In Japan, the United States has many military bases: 32 Navy, 20 Air Force, 17 Marine Corps, and 15 Army — from Hokkaido to Okinawa. That’s a total of 84 military and naval bases.

Donald Trump’s first foreign visitor on November 9, 2016, was Japan’s Prime Minister, Abe Shinzo. PM Abe was justifiably concerned about North Korea’s missiles visiting his country, especially Hokkaido.

It is not clear whether Trump likes Abe, because he has done a great deal of yelling about whether our allies, such as Japan and Germany, pay us enough for the military presence of the United States on their soil.

Trump likes women — though only on his own terms.

He may or may not like geishas. Geishas are not prostitutes, though Westerners have rarely understood that, so Trump probably thinks that they are. Our increasingly large corps of associate solitary reporters has not yet been able to ask Michael Cohen about that. But if we could ask Cohen about that, we’re sure that Cohen would say that Trump would find the kimono and obi to be an obstruction.

Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG & E), headquarted in San Francisco, provides gas and electric service to most of northern California — where wildfires have killed many people as well as destroying many homes.

On Sunday, Cuban-born Geisha Jimenez Williams, the president and CEO of PG&E, resigned, as PG&E announced that it will file for bankruptcy by the end of this month. Williams is the first Latina to lead a major US energy company.

Trump has a really hard time keeping people working for him at the highest levels.

As associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones stood next to him, Trump tweeted that he’s firing fifth-generation Texan Rick Perry, his Secretary of Energy, because Perry was the governor of Texas for over fourteen years and, during that time, Perry didn’t build a wall from El Paso to Brownsville.

When associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman asked Perry why he was being fired, Perry said he didn’t know, because he hadn’t heard anything about it.

Perry ran for president of the United States in 2012 and in 2016.

ASR Jones told ASR Sherman that Trump had, only this morning, told her, “Johanna, I’ve filed for bankruptcy many times, because I know how to do that in my own interest, and I want to give Geisha a second chance, but only if she’s what I think a geisha is — plus, I will need to win California for my second, third, and fourth terms, especially against a dynamite candidate like Kamala Harris.”

Associate solitary reporter Shoshanah Steinberg, a long-time San Francisco resident who has known Geisha Williams for many years, talked with Williams yesterday. Steinberg texted us, saying that Williams looks forward to telling Trump that he has the absolutely worst energy policy that the United States has ever had.

And associate solitary reporter Philomena Malinowski, a longtime and very astute observer of Texas politics, says Perry, a hard-core evangelical who was a Democrat until 1989, will, as of tomorrow, lead a massive prayer service in Houston, in which he’ll pray before at least 50,000 people for all the families which have been separated at our southern border at Trump’s insistence.

As ASR Jones once again walked into Trump’s Oval Office, uninvited, she found Trump foaming at the mouth over today’s decision by federal judge Jesse Furman that Trump’s decision to require a citizenship question in the 2020 census is unlawful. 

When Mitt Romney ran for president against President Obama in 2012, he said Russia was our most dangerous adversary — but that remark was greeted with skepticism.

Clearly, Mitt is ever so much smarter than Donald Trump.

Seems that Trump is so close to Vladimir Putin that he doesn’t want anybody to know how very deferential he is to Russia’s dictator. See https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/14/politics/trump-russia-weekend/index.html.

There have been reports that he made the translator for his disastrous Helsinki meeting with Putin give him her notes so nobody would ever see them. His top foreign policy aides don’t know what he and Putin discussed, but Putin sure does.

He doesn’t seem to mind that Putin grabbed Crimea.

He’s pulling our military out of Syria to please Vlad, while Pompeo et al are desperately trying to walk back his tweets.

And now he’s threatening Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan with massive economic sanctions if Erdogan won’t promise to be half-way civil to the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Syria, who have been our steadfast allies in the war against ISIS. He did that in a tweet, but diplomacy by tweets doesn’t work well at all.

Moments ago, associate solitary reporter Foma Kheroshonsky was not surprised to see Trump being warmly greeted at the Kremlin by Putin.

“Vlad, old buddy,” Trump said, “If it weren’t for my close friendship with you, I just wouldn’t know what to do with myself!”

