More Intrigue

The Don Jr Defense:  Yesterday, Trump surrogates were out in force defending Don Jr’s meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Vesilnitskaya with some variation of he didn’t do anything wrong and if he did it’s because he didn’t know any better because he has no political experience and besides he‘s not very bright. Jay Sekulow, Trump’s legal spokesman argued that “it’s not a violation of the law here” and if it was it didn’t matter because “it was a twenty minute meeting that did not produce anything.”  Of course, we don’t know what the meeting produced because we only know what Don Jr says happened and any credibility he had disappeared the fourth time he changed his account.  Deputy Press Secretary Sanders blamed the press saying that stories about Don Jr are “undermining the credibility of the media.” She then pivoted into Clinton attack mode, questioning money that Bill Clinton received for giving a speech to a Russian bank and attacking Hillary Clinton for giving away America’s uranium reserves. Trump just said that anyone would have held that meeting. Many in Congress disagree.  Yesterday, during the confirmation hearing for Christopher Wray, the nominee for FBI Director, Senator Lindsey Graham asked what should be done if a foreign government offers assistance in a US election.  Whey Wray paused, Graham testily said “you’re going to be the director of the FBI pal,” you better answer this one.  Wray then responded “to the members of this committee, any threat or effort to interfere with our elections from any nation state or any nonstate actor is the kind of thing the FBI would want to know.” He also promised not to pledge loyalty to Trump.  Wray will be confirmed.    

More Intrigue: Yesterday afternoon the Wall Street Journal reported that in the Spring of 2015, well before Trump announced he was running for president, US intelligence agencies captured an unusual number of conversations between Russian government officials discussing Trump associates and a higher than usual number of meetings between Russian officials and Trump associates.  They weren’t targeting Trump associates but picked them up incidentally because of their contacts with targeted Russians.  In and of themselves the conversations and meetings weren’t all that unusual but the volume prompted US officials to wonder what was going on.  Given all that’s now known about Russian meddling in the 2016 election and Putin’s preference for Trump, all of the collected information about these calls and meetings is now being reevaluated by the intelligence agencies.  According to yesterday’s McClatchy Report, US investigators are also examining whether the Trump campaign’s digital operations, which were overseen by son-in-law Jared, guided Russia’s fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton during the election. Last year Kushner bragged about the technological know-how that allowed Trump to run such an efficient campaign and how his sophisticated voter targeting capabilities allowed him to focus on swing voters. Spurred on by Don Jr’s excitement over the possibility of getting information from Russia, investigators are pushing forward with a search for links between Kushner’s technological prowess and Russia’s targeted news, looking for evidence of digital cooperation.  There is little doubt that Russia has the technology to hack emails and push false information, but knowing where to target weaponized attacks requires an understanding of local US politics and somehow or other the Russians fake news ended up in all of the most vulnerable places.  Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s personal lawyer, is now trying to build a “wall” between Trump and Kushner, banning anymore discussion of Russia related issues. It’s too soon to know if Trump will take this advice or fire Kasowitz.  For his part, Trump finally emerged from a few days of hiding in his White House bunker to tell Reuters that he spent at least twenty to twenty-five minutes of his meeting with Putin asking him about Russian election meddling.  He then said “look something happened and we have to find out what it is,” but this whole Russia collaboration story is just a witch hunt and a hoax, pushed by those Democratic sore losers.  “It’s a disgrace.”   

Trumpcare:  The health care legislation that never dies is still alive and kicking, barely.  Majority Leader McConnell plans to release the current iteration of his plan this morning. In anticipation of the big reveal he has been having a number of closed door meetings to drum up support but it doesn’t appear that he’s made a lot of progress with the dissenters.  Alaska Senator Murkowski reportedly yelled at McConnell when he told her that substantial Medicaid cuts remain in the bill.  Senator Rand Paul tweeted that Trumpcare is too similar to Obamacare to get his vote and announced that he wouldn’t even vote for it to be brought to the Senate floor.  For totally opposite reasons Senator Susan Collins is still a no along with Senator Dean Heller.  Senator Cruz, missed his opportunity to ask his usual obnoxious questions at the Wray confirmation hearing because he was busy pushing his Trumpcare amendment, the one that would allow for plans covering few if any Obamacare mandated services. His proposal isn’t going over well with the Insurance industry. The CEO of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association warned that it “would undermine pre-existing condition protections, increase premiums and destabilize the market.”  America’s Health Insurance Plans raised similar concerns saying that Cruz’s amendment “would lead to widespread adverse selection and unstable health insurance markets.”  It’s not clear that Cruz or his partner in crime Senator Mike Lee would vote for any Trumpcare bill that doesn’t include his amendment and many won’t vote for any plan with it.  Oblivious to the details, before boarding Air Force One for a trip to Paris to celebrate Bastille Day with France’s President Macron, Trump said that he will “be very angry” if Republicans fail to pass health care legislation. Maybe Macron can persuade him to stay in Paris.