No Latkes For You

Human Resources:  Dina Powell, the former Goldman Sachs partner who originally joined the Trump team to serve as Ivanka’s adviser before moving over to HR McMaster’s National Security team, has announced that she will be leaving to return to her family in New York.  Powell, an Arabic speaker, has worked on Middle East issues and reportedly will continue to help out from afar.  At one point it had been suggested that she would be promoted to UN Ambassador if Nikki Haley were to be promoted to Secretary of State.  However, Haley is no longer up for promotion since that position is expected to go to CIA head Mike Pompeo as soon as Secretary Tillerson gets the boot, probably early next year.  Still Powell shouldn’t give up all hope about getting a NYC position, the UN job could still be hers.  While defending Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel this weekend, Haley responded to a question about sexual harassment by saying that the women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct have a right to be heard, contradicting press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders who said “the people of this country addressed the allegations” when they elected Trump.  As to Jerusalem, Haley said that Trump’s “courageous decision” will speed up the Middle East peace process. Right now that peace remains elusive, demonstrations against the move broke out throughout the Middle East this weekend and didn’t stop there.  A synagogue in Gothenburg, Sweden was firebombed by masked men calling for the death of Jews.  Mike Pence is headed to the Middle East to visit the West Bank, Israel and Egypt and though his trip is still on, Palestinian leader Abbas has cancelled a planned meeting.   

Moore Men Behaving Badly:  Trump is all in on Moore.  He rallied for him in Pensacola, he’s formally endorsed him, he plans to send out a robo call before the election and he’s made it clear that a vote for Moore is a vote for Trump, a meaningful position in a state that he won by almost 30%.  As to Moore the more we learn about him the worse he sounds.  In September when asked when America was last great, he reached back to those hunky dory pre Civil War days saying “I think it was great at the time when families were united, even though we had slavery, they cared for one another…Our families were strong, our country had a direction.” He’s also on record supporting Trump’s BFF Putin because of their mutual disapproval of same sex marriage.  A few Republicans including Alabama’s other Senator, Richard Shelby, are out of step with Trump.  Shelby told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he has already voted and that vote wasn’t for Moore because Alabama can do better and Senator Susan Collins said that she never supported Moore even before the harassment allegations citing his removal from the Alabama court, his anti-LBGT position and his disparaging anti-Muslim comments.  Sadly it’s not clear that Alabama’s voters care what they think, Moore is holding his own in the polls and absent a very large pro-Doug Jones turnout, particularly among African Americans and a sudden attack of conscience by Republican soccer moms, Moore will win the Tuesday election.  Don’t expect anyone to move into Detroit Congressman Conyers’ seat anytime soon. Michigan’s Republic Governor, Rick Snyder, announced that he will leave the seat vacant until the 2018 elections, depriving Democrats of a reliable vote during the intervening months. Arizona Republican Trent Franks is also out.  Speaker Paul Ryan told him he had to go once he learned that Franks had pressed a few of his aides to bear his child, it turns out that Franks’ fundamentalist views prohibit  in vitro fertilization but are okay with Handmaid’s Tale style impregnation. Communications Director Hope Hicks spent two days with Special Counsel Mueller last week.  Hope’s been getting a lot of attention lately.  First former Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski disclosed that she also serves as Trump’s pants presser, then we learned that she intermediates between Don Jr and his dad.  On Friday we found out that the FBI visited her several times after Trump took office to warn her that she was being targeted by Russian cut outs who were trying to befriend her in an attempt to get inside the White House decision making process.  Given her close relationship with Trump, it’s hard to imagine that she didn’t share the FBI’s concerns, making Trump’s assertions that the whole Russian interference thing is fake news that much more ridiculous.  