Putin smiled and escorted Trump to a sumptuous room with a very large TV screen, where a very attractive young Russian woman slipped a DVD into the TV so Trump could watch the 1963 James Bond movie, “From Russia With Love."

The man whose first priority is not to his country, but to his political party (but not necessarily to Donald Trump) is in Kentucky. That man’s name is Mitch McConnell, and he is supposed to be the Senate Majority Leader. Quite possibly, he got some help getting back to the Bluegrass State from his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. She's in charge of the FAA, which is responsible for getting airplanes safely from one place to another. Many air traffic controllers are calling in sick because they are not being paid.

Had he wanted to, McConnell could have told Trump to resign in favor of Mike Pence, who has previously served in Congress. Trump does not understand that in the United States, we are supposed to have three co-equal branches of government.

McConnell didn’t do that because he doesn’t trust Trump and he's waiting for Trump, who’s notorious for changing his mind every five minutes, to say what kind of a Deal he would accept on his Wall. Trump’s the one who said he would own the government shutdown which he caused, but now, all he does is refuse to talk to the Democrats in Congress, and blame them for not doing his will for his Wall.

And now, Trump and his minions in the West Wing are joyfully looking forward to extending his partial government shutdown until — shall we say, into the summer?

Trump, a classic, uncontrollable narcissist, can’t keep anybody around him sane, and there are many reasons for that.

Speaking of mentally ill people, there is a severely mentally ill man living in Colorado since 1998, and his name is Ted Kaczynski, the notorious Unabomber. Kaczynski, once a brilliant mathematician, is serving eight consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole at ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

Because Trump is addicted to disruption in government, federal prison guards are being forced to work without pay — many have to work sixteen hours a day.

Associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman is, at this very moment, with Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, who just issued an all points bulletin, in which he announced, “The Unabomber is on the loose!” 

Whitaker tried to blame the Unabomber’s escape on Nancy Pelosi, but Sherman spoke with David Berkebile, the Warden at ADX Florence, and Berkebile told Sherman that all the guards at his supermax prison have quit becauses of having to work double overtime shifts, without pay.

The other high-profile federal prisoner living in Colorado is the notorious Rod “Blago” Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who infamously tried to cash in on the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Blago’s in a low-security prisoin in Englewood, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. There, he is not known as Blago, but rather as Prisoner Number 40892-424.

Always eager to report all the news that didn’t happen, associate solitary reporter Lewis Thompson, the Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, just texted us saying that Blago walked out of his prison after charming the exhausted guards there by telling him what a wonderful Democrat he is. Blago told Thompson that he likes Colorado because of its spectacular scenery and because of its marijuana culture, and that he plans to run against fellow Democrat Jared Polis, who became Colorado’s forty-third governor last week. But Blago will have to wait until 2022 to do that, so in the interim, he’ll open a pricey hair salon in the upscale Cherry Creek Shopping Center in Denver.

We scarcely have enough space to report on Trump’s meanderings in the highly toxic Middle East, but we are compelled to report that former Wichita Congressman Mike Pompeo is doing his best to undo the damage caused by Trump’s surprise announcement late last year that he’s pulling American soldiers out of Syria (so he can please Putin). Pompeo gave a speech in Cairo in which he said that when American forces leave, chaos follows. How Pompeo hopes to square that with the utter chaos Trump is causing in Syria, is a subject which we will continue to follow closely.

Donald Trump went to McAllen, Texas, yesterday so he could make a damn fool of himself at our southern border. Trump’s really good at that kind of s___. McAllen borders the Rio Grande, and it is seventy miles from the Gulf of Mexico. As of press time, Trump has no casino or golf course there, much as its residents might or might not like that. McAllen is represented in the House by Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat who opposes Trump’s Wall.

If Trump were not on TV, his doctors would start worrying about him.

At a photo op, his Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, sat on the right side of power as he wore a white MAGA hat. His close personal friend and confidant, Fox News’ Sean Hannity, was there, eagerly awaiting an exclusive interview. Trump, displaying his deep erudition and machismo, said “They say a wall is medieval. Well, so is a wheel.”

