The Moron on Pennsylvania Avenue

Moron-in-Chief:  Yesterday NBC news reported that during a summer meeting focused on Afghanistan strategy Secretary of State Rex Tillerson grew so frustrated with Trump that he called him an effing-moron and then, further outraged by Trump’s woefully inappropriate political speech at the Boy Scouts Jamboree, had to be talked out of resigning by VP Pence and Secretary of Defense Mattis.  Tillerson, a proud former Eagle Scout, who avoids press conferences like the plague, held one yesterday where he denied ever intending to resign, said he was sticking around, and asserted that Trump loves his country, he puts America first and is a really smart guy.  His words were carefully parsed, though he denied that he intended to resign he never denied threatening to, notably he also refused to comment about the report that he had called Trump a moron, saying instead “I’m not going to deal with petty stuff like that.”  Despite the temptation to congratulate Tillerson for calling Trump a moron, his failings are nothing to sneeze at, his decision to prioritize cutting and reorganizing the State Department over hiring competent deputies and undersecretaries has been foolish and his failure to build support among House and Senate foreign policy experts has been shortsighted.  Nevertheless, he is more attuned to the nuances of diplomacy than the “moron” in the White House mostly because everyone is better at diplomacy than the egotistical Trump.  In response to the accusation that he is a moron, a seething Trump affirmed his confidence in Rex calling the multi-sourced story false news and VP Pence said that he never had to convince Tillerson not to resign.  Denials aside, it’s clear that Tillerson and Trump don’t agree about much.  Last weekend, Trump tweet-dissed Tillerson’s efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the North Korean problem, Tillerson’s been left playing clean up over Qatar, pushed away from son-in-law Kushner’s priority countries and Trump ignored his recommendation to stick with the Paris Climate Accords.  Moreover Tillerson was one of the few cabinet members who didn’t support Trump’s Charlottesville statement, the one calling Nazis fine people.  Tillerson does have some supporters, Defense Secretary Mattis wants him to stick around because he need’s his help “managing” Trump.  Senator Corker, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, cited Tillerson, together with Mattis and Chief of Staff Kelly as the three people who “separate our country from chaos” because now that he’s decided that he’s not running for reelection, Corker is perfectly happy to call them like he sees them and he knows a moron when he sees one.  Buzzfeed reports that one US official expressed confidence in Tillerson’s status due to a “suicide pact” forged between Mattis, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Tillerson, whereby all three vow to leave in the event that one of them is fired.  Given his obsequiousness, it’s not clear that Mnuchin would really honor that pact but in any case, unless he is fired by Trump expect Tillerson to try to stick around through his one year anniversary to avoid incurring a hefty tax bill on the sale of his Exxon shares that would kick in if he left any time sooner. For his part, there’s little question that Trump would like to rid himself of Tillerson but he is in a bind, having just gotten rid of fancy flier Price, it’s not clear that he is up for the added upheaval that firing Tillerson would cause, then again Tillerson did call him a moron so it’s likely that Tillerson isn’t long for his administration and will have little if any input into decision making during the rest of his tenure.

Senate Intelligence Update:  Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Burr and Vice Chair Warner provided an impromptu update of the status of their investigation into Russian interference in the election and possible Trump team collusion.  They reported that though they have already interviewed more than 100 people and reviewed more than 400 pages of transcripts and more than 1000 pages of classified documents, they are far from done.  They are absolutely certain that Russian tampering happened and is ongoing and they are very concerned that the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security have no plan to proactively prevent future Russian efforts.  As to collusion, they haven’t finished that part of their investigation, they won’t rule it out but want to be clear that they have no initial findings to discuss. Trump can’t be all that happy that collusion remains on the table. The Senate has also spent a considerable amount of time analyzing the “Steele Dossier” that alleges political and financial ties between Trump and the Russians, trying to verify its components but have been unable to complete their review because they haven’t been able to convince Christopher Steele, it’s author, to agree to an interview.  Reuters reported yesterday that completing the analysis of the dossier and tracking down Steele is now the responsibility of Special Counsel Mueller whose special powers and determination may be a match for Steele’s evasiveness.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:  Sticking to his teleprompter, Trump gave an appropriately somber speech in Las Vegas, thanking first responders for their heroic actions and expressing consolation to survivors and the families of victims.  When asked by a reporter about the issue of gun violence during his visit to a local hospital, he said “We’re not going to talk about that today.” He may be avoiding the topic but Senator Dianne Feinstein, a long-time advocate of gun control, isn’t, she introduced legislation to close the automatic weapons loophole that allows gun owners to convert “legal” semi-automatic rifles into rapid-fire automatic killing machines.  The Las Vegas shooter had converted twelve of his guns into automatic guns using bump stock kits, also known as carnage force multipliers, easily bought at gun stores, and up until yesterday available on Walmart’s website.  A number of Republican Senators such as Majority Whip John Cornyn and Homeland Security Chairman Ron  Johnson have stated that they would consider banning the sale of bump stocks.  Others like Alabama’s Senator Richard Shelby who said I’m a Second Amendment man, I’m not for any gun control, OK? None”  won’t show any flexibility.  Legislation or not, bump stock kits have been selling like hotcakes ever since the Las Vegas rampage over fears that their sale will soon be banned.

Today’s Ironies:  Donny Jr and Ivanka were close to being indicted in 2012 on accusations that they misled prospective buyers of units in the Trump SoHo hotel and condo project that was having a difficult time attracting buyers.  Lawyers in the Manhattan D.A.’s office spent two years building a case that included emails showing that the kids knew they were using inflated figures to attract potential buyers.  Donny Jr even reassured one broker who knew about the inflated sales figures that “nobody would ever find out, because only people on the email chain or in the Trump organization knew about the deception.” Proud of their creative sales practices, Trump saved his kids butts by sending in his bombastic lawyer Marc Kassowitz who leveraged his history of making donations to the Manhattan D.A. to help get the case dropped. What is it about junior Trumps and their email trails and how did this news gem stay hidden while Trump railed at crooked Hillary and her email server?  Just a day after the House of Representatives voted to criminalize abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, Pennsylvania Representative Tim Murphy one of the most vocal anti-abortion members of the House, announced that he will retire at the end of his term, forced out over allegations that the very married Murphy asked his girlfriend to terminate a pregnancy.  Just to be clear, abortions are verboten unless you’re married and the pregnant woman is your girlfriend.     

Puerto Rico Footnote:  Tuesday evening Trump told Fox News that Puerto Rico owes “a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street, and we’re going to have to wipe that out….You can say good bye to that.  I don’t know if it’s Goldman Sachs, but whoever it is, you can wave goodbye to that.”  Trump was talking about Puerto Rico’s $73 billion of bonds and his remarks left Wall Street with the impression that he was going to pressure bondholders to forgive the island’s debt, good news for Puerto Rico but not so good for those who own the bonds.  By Wednesday, as the already heavily discounted Puerto Rican bonds dropped in value, Budget Director Mulvaney backtracked on Trump’s statements by saying that “The primary focus of the federal effort is to make sure the island is safe and that we’re rebuilding the island…..I think what you heard the president say is that Puerto Rico is going to have to figure out a way to solve its debt problem,” his version of don’t pay attention to the what the moron says.  Regardless of whether you believe Trump or Mulvaney, Puerto Rico is running out of money. Bloomberg reports that they are burning through the $1.6 billion they had on hand before the hurricanes hit and that without emergency funding will face a government shutdown on October 31.  So much for Trick or Treat.