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David Waldman never loses sight of, and always points us to the correct issues. There are a lot of them however, so quick, hop on the KITM tourbus, plug in your earbuds and let’s go:

Each week, thousands get banned from restaurants because the owner, employees or patrons don’t want them there. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is one of those people. Driving by the Red Hen, Donald Trump notices things are amiss, which seems to be the hygiene technique employed at his restaurants. David Axelrod wonders how you’d feel if you were him and couldn’t eat out that night? Normally, it’s nice to be nice, but it’s not normal anymore. (Hopping Mad tells us how to pull together an effective protest in minutes!)

Greg Dworkin assures us that the media are now returning to focus, even as Trump goes full fascist. Trump was exposed as such a weakling that even his base is beginning to pity him, and even Godwin is up for calling Nazis Nazis. Trump’s plan for deportation without a judge or due process could become reality tomorrow. But, although people do generally object to baby jails, they still prefer to keep the blame off themselves, therefore we have a history of such things we prefer to avoid addressing. As you might guess, MS-13 is Trump’s go-to scapegoat. (Hey, whatever happened to ISIS?) Fascists have a history of not caring.

Defense Secretary James Mattis falls out of the loop, as if Donald had one. The Iowa GOP bets it all on Trump, as if they had a choice. Harley-Davidson cashes in some of its chips because of Trump.

Good news: Democrats keep outperforming the partisan lean in Senate races, and progressives are getting attention.

Can we count on Trump’s incompetence? Mini-Trump Paul LePage shuts down road repairs and thousands of jobs, only LePage knows why. Kris Kobach remains incompetent, and no one can stop him.

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David Waldman, tormented by the slow drip of societal decay, brought about by our Slow Drip in Chief, continues to ask #wherearethegirls? A question sadly on fewer lips this morning than last. Donald Trump could only pretend to care for a few minutes in a row, but that was good enough to sucker Republicans for a day and just maybe enough protesters to get back to business as usual. Or… maybe it was a watershed moment, as more start to hear what is really going on there.

Meanwhile, do we really care about that Jacket? All sorts of Kremlinology popped up after Melania’s Potemkin visit to Texas yesterday. Perhaps a medievalist could explain Queen Melania’s strategy, or you could just ask an alt-right white-power Nazi what’s up. Paula Apynys’ (aka Paula Writer) fashion analysis concludes that all eventually turns to turds around Donald, even though Melania has been kind of turdy for some time now. 

Man of many conflicts, Wilbur Ross, reinstated the question of citizenship into the 2020 census, but it wasn’t a question of justice, but rather commerce that inspired him.

Even Greg Norman would tell you that takes some balls. Speaking of which, look at what this Pecker was up to at The National Enquirer—colluding with Michael Cohen.

The White House hopes to combine the Education and Labor departments, on their way to destroy both.

The biggest beneficiary of the Trump Economy is the Trump economy.

Trump continues to build bridges between the dumbasses and the deluded at his latest VIP Rally.

Hey, tell your digital assistant to holler over to your streaming device to remind you that Hopping Mad is back from hiatus on Monday, starting about an hour before this show! Yay!

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Donald Trump always wanted immigration to be be the issue everyone talked about. He just did not want it to be the issue anyone thought about. David Waldman, Greg Dworkin and Armando are here to help us both think and talk on the matter: 

Americans are now thinking about immigration, and they like it, and how Democrats handle it. They sure don’t like how it is being handled now.  Some are refusing to be complicit anymore, many are stepping up to make direct changes.

Donald saw it all himself on the telly-telly, so now he purports to be be suddenly changing his ways on immigrants and families. Trump purports a lot of things. Remember when we used to believe some of the things a president said or did? Ivanka said she was against all of this, after daddy told her it was ok to talk. Melania heads out to photo op solutions. You’ll never hear it from Trump, but so far this has been a total surrender. Even a real executive order couldn’t pass the court.

Our feckless Congress comes ready for battle, only to discover they’re still fresh out of fecks to give. Maybe they can slip Trump $25 billion, maybe $125 billion to make this blow over.

