Trump on Race

Trump on Race:  When the young African American and Hispanic guys who became known as the Central Park Five were arrested for the rape of the Central Park jogger, Trump ran an ad calling for the death penalty to be reinstated.  The crime was heinous, but the call for the death penalty seemed extreme, even at a time when most people thought the Central Park Five were guilty.  After seven years in prison, the five were exonerated based on a combination of DNA evidence and the detailed confession of a serial rapist.  Still last year Trump insisted that contrary to the facts, in his eyes the Central Park Five remain guilty.  So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that his first reaction to the Charlottesville tragedy was to assume that the counter protestors were as much at fault for Saturday’s murder and injuries as the White supremacists.  Yesterday morning, facing mounting criticism and pressure from his advisers, he finally read a conciliatory statement off a teleprompter, calling out the KKK, the White supremacists, the Nazis and “other” hate groups but not before first bragging about the number of jobs his administration had created since January.  And not before he tweet attacked Ken Frazier, the African American CEO of Merck who resigned from Trump’s American Manufacturing Council in protest to Trump’s tone deaf reaction to Charlottesville.   Really, even before he made his morning statement, Trump tweeted “Now that Ken Frazier….has resigned…, he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES.”  Notwithstanding Trump’s tweet attack, Frazier is not standing alone, last night he was joined by two more CEO’s, Under Armour’s Kevin Plank and Intel’s Brian Krzanich, who weren’t all that impressed with Trump’s anemic and delayed response to Saturday’s events, they’ve withdrawn from the council, too.  As to the neo-Nazi crowd, their online publication, The Daily Stormer lost its domain name when GoDaddy gave them the boot for violating its terms of service agreement by publishing a derogatory story about Heather Heyer, the Charlottesville victim who lost her life.  The Daily Stormer, which calls itself the “the world’s most genocidal Republican website,” then tried moving its domain to Google who also gave it the boot.  Trump, who this weekend told Fox News that he might pardon ex-Sheriff Arpaio who was convicted of illegally detaining Hispanic immigrants, will have to search a little harder to find those racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic memes he likes so much.   

North Korea Detente: In a joint Wall Street Journal op-ed Defense Secretary Mattis and Secretary of State Tillerson said that with the support of the international community the US is “applying diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea to achieve the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”  They go on to say that “we are replacing the failed policy of ‘strategic patience,’ which expedited the North Korean threat, with a new policy of strategic accountability.”  So with the help of China, who announced promised cutbacks in trade with North Korea yesterday, we are back to the big stick and carrot approach to North Korea except that now it’s being called something new. Few experts believe the denuclearization part is really going to happen, but tough international sanctions combined with diplomacy may already be taking us off the current cliff.  North Korea’s UN, Russian and Chinese ambassadors were recalled to Pyongyang for some quality time with Kim Jong Un and his generals and, at least for now, Kim has called off his threat to shoot those missiles over to Guam though he “reserves the right to change his mind if the Yankees persist in their extremely dangerous reckless actions.”

Falling Star:  Security advisor HR McMaster’s star is rising at the expense of Steve Bannon, who’s star is circling the drain. At least for now competency is winning out over xenophobia.  The New York Times reports that Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, a good friend of Jared and Ivanka and a sometime Trump confidante, told Trump that it is time for Bannon to go.  And billionaire, pro-Israel advocate Sheldon Adelson disavowed reports that he ever questioned McMaster’s support for Israel and is now aligning himself with the pro-McMaster camp.  Bannon still has many supporters among Trump’s base and the support of some in Congress including Freedom Caucus leader Mark Meadows and immigration hardliner Steve King and his overall philosophy matches Trump’s, so it’s not clear that whether he is out or in one of those cyclical troughs.  

The Investigation Percolates:  Nothing about current events is distracting Special Counsel Mueller from his ongoing investigation.  He plans to interview a number of Trump associates and former White House officials including former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Trump’s long-time assistant Rhona Graff, who was named in the email string related to the infamous “Russian Lawyer” meeting and who is still the go-to person for anyone seeking a meeting with Trump. Mueller is also expected to interview George Papadopoulos, who was one of the younger members of Trump’s much vaunted but extraordinarily inexperienced campaign foreign policy team.  A recent email dump reveals that he sent at least seven members of the Trump team emails entitled “Meeting with Russian Leadership – Including Putin” in an effort to organize such a meeting. To Paul Manafort’s credit he’s on record responding that he didn’t think it was appropriate for Trump to participate in such a meeting though he didn’t say whether it would be appropriate for someone else from the campaign to attend in his place.  Jared Kushner’s life may have just gotten a little more complicated as well.  Israeli billionaire Beny Steimetz, a source of some of Kushner’s real estate funding has been arrested in Israel for fraud and other business irregularities that are alleged to involve real estate related money laundering in an “unnamed country.”  Investigation of Trump’s real estate dealings is also proceeding.  This week’s New Yorker details a murky branding transaction between the Trump Organization and a corrupt financier from the Republic of Georgia.  Trump isn’t happy that this deal is getting attention.   His less than affable legal spokesman Jay Sekulow’s response is that the “Georgia real estate deal is something we would consider out of scope.” Adding “Georgia is not Russia,” which may be an admission that the deal really is hinky and worth investigating.

   

Fake Press Conference:  It wasn’t the really bigly press conference that he promised on Friday but the press was present when Trump signed an executive order to pursue trade investigation of Chinese theft of US intellectual property.  After signing his order, an unhappy and frustrated Trump refused to answer any questions about Charlottesville or his morning statement but did yell at the press for pushing Fake News, echoing the message delivered in an advertisement for his 2020 reelection campaign that he released this weekend. Reelection campaign, oy.