The Big Date

The Big Date:  Trump finally gets to meet Putin today. In anticipation, he headed to his hotel early last night to get some extra beauty sleep, put on a little more self-tanner and touch up and pouf his hair.  Putin and Trump will each be bringing just one other person plus an interpreter to the meeting.  Over their objections, Trump has decided to leave his national security advisor and Russian expert on the sidelines and instead plans to bring Secretary of State Tillerson, the recipient of Putin’s Russian Order of Friendship award.  Putin is bringing Sergey Lavrov, his foreign minister.  Lavrov and Trump are besties, the last time Trump saw him, he gleefully bragged about firing his nut job FBI Director. Only thirty minutes have been set aside for the big meeting, but a lot can be promised or given away in thirty minutes so the rest of Trump’s team is concerned about what will happen when unpredictable Donny meets wily Vlad. For his part Trump, who knows that his advisors are nervous, tweeted out a little reassurance this morning saying “I will represent our country well and fight for its interests,” because that’s what a US president is supposed to do. Hopes are fading that Trump, who gleefully bashed the US press in Warsaw, has any interest in chastising Putin for committing election interference.  The two have a lot to discuss including cooperating in Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, North Korea and, if Putin gets his way, sanctions relief.  We may have to wait for Putin’s meeting notes to be translated into English to find out what they agree to, unless the Russian spies move back into their US compounds before the notes are released.

Speaking Polish:  Trump’s formal remarks in Poland were well received by the friendly audience, some of whom were bussed in because of concerns that Trump would only be happy if the crowds were bigger than those of all previous visiting US presidents, especially Obama.  He stuck to the teleprompter and talked about the importance of maintaining the superiority of western culture, forgetting that a number of the most important attendees at the G 20 summit are leaders of Asian countries.  Since Poland is one of the countries who is meeting its NATO financial obligations, Trump finally felt he could commit to NATO’s Article Five, all for one and one for all provision.  Though he couldn’t bring himself to unequivocally acknowledge Russian election interference in the speech or press conference, he called for “Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere and its support for hostile regimes including Syria and Iran” and managed to read the words off the teleprompter without winking or editing in any Putin admiration.                         

Trumpcare is Struggling:   If Majority Leader McConnell is to be believed, Trumpcare is struggling.  He told members of a Kentucky Rotary Club that he is having a hard time getting the votes needed to push the health bill through the Senate.  He added that if Trumpcare fails, he’ll have to work with the Democrats on a more limited bill to fix the Obamacare exchanges, a shocking admission that the Democrats might be worth talking to and that Obamacare is fixable.  As he had expected, sending Senators home for the holidays and exposing them to the concerns of their constituencies has made passing the widely unpopular Trumpcare more difficult.  It’s refreshing to hear that McConnell believes that letting the Obamacare exchanges implode is not a viable option.  Still the Trumpcare battle isn’t over.  A new scoring report will be out in another week, in all likelihood McConnell is still trying to bribe a few Senators to garner support and Republican heavy hitters are still stalking and threatening vulnerable naysayers.  By the end of the month, the Trumpcare saga should be over, either it will be passed or it will die.  In either case McConnell will move on to something easier like tax reform or raising the debt ceiling.

No More Ethics:  Walter Shaub, the head of the Office of Government Ethics resigned yesterday.  Shaub had six months left on his term but had grown so frustrated by the Trump team’s unethical behavior that he decided to throw in the towel because “he had reached the limit of what he can accomplish under current rules.”  Shaub had pushed for Trump to fully divest his business empire and believed that having the Trump sons run the family business was not a satisfactory outcome.  He also had criticized the White House for granting staffers retroactive ethics waivers and was twisted in knots over all of son-in-law Kushner’s various and sundry ethics violations. Trump will either try to appoint his favorite golf caddy to replace the outgoing Schaub or he will leave the spot vacant because ethical oversight is a nuisance for this White House. 

The Fake News War Rages On:  Trump continues to unload on CNN, his current press scapegoat, calling the network out for being a purveyor of “fake news” again during his Warsaw press conference.  Publicly berating CNN might not be enough for Trump.  The New York Times reports that White House advisers have discussed using ATT’s impending acquisition of Time Warner, CNN’s parent company, as a “potential point of leverage” to push CNN to treat Trump more favorably, even suggesting that the White House may withhold support for the merger if Jeff Zucker, CNN’s current president, is allowed to stay on.  While in Warsaw Trump also questioned why NBC treats him so unfairly, especially since he used to be one of their most valuable “stars.”  Last night, Rachel Maddow, one of MSNBC’s biggest stars, revealed that someone sent her show what initially appeared to be very convincing information about a connection between the Russians and a senior Trump adviser. Working with NSA contacts, her researchers determined that the document was a carefully constructed forgery.  She believes that someone was trying to trap her into running with a “fake news” story as part of a strategy to undermine the press. Her story isn’t farfetched, CNN recently retracted a story and fired three experienced journalist who fell victim to a similar ploy and Trump is using their mistake to fuel his press war.