WikiWhat

The Spinner in Chief: Trump may not have mastered the art of the deal but he does seem to be the master of the spin cycle.  Citing the wild applause that he received at his lunch with Senate Republicans as evidence that he is more loved than ever and that Republicans are way more united than the Democrats, he dismissed Senator Flake’s critical speech and decision not to run again as a big nothing.  He even said that until a few months ago he didn’t even know who Senator Flake was and that the first time he heard him speak, he thought he was one of those dreaded Democrats. The very conservative Flake, who votes the party line more than 90% of the time, would probably be horrified to know that Trump thought he was a Berniac. Trump’s Mr. Outside, Steve Bannon, celebrated the Flake announcement by saying “another day, another scalp.”  As he was leaving for a trip to inspect hurricane relief in friendly Texas, Trump held one of his impromptu White House lawn pressers.  Responding to a question about accusations that he was responsible for a decline in civility, Trump said that any lack of civility was due to the way that he was treated by the press, boasting that he was an Ivy league graduate and very smart but when attacked he had to counterpunch because that’s what Ivy league guys do. The Wharton School may want to rethink their curriculum.  In response to another question about Sgt. Johnson’s bereaved wife’s insistence that his remarks to her weren’t nice and that he couldn’t remember her husband’s name, Trump couldn’t just let it go, instead saying that she was wrong because he couldn’t have been any nicer and besides he’s got a great memory.  So just to be clear, Trump wants us all to know that contrary to assertions and rumors he isn’t a moron, nor does he have early onset Alzheimer’s.  And then before stepping on his helicopter, he went after Hillary and the Democrats by calling the alleged Uranium affair worse than Watergate and the Democrats’ funding of the Christopher Steele dossier just more indications that the Russian related accusations against his team are part of the biggest hoax ever.   Senate Judiciary Chairman Grassley from Iowa, who Trump has been cultivating with corn ethanol friendly regulations, has been impeding Justice Committee investigation into Russian related issues but is jumping on the Uranium-Watergate analogy.  Tuesday night he’s called on the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the  Obama-era deal.  Also on Tuesday, the Senate approved legislation killing a new rule allowing class action lawsuits against banks. Senators Corker, Flake and McCain all voted with the majority, sadly proving that their conservative principles “trump” their concerns about Trump.  Two Republicans, Senators Graham and Kennedy voted with the Democrats; VP Pence cast the deciding vote.    

Healthcare Fix:  The Congressional Budget Office scoring report is out for the Alexander-Murray Obamacare fix and this time the scorers have some good news.  They project that the bill would save the government $3.8 billion from 2018 to 2027 without changing the number of people with health insurance coverage.  The fix calls for the reinstatement of the Obamacare insurance subsidies that Trump likes to misleadingly call bailout payments for insurance companies.  Since a federal judge ruled that the administration doesn’t need to resume making those payments while several lawsuits make their way through the courts, the Alexander-Murray fix provides the best chance to stabilize the insurance markets and the scoring report provides a compelling argument that the fix should be passed.  Nevertheless, Majority Leader McConnell won’t proceed without Trump’s blessing and, at least for now, he’s still not interested. This may be another one of those things that Chuck and Nancy seek to attach to the year-end funding resolution, right next to the DACA fix.     

WikiWhat:  The Daily Beast reports that Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, the billionaire Mercer family funded data analytics firm that the Trump Campaign used upon the recommendation of Steve Bannon, sent an email to several people including Rebekah Mercer, telling them that he had emailed WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange seeking access to emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server to turn them into a searchable database for the campaign or a pro-Trump political action committee.  Assange confirms that he was contacted by Nix but denied that he provided him with the Clinton emails. The assertion that the Trump campaign was seeking out the Clinton emails is consistent with earlier reports that Peter Smith, a Republican operator, was also seeking the emails. The White House responded to the Daily Beast article by releasing a statement that downplayed the campaign’s use of Cambridge Analytica’s services and said that “any claims that voter data from any other source played a key role in the victory are false,” an odd non-denial denial which focuses on the value of the data in aiding Trump’s election win rather than just outright denying that they had sought or received outside data.  It’s worth remembering that Trump called for WikiLeaks to release Hillary information countless times during the campaign and applauded WikiLeak’s release of the hacked Podesta emails.  Downplaying the relationship with Cambridge falls into the Trump playbook alongside claims that Paul Manafort only headed his campaign for a minute, that he never met Carter Page, that Michael Flynn was only a short term advisor and that he knew no Russians.      

Jane Doe:  Despite the best efforts of the Trump administration’s morality police, “Jane Doe,” the 17 year old Central American held in an immigration detention center, was allowed to proceed with the termination of her pregnancy.  Despite repeated allegations by Fox News that the government was being forced to “illegally” pay for her abortion, her procedure was privately funded. Sadly, this probably won’t be the last time that anti-choice activists try to stand in the way of a woman’s right to choose.  A draft Health and Human Services report calls for women to choose abstinence or “fertility awareness” over the birth control pill which they bizarrely assert doesn’t work.  Fertility awareness, which used to be called the rhythm method, has a 24% failure rate. To date, Congress hasn’t passed the renewal of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), is on the verge of passing a budget outline that calls for a huge cut in Medicaid services, another major funder of children’s health care services, and all this is occurring while the Department of Health and Human services is advocating fertility awareness.