Sold A Bill Of Goods

Most English speakers understand what being sold a bill of goods means but just in case, it describes what happened to you when you were given promises but none of the promises were kept. In other words it's an idiom for a fraudulent transaction in which one party swindles the other party.

Well, Trump made promises and so far he isn't doing very well at keeping them. Even before the election, he promised to provide his tax returns but so far only a partial one (and that arrived at the New York Times under dubious circumstances) is part of public knowledge. Now that his new tax proposal is described as a package of lies by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, pigs would have to fly before anyone other than his lawyers and his accountants see those returns. Trump promised to drain the swamp but at this point the various people around him, most chosen personally by Trump, have proven themselves to be the very essence of swamp monsters. Today, Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services, resigned. I don't know if he wrote his check yet, but the revealed cost of all his gallivanting has grown to $1M and I expect it will rise further after more investigation. Now as a licensed orthopedic surgeon he probably has that $1M but there is no chance in the world that he will repay the entire amount even though from what has been reported, most of his little excursions amounted to little more than boondoggles (another odd word that means: "work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value"), like the one where his friend arranged for him to speak to some other doctors so he could see his son at Vanderbilt. He offered to write a check for $50K but that is clearly inadequate. Jared Kushner, among other close WH advisors has been using private emails to conduct government business but Trump is silent on the flaws of this arrangement though we know he is aware of them because Trump made much of Mrs. Clinton's arrangement.

It would be charitable to think that these lapses in judgment, integrity, honor, etc. are simply because the man is new at the job, but we were also promised that he was the world's best dealmaker. It would also be charitable to think that Trump is just a cheese headed fopdoodle, as someone described Boris Johnson, but we were promised he was very smart, so smart. This would be funny if it weren't so tragic.