More Chaos

The Mooch Got Pooched:  Yesterday morning, immediately after attending Chief of Staff Kelly’s swearing in ceremony, Anthony Scaramucci was called into Kelly’s office and given his walking papers.  Ten days of fun and loathing Mooch style was more than Kelly could take.  The official White House line is that Trump was disturbed by the language that Scaramucci used when he crudely attacked Priebus and Bannon in a New Yorker interview.  The truth is that Trump was amused by the interview and only objected after he realized that everyone else thought that keeping the Mooch around reflected poorly on his already questionable judgement.  Trump may want to reconsider taking any more personnel recommendations from Jared and Ivanka.  Not only were they on team Mooch but during the campaign they pushed him to hire Paul Manafort and they supported the firing of Former FBI Director Comey.  We know how all that turned out.  As to the Mooch, his spin is that he is the ultimate utility player, brought in to fire Spicer and Priebus his job was done, so he offered his resignation to allow Kelly to start with a clean slate.  The Mooch also said he was returning to his old job at the US Export Import Bank but when he shows up he will find that his key card has been cancelled, during yesterday’s White House press conference, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who ascended to her press secretary gig when the Mooch forced Sean Spicer out, said that Scaramucci was no longer employed anywhere in the government. Spicer who is still hanging out at the White House, was walking on air as he called around with news of the Mooch’s demise and Bannon, no fan of the Mooch, was positively ecstatic.  General Kelly plans to be the Trump gatekeeper and even Jared and Ivanka have said that they will respect his boundaries, of course family dinners, pow wows and grandchildren visits won’t count.  Leaks and Trump tweets are next on the ambitious General’s agenda.  An interesting tidbit about General Kelly, he was so distressed when former FBI Director Comey was fired that he called Comey and told him he was planning to resign his Homeland Security position in protest.  He stayed only after Comey talked him down from that cliff.  It will be interesting to see whether he jumps when he encounters the next one.  

Drafter in Chief:  The Mooch firing was only one of yesterday’s notable stories.  Last night, citing several sources including unnamed presidential advisers, the Washington Post reported that Trump was the author of the deceptive press release that inaccurately described Don Jr’s meeting with the Russian lawyer and her nefarious traveling squad.  After Kushner updated his security forms to include the meeting, team Trump anticipated that the information would become public.  Kushner and his lawyers wanted to get out ahead of the story, providing a “transparent” description of the meeting to a friendly mainstream press outlet.  Trump wasn’t on board with that strategy so no action was taken.  During the G 20 meeting, the NY Times called the White House asking for a comment about the Russian sit down for a story that they were about to publish. Trump ignored his lawyers’ advice that Don Jr should come clean about meeting details, instead he drafted the statement that Don Jr ultimately released, the one that characterized the Russian lawyer meeting as a brief discussion of adoptions but skipped any reference to sanctions relief or damaging information about Hillary.  This is now a bigly problem for Trump, possibly providing more evidence that he obstructed justice. A few weeks ago Jay Sekulow, Trump’s legal spokesmen, denied that Trump had anything to do with the Don Jr statement and last night John Dowd, Trump’s newest lawyer, said that this is just “inconsequential fake news.” The Washington Post stands by its story.        

Health Care Killer:  Trump continues to tweet attack Obamacare, now targeting what he calls insurance company subsidies and also threatening subsidies that members of Congress and their staffs get to defray the cost of their insurance.  By insurance company subsidies he means the $8 billion of cost sharing payments for low income Obamacare enrollees that make their insurance affordable.  Without the subsidies insurance companies would jack up rates so eliminating these payments would severely damage the Obamacare market.  Members of Congress get subsidies along the line of those provided by corporate employers.  Eliminating their subsidies wouldn’t damage Obamacare but would seriously piss off the very people Trump needs to pass his legislative agenda.  Beyond his threats, Trump still hasn’t indicated what he plans to do about the subsidies, but he is still calling for the those Republican “quitters” and “fools” in the Senate to pass Obamacare repeal legislation.  Republican Senator Orrin Hatch has had it with Trump’s tweet smacks, together with a few other Senators, he plans to visit the White House to deliver the message that the Senate is too polarized to revisit health care, its time to move on.  On a more productive note, the aptly named House Problem Solver Caucus, an evenly split group of Republicans and Democrats who exist to focus on bipartisan legislative solutions, is seeking leadership approval to introduce legislation intended to stabililize the Obamacare markets, liberalize the employer mandate and get rid of the medical device tax. So far, House Majority Leader Ryan is ducking their request.

World Distress:  Yesterday the Treasury imposed sanctions freezing Venezuela President Maduro’s US assets in response to his illegal efforts to replace Venezuela’s democracy with a dictatorship. Maduro, a strongman that Trump doesn’t like, joins North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, and Syria’s Assad in the rogues gallery of repressive world leaders subject to US financial sanctions.  Though Maduro is out of favor, Trump is still showing love for Putin.  He hasn’t responded to Putin’s announced plans to kick out 755 US diplomats and diplomatic employees, nor has he signed the Russian sanction legislation sitting on his desk.  His silence and inaction on things Putin, especially with all things Russian under so much scrutiny, is well beyond baffling.