January 18

Facebook friends, as The Jourmudgeon looks forward to Friday’s inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump with all the excitement and anticipation he usually reserves for a root canal, he is comforted by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s recent scolding of the liberal news media for actually believing anything Mr. Trump says. The occasion, again, was Trump’s denial of ever having made fun of a New York Times reporter’s disability, followed by repeated broadcasts of video showing Mr. Trump doing exactly that. Coming from a senior member of the Trump administration, Ms. Conway’s words should provide us all with a blueprint for listening to his inaugural address. In other news:

1. While other news outlets girded up to defend their First Amendment rights, BuzzFeed took a courageous stand in support of the Second Amendment, by shooting itself and other news media outlets in the foot. It posted the contents of a dossier originally commissioned by Mr. Trump’s Republican opponents containing unsupported allegations that he had misbehaved in Russia. The dossier hinted at the existence of compromising video showing Mr. Trump wearing a Cossack hat backwards and playing the old shell game with Russian dolls during a factory tour. Numerous news organizations had known about the dossier for months but had not published reports of it because they could not verify its allegations. But when intelligence agency heads showed both Mr. Trump and President Obama copies, CNN reported their action, which caused Mr. Trump to blow up at a CNN reporter in his first news conference in almost six months.
2. Mr. Trump subsequently accused the nation’s intelligence agencies of leaking the document, and compared them to the Nazis while saying more nice things about Vladimir Putin. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway issued another warning to reporters not to – oh, never mind.
3. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 18 million Americans will lose their health insurance in the first year after the Republican-led Congress repeals the Affordable Care Act, and that others would see sharp increases in their premiums. Congressional Republicans responded that the report was one-sided because it did not take into consideration any plan to replace the Act. In fact, they say, they, uh, really don’t have any plan to replace it yet.
4. Congressional Republicans also responded swiftly to the head of the Government Ethics Office’s warning that several of Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees and others still had not filed required disclosure forms and conflict of interest statements: They dragged the ethics officer to Capitol Hill for a dressing down.
5. Congressional Republicans also adopted or reinstated rules allowing Congress to fire individual federal workers. Congressional observers were reassured that it was purest coincidence that the move came shortly after the Trump administration asked the Energy Department for the names of employees who had worked on climate change and the State Department for those working on gender equality and preventing violence against women.
6. On the eve of a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Trump took to Twitter to accuse an opponent of being “all talk” and “no action.” The opponent was Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a former associate of King and a pioneer in the Civil Rights movement. Mr. Lewis had made an intemperate remark publicly that he did not believe Mr. Trump was a legitimate president because, Mr. Lewis believed, Russia had helped get him elected. (Imagine.) It was not clear which of Mr. Lewis’ nonactions on civil rights over the past fifty-five years Mr. Trump had in mind in his Tweets. For good measure, Mr. Trump also characterized Mr. Lewis’ Atlanta district as “crime infested,” “in horrible shape” and “falling apart.”
7. Volkswagen pleaded guilty to several charges involving its cooking of vehicle emissions test results. At the same time, six company executives were charged as well, only one of whom was within reach of authorities. In the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people, justice seekers rejoiced at the prospect of one of Volkswagen’s U.S. factories reporting to jail with a big toothbrush and soap on a rope.
8. In one of his last official acts in office, President Obama commuted the remaining 28 years of the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, who as Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning leaked classified documents that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world. Rumors that Manning had already accepted a job with BuzzFeed could not be confirmed.
9. Finally, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus announced it was closing up shop after 146 years. Unemployment figures were expected to spike as lions and tigers and bears oh my joined the ranks of the jobless. (The elephants had packed their trunks [The Jourmudgeon apologizes] several months ago after complaining about the size of the seats in Economy.) Asked to comment on the demise of the Greatest Show on Earth, which had been part of millions of Americans’ childhoods, a company spokesman might have said, “How the hell are we supposed to compete with that free three-ring circus that’s coming to town? We’ve been Trumped.”