whimpering, pathetic, effeminate weakling, which is all the Scouts organization embodies at this point. What a disgrace and an embarrassment.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) May 2, 2018

I hope he and his son find refuge in an extracurricular activity free of whimpering and femininity.

As for my family, my son will continue on his Scouting path and my daughter and I will continue on ours. I think there are a lot of good reasons to allow girls into the entity-formerly-known-as-Boy-Scouts. I especially see boys benefitting from interacting with girls who have been given leadership positions in Scout activities. I will welcome girls into our pack with open arms and plenty of snacks for long hikes. However, for reasons best kept to myself, I have decided that is not the best path for me and my daughter. She needs something different and Girl Scouts is the place for her.

Different families, different choices. ‘Murica.

Patriarchy, Locked and Loaded: The laziest joke in the world is the one where a dad threatens his daughter’s date with a gun so he won’t do anything untoward while they’re out. Because teen boys are SO HORNY HA HA HA! And teen girls are SO SUSCEPTIBLE TO PRESSURE HA HA HA! No teenagers have ANY SELF CONTROL OR AGENCY OVER THEIR ACTIONS HA HA HA. So dads need to RESORT TO THREATS AND VIOLENCE TO CONTROL THEM HA HA HA.

A Georgia gubernatorial candidate is taking that to an illogical conclusion in a new ad where he answers questions about his political platform from his daughter’s boyfriend. He holds a shotgun the whole time and ends the ad by pointing it at the teen and saying something about respecting his daughter and the second amendment. Ostensibly, this ad shows that the candidate stands for family values and Second Amendment rights and he has a great sense of humor because see how he turned it all into standard joke about over protective dads? HA HA HA VIOLENCE AND PATRIARCHY ARE FUNNY!

I see it as a man who stands for controlling women by force. He uses threats of violence to establish his dominion over the body of a woman in his household. He withholds his permission for other men to assert a claim over her body. He demonstrates that he has no trust in the motives of men and he doesn’t acknowledge the autonomy of women.

Is that the kind of guy you would want as a governor? I wouldn’t.

Speaking of patriarchy: While we’re on the subject, we should turn our attention to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat who is very, very concerned about the plight of “incels”. As you might recall, the incel community rocketed to fame last month when one of its members used a van to plow down a bunch of pedestrians in Toronto. This was revenge for not being able to sleep with women as hot as the women as he wanted to sleep with.

I’m not joking. There are entire online communities dedicated to being mad about hot girls choosing to have sex with someone else. For more on incels, read this very good but very disturbing piece by Talia Lavin in the Village Voice.

After these events, Ross Douthat took to his keyboard to ponder how changing sexual norms have left some people lonely and depressed. This would be an interesting topic for an academic discussion about the effects of isolation on the human psyche but Douthat decided to make it about the redistribution of sex and suggest methods for making sure the poor incels can get some nookie. He talks about a lot of stuff but basically lands on sex robots as the solution for these guys because sex is so stinking important and they really must have it.

I am 44 years old and my whole life I have listened to conservative culture warriors tell me the circumstances under which I am allowed to have sex. The overwhelming message from the right side of aisle is that I, and other women, need to wait until marriage and, ideally, forgo birth control because sex is meant to make babies. No other reason. Women have been told over and over again to accept a celibate life if those conditions are not met. Women have been shamed every which way for rejecting those conditions and having sex for their own pleasure.

That was the conservative line and they were sticking to it, sexual revolution or no sexual revolution. Until now, apparently.

Now there are guys – white guys, even – who can’t get laid and Ross Douthat is all “THIS INJUSTICE CANNOT STAND! SEX ROBOTS FOR EVERYONE!”

The subtext of all of this is that a certain segment of the male population has seen a centuries-old privilege go down the toilet and they don’t know how to cope. For much of Western history, men were basically issued a wife, with whom they could have all the sex they wanted. Maybe they didn’t get a choice of wife, if this was an arranged marriage situation, or maybe their choices were limited by class structure or the bride price they could afford, but they got a wife and they got sex.

Women did not get these choices. Women were chattel, handed off from father to husband and told to have the sex their husband wanted them to have.

In the modern era of reliable birth control and financial independence for women, the balance has tipped. Both men and women have other choices now and sex ideally happens by mutual consent. That means that it is possible that you will go through points in life where no one will consent to have sex with you. That sucks when it happens but it’s better than returning to a social structure wherein 50% of the population’s consent was effectively erased from sexual negotiations. We will not go back.

Yes, there needs to be attention paid to social and sexual isolation in the modern era but it needs to be a holistic study that deals with all the different kinds of isolation we face. It cannot be solved by issuing white guys sex robots. Sorry, Ross. You missed the bigger picture.

pic.twitter.com/NVVUzuQF13

— Caspar Salmon (@CasparSalmon) May 3, 2018

God, no: Finally things came to a head in the weird battle between House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Chaplain Patrick R. Conroy.

As we discussed on last week’s More Perfect Union Podcast, the Speaker asked for the Chaplain’s resignation and the Chaplain gave it to him. The whispers behind the scene were that Ryan was mad at Conroy for a prayer he gave prior to the tax bill vote in which he said “May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all.” It was taken as criticism of the bill.