Tax Update: Though it’s not entirely clear that it matters, Senator Collins has moved from yes to maybe on the tax bill.  Perhaps because her office has been inundated with protests, she is now waiting to see what the bill includes when it emerges from Conference Committee. Collins still seems to believe that the promises that she extracted from Majority Leader McConnell to pass Obamacare fix legislation and to leave Medicare funding intact are going to be honored.  In other words she remains delusional.   Even if she moves to the no column, it would take a switch by another Senator or a loss by Alabama molester Moore to make a difference because as of now the only definitive Republican no vote comes from Bob Corker and it would take three Republican no votes to sink the bill.  Unless plans change, the tax bill is not expected back on the House floor until next week.  All the usual issues, including the deductibility of state and local taxes, the level and effective date of corporate tax cuts and the alternative minimum tax are under discussion. Given the delicate budget balancing game, its looking likely that the final bill will keep the Senate version’s elimination of the Obamacare mandate, but that’s not certain either.  No doubt a myriad of other special interest provisions and “fixes” are also being bandied about.  Trump and Republican leadership are desperate to get tax reform done, so whatever emerges, flawed or not, they will do their best to force it through.

Snafus:  With Trump and his surrogates quick to pounce on any journalist errors, reporters are getting a better understanding of what security professionals go through on a daily basis, one mistake and KABOOM.  Last week a few mistakes were made and Trump pounced, yesterday he tweeted “Very little discussion of all the purposely false and defamatory stories put out this week by the Fake News Media. They are out of control - correct reporting means nothing to them. Major lies written, then forced to be withdrawn after they are exposed...a stain on America!”  He was capitalizing on CNN’s mistaken report that Don Jr had received an email directing him to the DNC emails before they were published by WikiLeaks, Junior did receive that email, but the reporter’s source missed that the email was too late, WikiLeaks had released their DNC dump one day earlier.  Trump called it “viscous and purposeful.” He also called for the dismissal of a Washington Post reporter for a private tweet of a picture of a nearly empty hall in Pensacola, a tweet the reporter deleted once he was told that the crowds were still outside waiting to come in. Trump who takes his crowd size very seriously was irate. He also went apoplectic on ABC for reporting that he had told Michael Flynn to reach out to Russians during the campaign, a serious allegation that caused a temporary stock market selloff, before ABC corrected the story to say that the direction to Flynn took place once Trump was president-elect.  The CNN and WashPo reporters have survived their mistakes but the ABC reporter is on a temporary suspension. With Trump willing to go on the attack over even minor mishaps and with his supporters trying to set traps, the press has to be extra careful but so not so fearful that Trump’s misdeeds aren’t reported.  One of molester Moore’s accusers learned that lesson the hard way too, because she had annotated the page that he had signed in her year book, Moore’s supporters doubled down on their accusations that she was lying about her Moore experience and that his signature in her book had been forged.  Handwriting experts have confirmed that the signature in the book is his and her story remains compelling, but she is getting bashed and has received death threats. It’s not just the press and the harassment victims, Trump’s minions in the House are also ramping up their attack on the FBI and Special Counsel Mueller.  Trump’s strategy, abetted by Breitbart and other like-minded news outlets is frighteningly effective. 

Mississippi Burning:  Bucking tradition, the White House kept their Hanukah party partisan, leaving Jewish Democrats off the latke list.  As a result only two Jewish legislators were in attendance, Republicans Lee Zeldin of Long Island and David Kustoff of Tennessee. Though invited to the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights museum, a number of Civil Rights leaders, including Representative John Lewis, the civil rights icon who marched with Martin Luther King and who had been scheduled to deliver the keynote speech, stayed away citing Trump’s tendency to stir racial divisions and his questionable record on civil rights issues.  Sarah Huckabee Sanders criticized “these members of Congress” for failing to honor the “incredible sacrifice” of “civil rights leaders.”  Apparently the clueless Sanders has no idea that Lewis was one of those civil rights leaders who was being honored nor did she know that he led the freedom march from Selma to Montgomery and was beaten, left bloody and unconscious crossing the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge.  Instead of joining Trump, Lewis joined New Jersey Senator Corey Booker and former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick in Alabama where they urged black voters to turn out and vote for Alabama’s Democratic candidate Jones.