Blood Tweets

Trumpcare Update:  Senate Majority Leader McConnell hasn’t thrown in the towel yet, but neither has he solved his Trumpcare dilemma. At this point he is considering retaining Obamacare’s 3.8% investment tax, which was revoked in both the House and first Senate versions, upping opioid funding by $45 billion, and allowing the funding of tax deductible health savings accounts but he still doesn’t have a consensus and there will be no further action this week since the Senators have all gone home for the July fourth holiday.  He’s passed a few revisions over to the budget scoring gurus for their review and plans to revisit negotiations when everyone returns on July 10.  The budget guys haven’t had a chance to review the impact of McConnell’s most recent amendments but they did add to Trumpcare’s bad optics by releasing a fairly damning additional analysis of the Senate’s first draft, concluding that by 2036 Medicaid funding would decrease by 35%.             

Tweet Attack:  Impulse control is really hard when your healthcare plan isn’t working out, your tax cuts are in jeopardy and you’re being investigated for collusion and obstruction.  Yesterday morning Trump reminded his dedicated core why they love him while outraging almost everyone else by tweet attacking MSNBC Morning Joe’s co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.  Mika and Joe, on again, mostly off again friends of Trump are now among his biggest critics and routinely go after his policies and odd behavior on their morning MSNBC show.  Apparently their incessant chatter and sometimes laughable critiques have thrown the thin skinned Trump over the edge.  Thursday morning, he launched into a grotesque and sexist twitter attack against “low IQ Mika and Psycho Joe” calling them out for insisting on joining him at Mar a Lago in December when Mika “was bleeding badly from a face lift,” because his fragile ego couldn’t take any more of their morning banter. This morning Joe and Mika said that Trump invited them to Mar A Lago and Mika denied a face lift but proudly fessed up to a chin “tweaking.”  Note to Trump, it’s not a good idea to viciously attack a woman’s appearance and under no circumstances is it presidential and what’s with the blood obsession, first Megan Kelly, now Mika.  Also, publicly attacking a prominent woman’s intellect and appearance while you are trying to cajole Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Shelley Moore Capito to vote for your health plan is counterproductive.  A series of Republican Senators expressed their outrage. Senator Sasse tweeted “Please just stop. This isn’t normal and it’s beneath the dignity of your office.” Lisa Murkowski tweeted “Stop it! The Presidential platform should be used for more than bringing people down.” Lindsay Graham tweeted “your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics.”   Paul Ryan said “What we’re trying to do around here is improve the tone, the civility of the debate.  And this obviously doesn’t help.” Through her spokesperson, Melania Trump, who once said that cyber-bullying would be her First Lady cause, justified the tweet by saying that “when her husband gets attacked he will pushback ten times harder” and Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump is entitled to strike back at anyone he wants, except perhaps his good buddy Putin, and that no one cares because he won the election handily and the voters knew what he was like when they voted for him.  Sadly, Sanders is right.  The easily agitated Trump will be meeting with world leaders, including a few prominent women and his BFF Putin, at next week’s G-20 Meetings.  What could go wrong?

Clinton Emails, Russian Hackers, and Flynn:  Last night the Wall Street Journal reported that Peter Smith, a long term Republican political operative, tried to obtain the 33,000 emails “missing” from Hillary Clinton’s server by hiring a team of technology experts, lawyers and  Russian speaking consultants to search for the Russian hackers who he believed had the emails.  Smith said that he was working with former Trump adviser Mike Flynn.  The description of Smith’s operation is consistent with intelligence reports and tapes of conversations between Russian hackers who were overheard discussing how to obtain the emails from the Clinton server in order to have them transferred to Flynn through an intermediary.  The 81 year old Smith died on May 14, ten days after he was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, so he won’t be testifying before any Intelligence Committees but if his story is true the first direct connection between the Trump campaign and the Russians has been uncovered.  When contacted by the Wall Street Journal the White House and Flynn’s lawyers had no comment.  Smith’s story is being investigated by Special Counsel Mueller.  Maybe this is one of the things that pushed Trump over the twitter cliff.     

Trouble at State:  Before he was tapped to be Trump’s Secretary of State, Tillerson was ending his successful reign as the CEO of Exxon and moving towards a rich man’s retirement of  golf, travel and lucrative board seats.  When Trump called he was initially reluctant to join the administration.  His wife persuaded him to sign on and, after Trump promised him he could make his own hiring decisions, he did.  Trump forgot to mention that Tillerson would be Secretary of State in name only and that the real power would remain in the White House with son-in-law Jared Kushner.  To date, despite Trump’s promise, Tillerson has not been able to make his own hiring decisions and he’s growing tired of having to clean-up Trump’s diplomatic screw-ups in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.  He holds Kushner and Bannon responsible for White House leaks attacking his credibility.  On Tuesday, Tillerson, who has a reputation for being an even tempered manager, blew up at the White House hiring manager. The other Secretary of State, son-in-law Kushner, told Tillerson’s assistant that his behavior was unacceptable.  Retirement is looking better and better, Tillerson could be the first Cabinet member to jump ship.    

Busy Day: While Trump’s tweet attack was reverberating, a number of other significant events took place.  Trump’s bromance with China’s President Xi took a hit after the administration announced sanctions against a Chinese bank and several Chinese businessmen to punish them for illegal financial activities with North Korea.  The House passed two pieces of legislation targeting illegal immigrants and sanctuary cities and the travel ban went into effect with an incomplete and already amended list of what relationships qualify as “close family” ties.  Hawaii is already challenging the definition of “close family” ties in court.    

Low Energy Week:  Infrastructure, technology and workforce weeks are over so with Energy Secretary Rick Perry by his side Trump launched energy week.  He stuck to his usual themes:  trashed the Obama administration’s energy policies, called for more clean and beautiful coal and mining jobs, slammed CNN, attacked the Paris Climate Accords, called for the cancellation of Obama era job killing regulations and the exploitation of oil and gas on previously protected federal lands. He also discussed plans for a gas pipeline to Mexico, one that would run under his planned beautiful wall. Though no significant policies were introduced, Trump did take full credit for all the country’s energy resources which he just learned are abundant.  Who knew?