Phoenix Rising?

Arizona or Bust:  On Monday night when he delivered his Afghan “strategy” speech, Trump had a rare presidential moment.  He stuck to the teleprompter and talked about uniting the country. His Afghan strategy wasn’t very strategic or satisfying but as speeches go, his wasn’t all that unusual and could have been given by a number of prior presidents.  Last night he traveled to Phoenix and returned to true Trump form.  In anticipation of his speech, protesters gathered to express their discontent while many MAGA hat wearing Trump supporters showed up at the convention center for Trump’s 2020 campaign rally. Arizona’s Senators McCain and Flake stayed away as did Doug Ducey, Arizona’s Republican Governor and Greg Stanton, Phoenix’s Democratic Mayor, who would have been much happier if Trump had stayed away too.  Vice President Pence and HUD Secretary Ben Carson were in attendance.  Wonder if Trump’s only African American cabinet member realizes why his presence was mandated?  Trump spent much of the perverse pep speech attacking the lying press, especially CNN, for failing to accurately report the “fair minded” statements that he made following the Charlottesville tragedy, for sowing discontent and for discounting our “heritage,” a code word for taking down Confederate statues. He made it clear that his approved news outlet, Fox News, especially Sean Hannity, was excluded from his false news accusations.  He dramatically pulled a copy of his original post Charlottesville remarks out of his pocket, read them out loud and then duplicitously misquoted himself by leaving out his controversial, impromptu “on many sides” statement, the one that got him into so much hot water. When a few people in the audience yelled out unflattering comments he suggested that they go join the mere “handful” of “Antifa” protesters outside.  Despite Trump’s assertions, there were more than a few protesters outside and they weren’t antifascist revolutionaries, just disgruntled, overheated Americans.  Unfortunately by the end of a long hot night things did get a little out of hand, his supporters’ Nazi salutes did nothing to ratchet down the tension.  Earlier in the day the White House announced that Trump would not pardon former Sheriff Arpaio at the rally. Trump upheld that promise but did imply that he will pardon the oh so charming, racial profiler very soon by predicting “wink, wink” that Arpaio will be just fine.”

Hotspot:  Trump is at war with Senate Majority Leader McConnell who has privately expressed doubt that he will be able to salvage his presidency.  The two haven’t spoken to each other in weeks and the last time they did they had a contentious high decibel  conversation in which Trump hammered away at McConnell for his inability to get Obamacare repeal legislation passed and totally freaked out about, and suggested there would be ramifications for, McConnell’s failure to protect him from Senate investigations into Russian collusion.  By threatening McConnell about the investigation, Trump may have again committed obstruction of justice. Making good on his threat to be disruptive, Trump is now supporting far right, conspiracy theorist Kelly Ward, who previously ran against Senator McCain and now plans to run against Trump’s long-time critic Senator Flake in the 2018 Arizona Senate primary.  McConnell is throwing his full support and the money he controls behind Flake.  Trump and McConnell are expected to have a similar fight in Nevada, with Trump going after Senator Heller who ultimately did vote for the Obamacare repeal but not before infuriating Trump with a no vote on one of the early versions.  Trump’s attacks against vulnerable Senators are vindictive, threaten the Republican party’s hold on both the Arizona and Nevada seats, and are a gift to Democrats, but he is far more interested in punishing McConnell, Flake and Heller than maintaining the Republican seats.  Last night, Trump also threatened to shut the government down if he doesn’t get money for his wall, the one that Mexico was supposed to finance.  He’s not going to get much, if any, wall money and the government will probably not be shut down but his threats will make life more difficult for McConnell and the other Republicans in the House and Senate.     

More Hotspots:  Yesterday, Secretary Tillerson answered some questions about Trump’s new, not so improved Afghanistan strategy.  He discussed a willingness to meet with more “moderate” Taliban leaders.  He also ramped up the possibility of further discord with Pakistan by asserting that the US military has the right to engage in unilateral missions targeting terrorists in Pakistan territory. Switching gears, Tillerson complimented North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for not sending any missiles our way this week and attributed Pyongyang’s recent “good“ behavior to the new UN sanctions.  While Tillerson was speaking, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced the placement of sanctions on Chinese and Russian individuals and firms for “conducting business with North Korea in ways that advanced the country’s missile and nuclear weapons program.”  Mnuchin’s newest wife got herself into a little bit of trouble yesterday, she posted a picture of herself on Instagram, deplaning from an official US aircraft after a trip to Kentucky with all the components of her very expensive designer outfit tagged. Who doesn’t wear Hermes, Roland Mouret, Tom Ford and Valentino? When a “normal” housewife criticized her #deplorable post she ripped into her with a tone deaf, sarcastic and demeaning response.  Not clear what she was thinking, but later in the day she left it to her publicist to say that she was very sorry.  It’s time for Mnuchin to leave Washington and start shopping for wife number four.  

The Russian Beat Goes On:  Glen Simpson who heads Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that retained former British spy, Christopher Steele, to prepare the infamous Trump dossier spent ten hours testifying in front of a closed door session of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  As part of his testimony he handed 40,000 pages of back-up documents to the committee.  He stood by the contents of the dossier suggesting that it provides a good roadmap for investigating Trump.  Last night he released a letter to the NY Times authorizing the Senate to release the transcripts of his testimony.  FBI investigators are already following that roadmap, ABC news reports that they’ve met with the elusive Christopher Steele and that he provided them with the names of his sources. Trump is right, McConnell should have tried harder to put the kibosh on the collusion investigation.  

Ethics:  Before the Obamacare vote, Interior Secretary Zinke called both of Alaska’s Senators, threatening to withdraw funding for Alaska’s Interior Department projects if Senate Murkowski failed to vote for the Obamacare legislation.  Murkowski wasn’t cowed by the threats, voted against the repeal and both Senators made sure that everyone knew about Zinke’s inappropriate call.  It turns out that those calls were more than inappropriate, the Interior Department Inspector General has now initiated an ethics investigation into Zinke’s actions. Zinke may have some serious explaining to do.