No one knows Trump’s next move, but it might involve being a cynical back-stabbing repugnant racist hypocritical dotard. The New York Times reminds us that Hollywood celebrities cuss, too.

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Welcome to the middle—the middle of the week, and the middle of a fascist takeover of our government. David Waldman and KITM are here to help us over the hump: 

Greg Dworkin takes us into the middle of the political firestorm. Republicans will not win this, and they know it.

Children are taken from their parents, not to another room, but to baby jails thousands of miles away, to be processed by foster homes. No reports yet of medical experimentation on twins, but the day is young and things are moving fast.

This is not just a political, but a moral crisis. We all need to pick our track, hopefully not the track to mass atrocity. We are better than that. After 30 years, Steve Schmidt leaves the Trump party.

Donald Trump says Ivanka Trump says family separations are bad, at least the images of family separations are bad. Hey, wait a second, did you know Canadians are smuggling shoes?

Corey Lewandowski, Kirstjen Nielsen, and Sean Spicer create a boom in guillotine futures. 

Joan McCarter tells us Republicans have a plan: pretend to help kids, help Trump. Trump doesn’t have an immigration plan to offer the House Gop, but he does have a plan to shut down government if he doesn’t get his wall. The Republican 2018 reelection plan: Cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Breaking: Donald Trump says he’ll fix everything. (Donald Trump lies.)

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#WhereAreTheGirls? We still don’t know. Which only adds to the growing sense of crisis. And of course, stories like this don’t help put us at ease. Nor do pictures like this one. And if you think I’m just kidding, don’t forget Donald Trump’s actual record on the trafficking and abuse of young women and girls.

Oh, and then there was that time he let his friend Jeffrey Epstein romp through Perv-a-Lago, and when he was finally sentenced with a slap on the wrist. By the way, what ever happened to that terrible prosecutor?

But I’m sure this particular inconceivable outrage really is beyond the pale, even for Trump. Though then again, with Trump, sex cult-level weirdness has an almost miraculous way of finding nesting space close by. Just saying! By the way, what ever happened to that terrible sex cult guy’s super consultant?

Still more communities of faith join in the condemnation.

Kris Kobach is pummeled in court again. And this time he literally gets schooled.

Did you know that some Dem Senators once considered Sago Mine murderer-turned-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to be among Trump’s most honest cabinet picks? Ha ha! Well, he’s not.

What did you know about Kaliningrad? Did you know there was this weird Russian “island” in the middle of what’s now NATO? Did you know they were upgrading their nuclear weapons facilities?

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It’s Week 74 of The Presidential Apprentice, issue 689 of my coverage of David Waldman’s coverage of Donald Trump, and I don’t know, I must be doing something wrong, ‘cause that jerk’s still around. (No, not David… Donald):

Also very nice guy Greg Dworkin tells us about those who very much aren’t: Republicans approve of the Trump policy of torturing children by separating them from their parents. Republican lawmakers, just as evil, slightly smarter, are pushing to roll back the "zero tolerance" part of the policy. Laura Bush’s heart is broken. US. Catholic Bishops declare the policy immoral. The New York Post is demanding changes. Susan Collins is troubled. Melania Trump thinks this must be someone’s fault. The Trump staff lays down as many smokescreens as possible. Steve Doocy doesn’t see any cages. Kirstjen Nielsen doesn’t see any policy, in fact she has a hard time seeing any children. Jeff Sessions sees God... just not yours. Hillary Clinton saw this coming. And, Donald Trump sees this as Angela Merkel’s problem.

Trump intensifies and narrows his base into one white-hot white nugget, but fewer voters still equal fewer voters. Paul Ryan kicks the crap out of Medicare and leaves it in a ditch. The great minds of KITM and Macleans think alike, and suggest sanctioning Trump’s two most precious things in the world: his money, and his kid’s money.

After bending over for North Korea, Trump turns to Russia. The White House ignored grandpa for as long as they could. Roger Stone just remembered a little bit of collusion a couple of years ago.

