Trump Fatigue

The Week That Was:  This was the week that Trump proved how vindictive and implacable he can be. Ballistic about accusations that he is unmanageable, increasingly unhinged, juvenile and moronic he decided to give credence to the reports. Though he advocated really good health care during his campaign, infuriated by his failure to get Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare, he launched a lethal grenade in its direction.  Though most of his advisors and all of the other signatories urged him to recertify the multi-party Iran agreement, a pact that he had campaigned against largely because of its association with Obama, he refused to go along, setting the stage for its possible dissolution in a few months.  Angry that the burgeoning humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico couldn’t be swept away with a pronouncement that all was going great, he threatened to pull aid from the “bankrupt” US island.  And so Trump the reality show, the one that you really don’t want to watch anymore and certainly don’t want to live, goes on.

A Moment of Wonkiness:  Obamacare was structured to provide health insurance for everyone not covered by an employee plan, Medicaid, or Medicare.  Under Obamacare, to the extent that they are lucky enough to live in a state that opted for the Medicaid Extension, insurance for lower income people who don’t qualify for Medicaid is provided through the extension.  Until Friday, premiums for the rest of the “working poor” were subsidized by cost sharing payments made to insurance companies.  When Obamacare was drafted the language authorizing the payments was vague so some Obamacare opponents sued claiming the payments were illegal, a court agreed with them, with a higher court determining that the Federal government could continue making the payments while the case traveled through the courts or until a legislative fix was enacted.  Obama continued to make these payments while he was in office.  Trump groused about the subsidies but continued to make the payments while the Obamacare Repeal/Replace tango continued.  Now that the music has stopped, he’s nuked the payments, in the hope that he can hasten Obamacare’s demise or bring Nancy and Chuck to the table to get them to agree to dismantle most of Obamacare, something that isn’t going to happen. Senators Alexander and Murray tried to come up with a bipartisan solution ensuring the payments would continue, but their on again off again cha cha still hasn’t come up with a solution.  For their part, Nancy and Chuck aren’t interested in dancing to Trump’s tune and aren’t interested in doing anything more than “fixing” Obamacare and reinstating the payments, though at this point they would settle for just reinstating the payments. They aren’t alone, Republican Governor Sandoval and Senator Susan Collins are calling for the payments to be reinstated and eighteen states are suing.  In the meantime Trump’s threatening talk and actions have already resulted in large premium increases, above those that would have been expected ordinarily. Ten of the eleven states seeing the most dramatic increases are “red” states that didn’t opt for the Medicaid expansion and voted for Trump and 70% of the people who benefited from the subsidies live in those states.  Obamacare’s demise is now Trump’s problem             

Persian Troubles:  Citing Iran’s nefarious activities, their danger to world peace, their long term nuclear aspirations and their ballistic missile program, Trump announced that he won’t recertify that Iran is in compliance with the terms of the pact that his security advisors, Defense Secretary Mattis and Secretary of State Tillerson say that they are meeting. Under pressure from Tillerson and Mattis, he stopped just short of pulling out of the pact altogether, instead tossing it back to a less than eager Congress. Initially it looked like Trump was acting on his own judgement but it turns out that he’s been getting advice from a few soulmates, including UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Bush era UN Ambassador John Bolton, who has managed to keep talking with Trump even though Chief of Staff Kelly has tried to cut off his phone privileges.  Both Haley and Bolton have been pushing Trump to walk from the pact.  Haley may be auditioning for Secretary of State, and her view here accounts for some of the reason that she and Secretary of State Tillerson have been butting heads.   Congress has sixty days to come up with a plan.  They can leave the pact alone, in which case Trump is threatening he will walk away, or they can reimpose sanctions in which case Iran might walk away, or they can attempt to come up with some middle ground, which won’t be easy. Senator Corker, head of the Foreign Relations Committee, who said that one of his biggest concerns is that Trump is publicly castrating Tillerson, is now working on a plan together with Senator Cotton to fix the pact’s flaws. The Republican duo's proposal would "effectively" eliminate the pact’s sunset, instituting an automatic reinstatement of penalties if Iran comes within a year of nuclear capability. Their planned bill would also enhance verification authority for international inspectors and "limit Iran's advanced centrifuge program." Corker told reporters that he expects the current requirement for Trump to certify Iran's compliance every 90 days to be "far less relevant if his legislation passes." To the extent that he is still around, the castrated Tillerson would then have to try to work with European allies, China and Russia to gain their support before approaching Iran.  Another one of those really complicated, if not impossible, things.

Russia, Russia, Russia:  While Trump’s been busy dismantling health care and chipping away at global cooperation,  Special Counsel Mueller and his team have stayed busy on other things.  Yesterday, former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus’ lawyer reported that Priebus had a “happy” time being interviewd by the Mueller team.  His tenure at the White House must have been really traumatic for Priebus to call a whole day being interrogated by a the gotcha squad a happy time. Preibus spending anytime with Mueller’s team is a concern for Trump and his lawyers. As chief of staff Priebus was present or in close proximity for many of the Trump meetings now under the Mueller microscope, including the discussions about the firing of former FBI Director Comey, the tete-a-tete with the Russian duo Kislyak and Lavrov and the time when when Trump asked Comey to lay off former security advisor Flynn. He also would have been privy to an interesting trove of  White House documents.  Trump was never particularly nice to Priebus so it’s hard to believe that Priebus would be all that interested in falling on his sword or spending time behind bars for Trump. One guy who maybe spending some quality time behind bars is former campaign manager Paul Manafort.  Last night Richard Engel, NBC’s intrepid international correspondant, reported the results of his investigation into Manafort’s finances.  He has uncovered bank records indicating that Manafort received “loans” totalling more than $60 million from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, one of Putin’s close cronies. Since it’s not unusual for Russian oligarchs laundering money in the US to characterize their fund transfers as loans this could be another big legal problem for Manafort.  Manafort’s close ties to Deripaska combined with his eagerness to serve as Trump’s campaign manager without asking for any compensation for his services, and his promise to provide Deripaska with regular “Trump” updates is looking more and more suspiscous.  In the depressing event, yikes, that Trump is around for another election he may want to consider hiring people who want to get paid in dollars by Americans.        

Endpoint:  The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Family Research Council as a hate group, calling  it the “rogues gallery of the radical right” which may explain why Trump was comfortable speaking at their convention on Friday.  While there he took back his threat to pull aid away from Puerto Rico, forgot that he was President of the Virgin Islands, bragged about his many legislative accomplishments but failed to name one, denied that he ever planned to do anything constructive in his first one hundred days, and with the holiday season just around the corner, attacked everyone and anyone who uses the word holiday instead of Christmas.  I am in bigly trouble! Trump’s in trouble too, by miring Congress in the Iran deal, a DACA fix, another round of the health care jig, and facing the need for another funding bill by year end, he’s probably pushed any hope of tax reform, and by tax reform think tax cuts for him and his donors, off until next year.