Tweet Contradiction

Tweet Contradiction:  Friday Trump announced that he is being investigated for firing former FBI Director Comey.  On Sunday Jay Sekulow, his legal spokesman and flack for the day, did the Sunday morning talk show tour to announce that despite his tweets, Trump is not under investigation.  Sekulow, who apparently doesn’t know that Trump has been a “unnamed” source for years, slammed the Washington Post for its article because of its use of five no name sources.  By the time he got to Fox News, he must have been a little slap happy because he bungled his prepared remarks while talking to Chris Wallace when he said “so now he’s being investigated for taking the action that the attorney general and deputy attorney general recommended him to take by the agency who recommended the termination.”  Bottom line, it’s way too early to know if Special Counsel Mueller has a convincing case, but it is highly likely that Trump’s tweet is correct, he is being investigated for criminal obstruction of justice.  Former Congressman Newt Gingrich, one of Trump’s other aggressive supporters, spent the last few days arguing that even if Trump fired Comey to get out from under the Russia investigation it wouldn’t matter because he’s the president and if he wants to fire his FBI Director to obstruct justice he can.   This from the man who relentlessly went after former President Clinton for obstruction of justice for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinksy.  So much for consistency.      

Still Tweeting:  Any thought that John Dowd, Trump’s newest legal hire, could stop the president’s tweets went out the window on Sunday.  Trump tweet slammed the Russia investigation again calling it a witch hunt and blamed it for distracting attention from his policy agenda.  He cited a Rasmussen Report that put his approval rating at 50%, “higher” than similarly timed Obama ratings even though the Rasmussen ratings always trend higher than other polls which continue to show Trump’s ratings in the 35 to 40% range and that the equivalent Rasmussen Report had Obama at 56%.  He didn’t tweet about last night’s violent incident in London where a van barreled into a group of Muslim worshipers killing at least one and injuring ten because the assailant wasn’t a Muslim but the victims were.  They were attacked while leaving their Mosque where they were celebrating the holy month of Ramadan.     

Off to the Holyland:  Son-in-law and sometime chief diplomat Kushner is on his way to the Middle East this week to meet with Palestinians and Israelis to promote his quixotic effort to broker a peace deal and to divert attention from his role in the Russia probe.  In the meantime, according to the NY Times, he is shopping around for a lawyer with litigation experience to either replace or supplement his current lawyer Jamie Gorelick, who is a partner in the Wilmer Hale law firm that Mueller just left to assume his role as special counsel.  

Georgia on My Mind:  Tomorrow is June 20, election day in Georgia for Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s vacated congressional seat. Moderate Democrat candidate Jon Ossoff faces off against Republican Karen Handel.  To the extent they mean anything polls indicate that the race in the heavily Republican, relatively well educated district is close with Ossoff having a narrow two point advantage.   Any thoughts that last week’s Alexandria shooting would lead to more civility were disproved over the weekend when a right wing Republican PAC released an advertisement claiming that the “unhinged” left endorses violence and was responsible for the baseball field shooting.  The ad opens with sounds of shooting and a picture of Representative Scalise being wheeled away on a stretcher.  Ossoff condemned the ad and called for his opponent, Handel, to call for it to come down.  She called it “disturbing and disgusting” but didn’t call for it to be removed.  Nothing has changed.  All eyes are on Georgia.

Syria Heating Up:  Yesterday, for the first time the US shot down a Syrian war plane over Raqqa Syria. The US then notified the Russians over the so-called “deconfliction line.” In response, the Russians didn’t attack any US planes but two hours later they did drop bombs on US coalition supported rebels in the area.  This marks a significant escalation.  Unlike Obama, Trump who is not into details, has given his generals wide discretion to act without his approval so he might not have been in the loop for this one. In any case he didn’t mention Syria in any of his Sunday tweets.