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College Football Notebook: Quarterback Lamar Jackson leaving Louisville for NFL draft

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Patriots insist there’s no Kraft, Belichick, Brady rift

<p>President Donald Trump has had one of the most successful first years in office of any president in the history of America.</p><p>I know this because White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said as much Tuesday: &#8220;I don&#8217;t think anyone can argue it&#8217;s probably one of the most successful first years in office.&#8221;</p><p>Because nobody can argue with it, I&#8217;m not going to try. Besides, spending five minutes Googling the concrete factual evidence that would disprove that claim is a waste of five minutes that could be spent honoring the unrivaled greatness of our president.</p><p>Speaking of Trump&#8217;s greatness, did you know he has made it so nobody dies in commercial airline crashes anymore? On Tuesday, the president tweeted: &#8220;Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news &#8212; it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!&#8221;</p><p>That&#8217;s fantastic! What&#8217;s even more amazing is the report Trump is citing was for global air travel, meaning the many actions he did not take to increase commercial aviation safety in America also helped travelers in every other country in the world! And here in America, we went from zero commercial airline deaths in 2014, 2015 and 2016 to an even-more-impressive zero commercial airline deaths in 2017!</p><p>That&#8217;s what I call strong leadership. Speaking of which, did you know our supremely confident president has increased the size of America&#8217;s famously non-existent Nuclear Button, making it bigger than North Korea&#8217;s Nuclear Button?</p><p>Well, he has. Late Tuesday, Trump sent the following tweet: &#8220;North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the &#8216;Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.&#8217; Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger &amp; more powerful one than his, and my Button works!&#8221;</p><p>At long last, we have an extremely secure and manly president unafraid to boast about the great size and power of our national desk-mounted nuke button, which I&#8217;m sure is really a thing despite no credible evidence to suggest it exists.</p><p>Of course the president hasn&#8217;t tweeted about all his accomplishments. He&#8217;s far too humble and fantastic, and also too busy accomplishing more than any president in history.</p><p>But you can easily identify the many things you should be thanking President Trump for by applying this simple two-part rule:</p><p>1) If it happened any time after Inauguration Day 2017 and it was good, President Trump is responsible for it.</p><p>2) On the off chance it&#8217;s something not good, President Trump is responsible for it only if it can be framed in a way that makes it seem good.</p><p>For example, the Chicago area had its coldest New Year&#8217;s Day high temperature on record and by Saturday the city will likely tie a decades-old record for consecutive days below 20 degrees.</p><p>Donald Trump is clearly responsible for these wonderfully cold temperatures and for helping Chicago break records! You never saw cold-weather records broken under President Barack Obama, and if Crooked Hillary Clinton had been elected, it would likely be 80 degrees and sunny in Chicago right now.</p><p>Trump&#8217;s conviction that global warming is a hoax has forced temperatures to drop, giving Chicagoans the enviable status of &#8220;record breakers.&#8221;</p><p>Another important improvement over past administrations: The total number of verified Bigfoot-related deaths in 2017 fell to zero, a comforting and substantial improvement over the less-impressive zero Bigfoot-related deaths that occurred during all other American presidents&#8217; first years.</p><p>So what do we have after only one short year of the single greatest presidential administration in the history of presidential greatness? We have, inarguably, the most successful first year in office, with zero deaths from plane crashes and a Nuclear Button so big it could in no way be interpreted as an overcompensation for something tragically small. We have Chicago being made great again with record-breaking cold weather and a precipitous drop in the number of people killed by Sasquatch.</p><p>We have a booming economy, with the S&amp;P 500 up an unprecedented and certainly record-breaking 18 percent in Trump&#8217;s first 11 month&#8217;s in office, compared with the S&amp;P 500 going up a mere 36.9 percent during Obama&#8217;s first 11 months. (Any suggestion that 36.9 is a larger number than 18 is FAKE NEWS.)</p><p>The bottom line is this: I don&#8217;t think anyone can argue with how well everything is going in America.</p><p>Have you noticed how every American who is alive is breathing? I imagine we&#8217;ll soon see a Trump tweet celebrating this fantastic news: &#8220;Since taking office I have been very strict on human beings breathing. Good news &#8212; it was just reported that all living human beings were breathing in 2017. I am amazing and this is all thanks to me! #MAGA.&#8221;</p><p>God bless America.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Rex Huppke</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Rex Huppke is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Readers may email him at <a href="mailto:rhuppke@chicagotribune.com">rhuppke@chicagotribune.com</a>.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Their view: No one has been killed by Bigfoot, so we should thank Trump