Armando calls in to discuss how the Supreme Court sidestepped the issue of partisan gerrymandering through partisan political game-playing.

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Friday! If you think it’s hard working through the chaos of a week, you should try manufacturing it. Donald Trump could barely wheeze it out this morning, but for David Waldman all that dotarding  just makes him sit up at attention that much harder. Donald wants obsequiousness only a firing squad can provide, as if there were any real estate on his giant butt left available.

Trump doesn’t have a clue of what summits are for, so he wants to throw a huge one for Vladimir Putin. There, he’ll ask Vlad to leave Ukraine and Syria, please. Crimea they can keep, they all speak Russian there anyhow. (If only Puerto Ricans spoke American, think of how well they’d do.)

The Inspector General’s report on the FBI reports that Trump is lying. New York’s attorney general says the Trumps are a crime family. Trump rolls Michael Cohen under the bus, follows with Paul Manafort to pick up the spare.

Scott Pruitt’s aides discovered his entitlement was their job. Scott Pruitt’s entitlement is why he keeps his job.

Why should Trump have divested? Ottawa prepares a lesson plan.

Gunmakers have the successor to the bump stock lined up, and the next successor, and the next.

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A lot of news to go over for today’s KITM, and to get out of the way before the afternoon’s news runs right over it. David Waldman and Greg Dworkin catch you up, at least until 11 AM Eastern:

Remember that North Korea summit? North Korea won bigly. Thousands of happy centenarian parents now owe a debt of gratitude to Donald Trump. South Korea is happy that it isn’t being bombed yet, and plans to use this a start to stay explosion-free. Trump hasn’t quite thought it out that far, and really wishes no one thinks it out at all, but comes away realizing despots are fine people too, and tough love in a nation is sometimes necessary.

Tough love abounds under the watchful gaze of Il Dotard at our border. Funny, this didn’t come up at the weekly meeting. Right-wing Christians are almost ready to get to the Christian part. The Gop might consider letting parents and kids stay together if there was a little cash in there someplace. Republicans were elected by people who hate government to in order to destroy it, so this Trump situation mystifies them a bit. Was Mark Sanford pushed, did he jump, or did he just fall off?

We say Trump Cult like Kool-Aid was a bad thing, but Republicans find it quite delicious. Ronna Romney McDaniel sure thinks that you’re making a big mistake for not taking a big swig right now, and Mari Stull is putting together an ideological deviation list to measure government employees’ deviation from Mari Stull’s ideology.

Coffee boy Michael Cohen won’t have two taxi medallions to rub together soon, but he still has his health, for a while. Brexit, Russians, Trump and the World Cup—if you kept up with KITM you knew all of that for years, and if not, where have you been?

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Donald Trump and I are jet-lagged today. Tomorrow I hope to be better, I don’t know what we can do about Donald. 

Comedy duo Kim and Trump sang and danced in their international debut, “The Road to Singapore”. The reviews have been mixed... even by the same reviewers. The producers request no audience questions at this time, or ever.

David Waldman, Greg Dworkin, and even jet-lagged Joan McCarter return today and hope to get a focus on everything going on. Greg reports Trump gave away the farm and got the bird from our allies. And you know what happened to Canada... Mark Sanford knew what he was doing, and what it would get him. Rudy Giuliani has no idea of what to do, and also not what it would get him.

Democrats keep looking good in the primaries, Republicans, not so good. Invalidating protection for preexisting conditions is not the best slogan. Senior career Justice Department official Joel McElvain sees this as a good time to go. Trump doesn’t care about any of that, and that has Republicans panicking, in denial, and in hiding. Meanwhile, here comes a bill that would criminalize ALL undocumented immigrants. Overnight.

Trump figures if he doesn’t need exercises, neither does the military. Robert Mueller kills a few more trees because of Paul Manafort.

Hey, did you hear about that raccoon in Minnesota? Bees know nothing when they see it. Michael Cohen also learns how to count to zero.