More Rain, More Missiles

Harvey Photo Op:  Trump still plans to head to Texas today but he will be avoiding the Houston area instead going to either Corpus Christie or San Antonio where his photo op will be “less” intrusive to critical storm rescue activities.  Once there expect to see him lift an empty sandbag or push a shovel full of air, before climbing back onto a very dry and comfy Air Force One.  Trump promised resources for Harvey related repairs and reconstruction but didn’t acknowledge that to date FEMA hasn’t been fully staffed and that his budget plans call for a substantial $600 million cut to the FEMA budget, a fairly significant decrease for an agency that received $7 billion in 2017.  Ironically, Texas Senators Cruz and Cornyn, who are calling for Congress to authorize funding for Harvey repair as soon as possible, opposed funding for the Superstorm Sandy “boondoggle” in 2013, a fact that led NY Congressman Peter King to tweet “Ted Cruz & Texas cohorts voted vs NY/NJ aid after Sandy but I’ll vote 4 Harvey aid.  NY wont abandon Texas.  1 bad turn doesn’t deserve another.”  Today Trump also noted that Harvey was a record breaking storm but he failed to mention the link that extreme weather events like Harvey have to rising temperatures, because climate change is one of those things he doesn’t understand or acknowledge.

More on Sheriff Joe:  During a press conference that followed a meeting with Finland’s president, Trump responded to a question about his Friday pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio by doubling down.  He said that Arpaio, that great American hero, was treated “unbelievably unfairly by Obama’s people” who hammered him right before he was up for reelection causing him to narrowly lose an election he would have won if it wasn’t for his unfair treatment by Obama. No surprise that Trump had the facts wrong, Arpaio is no hero, the investigation into his activities was initiated during the Bush administration and Arpaio lost that election by double digits.  Trump also denied that he tried to hide the pardon by issuing it late on an August Friday as attention was focused on hurricane Harvey.  Instead he said that he purposely timed the pardon to coordinate with Harvey related hurricane updates, maximizing its exposure.  Finally, Trump justified his pardon by pointing to Bill Clinton’s controversial pardon of the discredited financier Marc Rich and sixties radical Weatherman Susan Rosenberg and Obama’s pardons of drug dealers and infamous leaker Chelsea Manning.  Trump had clearly practiced his response and he has a point, pardons are always subject to criticism.  However the pardons he cited were done at the end of presidential terms and with the exception of Marc Rich, whose pardon was one of those questionable Clinton decisions, they followed more traditional judicial review procedures.  Still just mentioning them seemed to embolden Trump who revels in his Arpaio decision.  Trump was also asked about the funding for the Mexico Wall, and this time he hedged a little.  He insists it will be funded but now, instead of saying that it will be paid for by Mexico, “one of the top three most violent countries in the world,” he’s finally acknowledging that US taxpayers will have to pay up, at least initially.  His new strategy is to tie Mexico reimbursement to the renegotiation of the NAFTA trade agreement, another one of his pipe dreams.    

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Russia, Russia, Russia:  To date there is no Trump Tower Moscow but not for lack of trying.  Yesterday long term Trump organization lawyer and close family friend, Michael Cohen, turned a series of emails over to Congressional investigators that document how hard Trump was trying to pursue a major deal in Russia while he was running for president, at a time when he repeatedly claimed to have nothing to do with Russia.  Felix Sater, a Russian born Trump business associate, who claimed to have connections in Russia, and who years earlier had arranged for Ivanka Trump to visit Putin’s office and sit in his chair, pushed Cohen to reach out to a close Putin associate to get Putin’s approval and help with the deal.  He also claimed that getting the tower done would get Trump elected which sounds like hyperbole, but then again Trump was elected. Though Cohen initially said that he didn’t run his efforts to reach Putin up the food chain to Trump, he now acknowledges discussing it with Trump at least three times and ABC News reports that Trump personally signed a non-binding letter of intent for the project, a direct contradiction of his repeated assertions that he had no business dealings in Russia.  Pursuing the tower project was not illegal unless questionable financial dealings and promises were involved, but Trump’s denials about his Russian business connections combined with his propensity to compliment Putin whenever he can feed the cloud of suspicion around all things Trump and Russia.  Also on the Russia front, yesterday it was reported that Special Counsel Mueller’s team is focusing on Trump’s involvement in the obfuscation of the facts about  Don Jr’s sketchy Trump Tower meeting with the Russian lawyer, the one purportedly about Russian adoptions but really about getting dirt on Hillary.  Specifically they want to know what Trump knew about the nature of the meeting when he crafted Don Jr’s misleading and incomplete statement aboard that long Air Force One flight home from Europe. 

More Missiles:  Yesterday, residents of Hokkaido Japan woke up to text messages warning them that “A missile was fired from North Korea.  Please evacuate to a sturdy building or basement.”  That text was followed with another that said “A North Korean missile passed over this area.  If you find suspicious things, please never touch them.”  The texts were real, not an emergency system test.  They were issued in response to Pyongyang’s launching of an intermediate ballistic missile over Japan during our afternoon, another reminder that Kim Jong Un continues to ignore UN Sanctions and Trump’s threats.  Japan responded with a quick condemnation of the particularly threatening launch, but so far Trump, for the moment more focused on Harvey and the justification for his Sheriff Joe pardon, than being dissed by Kim Jong Un, has had no response.  The UN plans to hold another one of its emergency security council meetings today.

Also Disturbing:  Trump and Sessions continue to push their law and order agenda, this time by rolling back Obama era policing reforms.  Obama had limited the provision of surplus military equipment such as large caliber weapons and grenade launchers to local police departments.  It does make you wonder why Trump thinks local peace officers need grenade launchers.  Yikes.