Tweetmania

Travel Ban:  On Monday, the day that was supposed to be all about the launching of his signature infrastructure plan, an increasingly unhinged Trump went off on a series of twitter rages damaging the already tenuous legal footing for his travel ban and escalating his twitter war with the Mayor of London.  In a series of four early morning tweets he called for a return to the original tougher version of the travel ban, attacked the current version for being watered down, slammed his own Justice Department for not sticking with the original ban and ended with “In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the US in order to help keep our country safe. The courts are slow and political.”  He effectively killed the rationale for the ninety day travel ban by acknowledging that vetting has already been implemented and foolishly threw shade at the court system that will rule on his ban.  After seeing Trump’s tweetathon, George Conway, Kellyanne’s husband, tried some tweet-toughlove by saying though “these tweets may make some people feel better, they certainly won’t help the Office of the Solicitor General get five votes in SCOTUS (the Supreme Court), which is what actually matters.”  George is feeling better and better about his decision to stay out of the administration.   Kellyanne, however remains a loyal team member.  She said that Trump’s tweets are just fine, it’s the press focus on them that’s the problem.  A crisis may be brewing in the Conway house.

Mayor of London:  Inexplicably Trump continued to tweet smack London Mayor Khan.  He accused Khan of making a “pathetic excuse” over his statement urging Londoners not to be alarmed by the presence of additional police.  Khan initially said that he was too busy managing the fallout from the attack to respond to Trump’s tweets but by the end of the day he found his voice and called for plans for an upcoming Trump state visit to be cancelled pointing out that you stand with special friends in “times of adversity, but you call them out when they are wrong.  There are many things about which Donald Trump is wrong.”  Hard to disagree with Khan’s observation. Later in the day, proving why she is now Trump’s go to  press person, Sarah Huckabee Sanders guilelessly said that she did not think it was fair to characterize Trump’s tweets as picking a fight with Khan.  

Comey Thursday is On:  Not long after the loyal but out of the loop Kellyanne Conway said that Trump had not decided if he would exert executive privilege to block former FBI Director Comey’s Thursday testimony, the more informed Huckabee Sanders, announced that Trump will let Comey go forward.  Judging by yesterday’s irresponsible tweeting, Trump is pretty nervous about what Comey has to say but legal reality, his compulsive tweeting, and his comments to NBC’s Lester Holt about Comey limited his options.  It wasn’t clear that he had any legal justification to block Comey and the optics of blocking his testimony would have been terrible.  Tune in Thursday.   

Infrastructure Plans:  In an effort to distract from all the upcoming testimony Trump launched his signature infrastructure plan with the announcement of his intention to privatize the “antiquated” air traffic control (ATC) system by spinning it off to an independent non-profit entity.  The concept of privatizing the ATC is not new, many other countries including Canada have followed that path with their systems.  However, both Republicans and Democrats have opposed earlier attempts to privatize the US system so Trump’s plan is not a slam dunk.  Absent all of his crazy tweets and the appearance that he is teetering on the edge, the plan would have garnered a lot more attention.

Leaked NSA Report:  Late Monday, The Intercept, an online publication, ran a story, based on a leaked NSA document, detailing how the Russians launched a cyberattack on at least one US voting software supplier by sending more than one hundred local election officials spear-phishing emails during the month before the November 2016 elections.  It doesn’t appear that any voting systems were impacted this time but the report does provide evidence that, despite Putin’s claims to the contrary and Trump’s on again, off again refusal to acknowledge any Russian interference, the Russians were actively involved in election meddling.  Moments after The Intercept published the story the FBI arrested Reality Leigh Winner, a 25 year old, short term NSA contractor for stealing and leaking the document. Winner who is now in bigly trouble may have been channeling Edward Snowden, the infamous former NSA contractor.  

Diplomatic Disarray:  When Trump decided to omit affirmation of the Article 5 mutual defense commitment from his NATO speech,  European allies were stunned.  They were not alone.  Apparently, security adviser McMaster, Defense Secretary Mattis, and Secretary of State Tillerson also expected that Trump would reaffirm Article 5 because they had written it into his speech and had gotten assurances from him that he would affirm the commitment.  Unbeknownst to them, Trump, possibly with the urging of adviser Bannon, axed the commitment from his speech further damaging relations with key European allies. McMaster, Mattis and Tillerson have been playing clean up with NATO members ever since.  At some point one or more of these guys is going to decide that enabling Trump is irreparably tarnishing their reputations.  Someone may jump ship soon.

Trump Appointments:  In addition to tweet smacking Mayor Khan and dooming his travel ban Trump  tweet blamed the Democrats for slowing the confirmation process for his appointees, “Dems are taking forever to approve my people, including Ambassadors.  They are nothing but OBSTRUCTIONISTS.”  Trump refuses to acknowledge that most of the delay is because he hasn’t nominated many people to fill the large number of open slots and in some cases he’s thrown out names but not moved forward with the formal confirmation process.  He’s said that he wants Jets owner Woody Johnson to be his ambassador to the UK and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman to be ambassador to Russia but has not formally submitted any paperwork.  He really needs to stop tweeting and move forward, another slot opened yesterday when a long term career diplomat quit because his conscience wouldn’t allow him to formally advise the Chinese government that the US is pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.

Trumpcare Lurks:  Despite pronouncements from an assortment of skeptical Senators on both sides of the aisle, Majority Leader McConnell may try to get a version of Trumpcare out of his all secret committee shortly.  Reports are that McConnell is doubtful that he has enough votes to pass a Senate Trumpcare bill but wants to clear it from his to-do list to make room for more pressing issues like tax reform, budgeting and passing a new debt limit.