Accompanying him to South Texas was the man he bested in 2016 for the GOP nomination — none other than the junior U.S. Senator from the Lone Star State, who is the one senator most hated by his Senate colleagues — Ted Cruz (TP-Texas).

Ted, never handsome, has grown hair on his face. It doesn’t help his looks any, but he still wants to sit in the Oval Office after Trump leaves his White House in 2029 after completing his third term.

While Trump was at the McAllen Border Control Station saluting a passing ICE/CBP helicopter, and being shown by ICE how many tunnels there are under the fences that are already there, our top-notch DC-based associate solitary reporter, Keith Coleman, interviewed Jeffrey David Cox, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (to which, at one time, your solitary reporter belonged, while representing Secretaries of Labor Peter J. Brennan, John T. Dunlop, Willie J. Usery, and Ray Marshall).

Cox solemnly told ASR Coleman that all eight hundred thousand federal employees who are SOL because of Trump's shutdown have resigned to seek work where they can be assured of a paycheck. Associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman, our crack investigative reporter, tells us that they will all be replaced by illegals who are currently working at Trump’s worldwide casinos, resorts, and golf courses, including Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago — where Melania is happy to be as long as Donnie Boy is in Texas. According to ASR Coleman, all Trump’s illegal employees have been well-vetted by Ivanka and Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker; Nielsen has already given them waivers in the interest of helping Trump stay comfy.

Elsewhere, associate solitary reporter Theodora Lewis is vetting Michael Cohen for his blockbuster testimony to Congress in February, a month before he goes to federal prison.

Finally, associate solitary reporter Philomena Malinowski has signed up as an advance woman for Beto’s presidential campaign, after Beto went on camera in El Paso introducing his dental hygienist to the world (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/10/dentist-beto-orourke-social-media-1096173).

In yesterday’s Times, there's a must-read about Donald Trump’s third government shutdown, now in its twentieth day after yesterday’s temper tantrum, written by top-notch reporters Katie Rogers and Maggie Haberman: “Trump Thinks He’s His Own Best Messenger. Where Does That Leave Bill Shine?”

Shine is one of Trump’s top communications staffers. Mr. Shine came from Fox News, where he was best known as the chief protector of Roger Ailes. Ailes, who died in 2017, was well-known as a sexual predator.

Rogers and Haberman point out what we all knew instinctively, that Trump is constantly hungry for positive news coverage, and that he chafes at being managed. 

That should be no surprise, as he is totally unmanageable.

Their article quotes Newt Gingrich (remember Newt? Years ago, Garrison Kiellor sang a song on Prairie Home Companion when Newt became Speaker of the House in 1995, after he had clobbered President Bill Clinton in the 1994 mid-terms. It was a little ditty, and it went “Newt, Newt, he don’t give a hoot" (about people who are not wealthy, as he is).

In 2012, Gingrich ran against now-Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) for the GOP presidential nomination, but Gingrich, who has never, ever, been warm and cuddly, lost out to Mitt.

Rogers and Haberman have this quote from Gingrich about Trump: “This [Oval Office dude is] never going to be happy with his [media] coverage because he’s in a permanent war with the media…Shine in that sense is in a challenging environment. His primary client is somebody who would like a result that requires change but is not willing to change.”

They also quote counselor Kellyanne Conway: “Donald Trump is an irrespressibly press-savvy, communications-centric [occupant of the White House]. About Shine, Conway said, “He has a gut for what sells and an eye for what compels.”

Shine is the guy who made Trump give a total loser of an Oval Office address to the nation on Tuesday. It’s obvious that the only way that Sociopath-in-Chief Trump likes to communicate is through Twitter and at his rallies, which are always sold out.

Given Trump’s constant craving for adulation from the media — a craving that will never be satisfied — it’s clear that Shine flunked at doing what Trump wanted, namely, convincing American voters that it’s a good idea to buld a useless wall on our southern border.

Moments ago, associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones was with Trump as he tweeted that he has fired Mr. Shine.

When ASR Jones asked Trump who’s going to replace Shine, he said it will be his close personal friend from Fox News, Sean Hannity.