Ryan claimed that was not the case and in fact the firing was due to Father Conroy providing insufficient pastoral care to Members of Congress, something that was news to the Chaplain. He had not received such complains about his performance.

Usually if you screw up at work, your boss talks to you and asks you to fix the issue before firing you. Paul Ryan is evidently not that kind of boss.

In fact, he’s not the Chaplain’s boss at all and doesn’t actually have the authority to fire him as it turns out. The Chaplain is an elected position, voted on by the Members of the House.  This is the same way the Speaker is chosen, actually. The Speaker isn’t the Chaplain’s supervisor and he can’t summarily fire the guy just because he wants to.

Father Conroy found this out and rescinded his resignation and said he planned to stay in his role until the end of the year, which would also make the end of the 115th Congress and the end of his elected term.

Paul Ryan’s response was to roll over and capitulate to all of it.

Remind us all to try telling Paul Ryan no more often. That might be the thing that derails his crusade to cut social safety net programs.

There’s lots more to talk about this week and talk we will on the next More Perfect Union podcast. Look for it to drop next week!

By Rebekah Kuschmider, MPU Co-host

Every week we create a segment list for the podcast that includes the hottest trending news topics. Hard news topics, that is. We pull our subjects from the pages of esteemed publications like The Washington Post, The Economist, network news sites, and other media mainstays. We do not usually go to the likes of People Magazine for our pressing news coverage.

But maybe we should.

Pop culture is American culture and the happenings in the world of art and entertainment are no less interesting and impactful than the happenings on the Hill.

Also, I’m kind of shallow and like to read gossip magazines and talk about them. So, there’s that.

With all of that in mind, here’s a little round up of all the news that NOT fit to ‘cast!

Kanye: Yeezy’s been tweeting like Trump this week and he’s been tweeting about Trump, too. He praises the POTUS to the skies saying they both have “dragon energy” and he loves Trump the man. I don’t think anyone should really be surprised that Kanye is taken with the mogul turned politician. And I mean that from a policy perspective. Kanye is a brand just like Trump is a brand and Trump’s economic doctrine is one that protects brands above all else. Look at the Trump tax plan, for one. If you incorporate, you win. For another thing, Kanye, like many artists, has probably seen lost revenue due to Chinese intellectual property piracy. Trump’s China tariffs exist in some part due to kind of copyright theft and plenty of artists would benefit from having that illegitimate market clamped down. On a less wonky analysis let’s be gritty: Kanye is a starfucker and so is Trump. Like calls to like.

You don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 25, 2018

The Royal Baby: First, let us all take a moment to be grateful that Duchess Katherine and her new son are both healthy after the birth. Royal history is littered with the bodies of royal British wives who weren’t so lucky. But apparently royal history is also still in effect when it comes to the rules about announcing the birth of a child in line to the throne, because they dragged that poor woman outside a mere seven hours after delivering a real live baby so that people could gawp at her. FEMINISM NEEDS TO FIX THAT FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF ROYAL MAMAS! Listen, it’s all well and good to need evidence of the healthy of mother and baby in moments like that. I get it. But this is the age of the iPhone. Take a pic, time stamp it, and release it on the Royal Instagram account. They call childbirth labor for a reason. Let a mother rest after doing that kind of work.

Melania’s Hat: I don’t purport to be an expert on Melania Trump. In fact, I’m not sure I knew anything about Melania Trump before 2016. From what I have learned about her since then I have come to the conclusion that she is a person who really likes beautiful clothes. She’s been a model since she was a child. She’s famously well dressed as an adult. So it should surprise no one that she ramped up the glam for the State Visit from the President of France. She looked nice. Her outfits were nice. She wears clothes well. That white hat? It was gorgeous. But if anyone was looking for secret messages in the outfits Melania wore this week, I think you’re going to be disappointed. She picked clothes because they were beautiful. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s who she is and it’s what she loves. Probably more than she loves her husband if this awkward handing holding video is any gauge.

Sportsball: Finally, in the wide world of sports, Trump is not a high level draft pick. It’s been abundantly clear that athletes, particularly athletes of color, are not fans of the president. Remember his twitter beef with Steph Curry? Yeah. Well, he isn’t the only sports figure who isn’t White House bound these days. A bunch of Olympic athletes are declining the invitation to meet the president as well, including Adam Rippon, Lindsay Vonn and others. The women’s hockey team IS going but they made it clear that they really just want to see each other, not the First family. But Trump’s bigger problem is the fact that he’s lost the love of folks like NFL owners. In tape of an owners and players meeting last fall shared with the New York Times, it was clear that owners did not love the president haranguing about Collin Kapernick and other players kneeling during the anthem. Bob Kraft, owner of the Patriots and a Trump supporter even said “The problem we have is, we have a president who will use that as fodder to do his mission that I don’t feel is in the best interests of America. It’s divisive and it’s horrible.”  I don’t know much but I know that when white guys who are rich enough to literally buy and sell young men for the entertainment of the public are massing against you, you’ve got a problem. These guys should be Trump allies and he’s managing to drive even them away.

There’s been a lot going on in serious news this week, too, and the MPU gang and I will all be talking about that on the show. The official segment list interesting af – but you’ll have to tune in to the podcast to hear about it!