Miscommunication

Miscommunication:  The Trump Administration has blown through a number of Communications Directors.  Little seen Mike Dubke lasted from February until May and the Smooch lasted for ten days.  Sean Spicer floated in and out of the job, filling the gap whenever there was a vacancy, but since he is no longer available, Trump is actively searching for a new director and may have settled on the least probable candidate.  He is seriously considering Stephen Miller, the guy whose performance rolling out the travel ban was so memorably horrific and ridiculed that he was hidden away for several months.  Apparently Trump liked the way he insulted the press and took on CNN’s Jim Acosta during last week’s rollout of the proposed immigration legislation.  Miller is an accomplished policy wonk, a card carrying member of Steve Bannon’s government deconstruction brigade, a protégé of Attorney General Sessions, hates immigrants, is rude, monotonic and devious, all the attributes that Trump admires. Before getting the boot, the Smooch actually produced a coherent communications plan that called for improving relations with the press corp.  If Miller gets appointed expect that strategy to quickly fall by the wayside.  Eagerly smelling a career enhancing opportunity a number of actors and comedians have already submitted their best Miller impersonation audition tapes to Saturday Night Live.   If appointed, Miller would supervise Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has no problem advocating Trump’s vision and spewing alternative facts.  Huckabee Sanders had a good teacher, her dad is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who last week advocated repealing the 17^th Amendment to the Constitution, the one that provides for Senators to be elected by the general population.  He wants to return to the good old days before 1913, when women didn’t have the right to vote, people of color were blocked from voting and state legislators picked Senators. Frustrated by the Senate’s failure to repeal Obamacare and their unwillingness to pass other parts of the right wing agenda, he feels that returning the selection of Senators to state legislators, thirty three of which are dominated by Republicans, would result in a more right wing, conservative Senate.  Like father, like daughter, like Trump.      

Teeing Up the Candidates:  It’s only 2017 but a number of candidates are hiring consultants and raising money in anticpation of the 2020 Presidential election, most of them are Republicans and one of them is Vice President Pence.  Though he categorically denies it and called the suggestion insulting and offensive, the New York Times stands by its story that Pence has been having lots of meetings with conservative donors, has staffed up and is making all the moves that a guy seeking the presidency would make.  He is not alone, Ohio Governor Kasich, Senators Ted Sasse and and Tom Cotton, and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley are all quietly polling and hiring advisers.  It’s highly unusual for so many members of a first term president’s party to test the political waters but given Trump’s age, the threats of the Mueller investigation, his declining polls and his irrationality the sharks are circling.  As McCain said “look it’s not a nice business that we are in.”  When asked about the possibility that Pence was quietly preparing himself to run, Kellyanne Conway threw a little shade his way, calling him “dutiful” and pointing out that Trump has him traveling the globe to keep him away from donors.  Pence just got back from Eastern Europe and is being shipped to Latin America next week.  A few other Republican Senators are straying off the Trump plantation.  In addition to Utah Senator Flake whose book slamming Trump is due out shortly, North Carolina Senator Tilles has teamed up with Democratic Senator Coons on legislation that would make it difficult for Trump to fire Mueller. When ultra conservative Laura Ingraham commented that there were three branches of government and he’d better get in line supporting the president, he snapped back “My job is to assert the authority of the Congress as a coequal branch…. go back and study up on civics 101.”

Transgender Ban: Sunday morning Kellyanne also defended Trump’s transgender military ban.  Despite evidence to the contrary, she claimed that all his generals had been informed before his surprise anti-transgender tweet storm.  When ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked her to name them, she cited Patton, Eisenhower and Stonewall Jackson because dead generals can’t contradict her alternative facts.  She also said that Trump’s policy change was justified to ensure military cohesion and preparedness.  So far, the living Generals disagree.  After a report on Friday that the White House is planning to publish guidance on the ban, Civil Rights groups announced that they are planning to sue.  Kellyanne also danced around Stephanopoulos’ when he asked if Trump would fire Special Counsel Mueller.  She said that’s never been discussed, before quickly adding that the Russia stuff is phony, fabricated and is just a strategy to cheat Trump’s voters and, oh, those Mueller lawyers are all card carrying Democrats.  She also added that Trump isn’t under investigation because Comey said three times that he wasn’t.  She’s sticking with that claim even though its as dead as her list of generals.  Appearing on Fox, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein said that Mueller can investigate anything within the scope of his probe, but was a little vague on what that scope was but implied that financial investigations were okay as long as they were an offshoot of investigation into things Russian.  He pushed back against accusations that Mueller was on a fishing expedition.  He also provided reassurance that despite the Department of Justice war on leaks, he didn’t anticipate that any members of the press would be investigated for reporting leaked stories.

UN Action:  The UN imposed new sanctions on North Korea in an effort to get Kim Jong Un to stop with the missiles and the nuclear threats.  Notably, China and Russia joined in the action.  Their participation was a diplomatic win for the US and Nikki Haley and proves that even if relations with Russia are at an all time low, Russia will support joint efforts when its in their interest.  Same for China. While at the ASEAN summit in the Philippines, Tillerson, who is still riding solo because he hasn’t staffed his State Department, followed the UN action by saying the US would sit down with North Korea if the missiles stop. Last night North Korea responded with more verbal attacks.  Tillerson also said that he told Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov that Russian election meddling had caused deep distrust between the US people and Russia.  Not Trump, just the rest of us.  Tillerson’s comments aside, Russian bots, have been assisting Steve Bannon in his ongoing war against national security adviser McMaster, helping to spread nasty stories about him as he tries to rid the White House of Bannon’s remaining sidekicks.