Rainy Days and Tweet Storms

Rainy Day Tweets:  Yesterday Trump woke to rain and a NY Times article that said he traffics in “hyperbole, distortion and fabrication on practically a daily basis,” before turning on his the TV to hear Connecticut Senator Blumenthal say that he was on a collision course that could lead to a constitutional crisis. Criticism and a rained out golf game were more than he could take so he responded with a series of tweets that attacked the fake news, failing NY Times and dumped on Blumenthal, the “Viet Nam con artist” for long ago statements that his military experience included service in Viet Nam.  Blumenthal apologized for exaggerating his military service years ago and unlike Trump he actually served in the Marine Reserves for six years but by Trump’s standards he is still a loser.  Blumenthal held his own, going back at Trump and saying he wouldn’t be intimidated by his bullying ways.  Chief of Staff Kelly may have imposed control over the White House staff, but Trump’s tweets fall outside his portfolio so with no moderator in sight, Trump kept tweeting.  He complained that there was no press coverage of the UN vote to impose sanctions on North Korea (there was), and eight hours after his morning tweet attack re-slammed Blumenthal by telling him to vacation in Viet Nam now so “he can say he was there” but failed to tweet any concern about or condemnation of the bombing of a Minnesota Mosque, which the local FBI office called an act of terrorism.      

Climactic Report:  A draft Government report from thirteen federal agencies concludes that climate change is already affecting Americans going on to say that human-caused warming is particularly impacting the Western and Northern US.  The report, required by Congress every four years, is still in draft form and hasn’t been officially released though the NY Times has a copy and published it in today’s paper.  Read the draft because once Trump and his team of climate deniers and science debunkers  gets their hands on it, the authors may be reassigned to parts unknown and the final copy may never see the light of day.  

More False News:  Trump TV is back, anchored by the not so ready for prime time Lara Trump, Eric’s wife.  Lara is producing a number of “Real News” propaganda videos, funded by the campaign cash not allocated to Trump’s Russia collusion defense fund.  Her amateurish videos got a boost yesterday when she was joined by Trump defender Kayleigh McEnany who just left CNN to join the Republican National Committee as its new voice.  If you tire of Kayleigh and Lara’s reports, depending on where you live, you can always tune into your local Sinclair TV station for Bottom Line with Boris, as in Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s erstwhile spokesperson who is now an employee of Sinclair Broadcasting.  One of Boris’ recent “unbiased” opinion pieces claims that former security adviser Michael Flynn is being pursued by the FBI because they have a personal vendetta against him.  Sinclair is a large media group that owns local stations across the country including a number of local NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox channels.  Sinclair mandates that its local stations broadcast Sinclair approved stories and segments, including Epshteyn’s Trump friendly, Mueller bashing pieces.  If you aren’t in an area with a Sinclair station, don’t despair, Sinclair may be coming to a neighborhood near you.  They are close to getting Trump approved FCC waivers to acquire a large number of Tribune stations which will result in them owning TV stations covering 72% of the US market.  Fox’s Rupert Murdoch isn’t happy about the conservative competition and the possibility that Sinclair might launch a rival conservative cable news channel to complement their local station dominance, with programs starring former Fox star Bill O’Reilly and current Fox star and Trump’s number one supporter Sean Hannity.  FOX is considering removing their local stations from the Sinclair orbit.  Sadly, viewers in Sinclair dominated markets may not even realize that their news programs are skewed and given Sinclair’s growing dominance will have fewer options.  

Sanctuaries Fight Back:  Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department is targeting so-called sanctuary cities by threatening to withhold federal grant money from any cities that refuse to cooperate with INS efforts to round up and report undocumented immigrants.  For the most part these cities do cooperate with regard to violent felons but don’t turnover others who are involved in lesser offenses or who they encounter during routine community and crime fighting activities.  Among other things the local police are concerned that actively helping with the deportation of undocumented  immigrants diminishes their crime fighting efforts in local immigrant communities by eroding trust and cooperation.  Chicago has filed a lawsuit that accuses the Justice Department of forcing the city to police undocumented immigrants in a way that “would violate peoples’ rights, damage public trust and make the cities less safe.”  California Governor Jerry Brown says that though he wants some changes he would support a state bill that would make all of California a sanctuary.

McTargeting McMaster:  The Bannon led war against National Security Adviser McMaster continues.  Last week Breitbart News, the right wing media and an assortment of conspiracy theorists and bots attacked him for being anti-Israel.  Trump swatted that accusation away on Friday so now they are going after him for working for a thinktank that supported Obama’s efforts to pass the Iran nuclear agreement and, horror of horrors, received some funding from that Jewish internationalist George Soros.  Not only can’t General Kelly control Trump’s tweets, but he still hasn’t managed to cut off Steve Bannon.    

More Polls:  For what it’s worth Trump’s favorability ratings are taking a hit.  According to a very recent CNN poll, 59% of Americans believe Trump’s presidency has been a failure and strong approval among Republicans has dropped from 73% to 59%.  To state the obvious, Trump’s strategy of appealing only to his narrowing base may not be bearing fruit.  Between the new polls and the growing Mueller investigation, all indications point to another tweet tsunami.