How Low Can He Go?

Lower and Lower:  Yesterday, Trump dragged the death of Chief of Staff General Kelly’s son into this week’s episode of how low can you go.  In order to defend his comment that he was the only president who routinely called soldier families after they died serving the country, he said that Obama hadn’t called the Kelly family after their son was killed in combat in Afghanistan.  Technically, he may be correct, but the Obamas hosted a dinner for Gold Star families not long after Kelly’s son was killed where Kelly was seated with first lady Michelle Obama.  In any case Kelly is very private about his son’s death and purposely doesn’t discuss his family tragedy in public.  No one from the White House, especially Kelly, knew that Trump was going to bring up the Kelly family experience.  Notably Kelly, who usually is close by Trump’s side during press conferences and meetings with foreign dignitaries, was absent yesterday when Trump and Greek Prime Minister Tsipras held a brief post meeting press event. Tsipras was too busy digging himself out of a comment he’d made during the 2016 election where he had called Trump evil to notice Kelly’s absence. Trump did finally call the families of the four Green Berets who were killed in Niger, though to date no one from the administration has explained what they were doing in Niger.  One of the wives he called was in a car on the way to meet her husband’s body, unfortunately for Trump the pregnant mother of two was with her local Democratic Congresswoman who overheard Trump’s not so consoling words.  Proving once again that he lacks the compassion gene, Trump said to the grieving spouse your husband “knew what he signed up for but I guess it still hurts.” Yup, it still hurts, bigly.  Trump was all in on veterans yesterday, responding to Senator McCain’s Monday night take down of Trumpism, he threatened McCain, the man he doesn’t respect because he was a prisoner of war for five years, by warning him to “be careful because at some point he will strike back.”  McCain, who has more pressing things to worry about, was not shaking in his boots but he did snap at a Fox Reporter who asked him if he would vote against all Trump supported bills because of their ongoing feud, telling him on camera in front of all the competing networks that was the dumbest question he’d ever heard.  Despite his disdain for Trump, the conservative McCain announced yesterday that he would support the Republican’s current budget resolution. Notwithstanding his tweet attacks,  Trump’s other favorite target, kneeling football players, will be allowed to keep kneeling.  NFL owners have capitulated to player demands that they be allowed to continue exercising their rights of free expression despite Trump’s attempts to equate their protest against racial inequality with disrespect for the military. The football players, several of whom have other behavioral issues, have not told any grieving family members of fallen soldiers that they knew what they signed up for.  

Health Confusion:  Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray emerged from their weeks of on again, off again negotiation to authorize funding for Obamacare insurance subsidy payments with a bipartisan agreement that included concessions from both sides of the aisle.  In exchange for authorization for the funding of subsidies past the midterm elections through to 2019, Democrats agreed to provide States with more flexibility.  The plan calls for faster approval of state waivers for locally designed plans as long as those plans included essential services and have “comparable affordability,” which is a concession to the current requirement that plans be “as affordable,” a distinction that only they understand.  The plan would also allow consumers over thirty to buy catastrophic health insurance plans and would provide $106 million in funding to support Obamacare enrollment.  Trump started the day by repeating that Obamacare was dead, then when told that Alexander and Murray had reached an agreement, he said that it wasn’t dead, that he fully supported their plan and briefly took credit for the success of their negotiation.  First he categorized it as a bipartisan effort, before then calling it a Republican plan with reluctant support from the obstructionist Democrats.  Those obstructionist Democrats are likely to line up behind the plan, but Republican leadership appears less supportive and a number of Republicans, including Trump’s own Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short, were caught “short” by Trump’s support for the agreement.  They just want to see Obamacare die, so they are in opposition to any agreement that sustains Obamacare for another two years.  As the day wore on, Trump’s position changed so many times that it’s not clear where he or the plan stands.  Bottom line, it’s too early to conclude that the grenade that Trump through into Obamacare by precipitously ending the subsidy payments has been defused.      

Back on Hold:  The newest version of Trump’s Travel Ban, the one that largely targets Muslims, was due to go into effect today but now it’s largely back on hold.  Yesterday, a federal judge in Hawaii issued a nationwide order freezing most of the travel ban, the third iteration of Trump’s efforts to meet his campaign promise to keep Muslim terrorists and criminals out of the country.  The judge ruled that this version of the ban “suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor” in that it “plainly discriminates based on nationality” in a way that undercuts “the founding principles of this Nation.”  Ironically, the only part of the ban that can move forward is the ban on travelers from North Korea and Venezuela, the two non-Muslim countries that were added to the third version of the ban to make it more palatable to the courts.  This part of the ban has little effect since few if any North Koreans travel to the US and the Venezuelan ban only applies to government officials.  To no one’s surprise, the Justice Department is appealing the Hawaii court’s decision.    

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Former Press Secretary and liar extraordinaire Sean Spicer spent the better part of his Monday hanging with Special Counsel Mueller.  In all likelihood, Spicer stuck to the truth and nothing but the truth, whatever that is, during his meeting especially since Mueller had copies of the notebooks filled with his “copious” notes from his days in the White House.  Spicer, another one of those White House staff members that Trump treated with disdain, was probably very forthcoming.  The press shy Mueller team has also met with Keith Kellogg, the official who temporarily replaced former security adviser Mike Flynn before General McMaster took over Flynn’s role and Matt Tait, the cyber expert, who wrote an article about the time he was “recruited to collude with the Russians.”  Tait’s article detailed GOP operative Peter Smith’s efforts to recruit him to help locate Hillary Clinton’s “missing emails” during the campaign.  Mueller will not be interviewing Smith who committed suicide earlier this year days after telling a Wall Street Journal reporter about his “Flynn authorized” quest.