Not That Alice

Alice Still Lives Here:  Next time you read an article criticizing US involvement in Syria, the actions of the FBI, racial discord in the US or attacks on Trump, check the name of the author.  If the article’s author is Alice Donovan, stop reading, you’ve been trolled.  Yesterday, in a comprehensive article chronicling Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaign, the Washington Post revealed that Alice Donovan, the author of countless articles about subjects ranging from US politics to defense of Russia’s actions in Crimea, is really one of Russia’s many bots, and a convincing, well-spoken one at that.  The article details Russia’s long term and depressingly successful efforts at fostering discord in the US and Europe, a cheap and effective way to hinder democracies at a time when the Kremlin’s financial resources were growing more limited.  Although the Europeans took the Russian disinformation campaign seriously, initially our inherent sense of superiority and naive confidence that truth would win out, limited the US response.  The Obama administration was first skeptical of the breadth of the attacks and then concerned about reacting too aggressively especially fearing that taking action during the end of the 2016 election cycle would raise more problems than it solved.  The Obama administration did leave Trump with a plan of action, however, given Trump’s attitudes towards Russia and his BFF Putin, his thin skinned response to any suggestion that the Russians meddled in the election that he won, and the somewhat unsurprising battles over who in the Trump White House should take on the lead responsibility to combat future Russian interference, Russia’s disinformation campaign continues, Alice Donovan is still getting her articles published and our elections remain vulnerable to interference in ways that we might not discover until after the fact.  And that little dispute between Trump and the FBI, it, like the racial discord after Charlottesville and the “taking of the knee” movement are being further amplified by Alice and her friends.  For his part, Trump just wants to improve his relationship with the Kremlin so he celebrates the sharing of US intelligence, brags about preventing a terrorist attack in St Petersburg but leaves the US systems vulnerable to interference by Putin and his Russians, who never stopped their cyberattacks, and other nefarious state players like North Korea who may seek to follow the Russian path.  

Obamacare Still Lives Too:  Before heading out to “work” on the golf course Trump once again tweet smacked Obamacare:  “Based on the fact that the very unfair and unpopular Individual Mandate has been terminated as part of our Tax Cut Bill, which essentially Repeals (over time) ObamaCare, the Democrats and Republicans will eventually come together and develop a great new HealthCare plan.” In just one tweet he revealed how much he doesn’t know and how much he doesn’t care about health care in America.  Though injured, Obamacare isn’t dead, if anything it’s more popular than ever. Focusing on and concerned about Republican prospects in the 2018 midterm elections, Senate Majority Mitch McConnell has announced that he wants the Senate to move past repealing and replacing Obamacare, prefering instead to stabilize the insurance markets by passing some form of the Alexander-Murray plan, the approach that he promised to Senator Collins. Trump’s tweet also baffled his own White House staff, their plan is to sidestep contentious issues like repealing health insurance by pivoting back to Infrastructure, in the hope that a more popular subject will win some  bipartisan support positioning the Republican party to peform better in what is increasingly looking like a tough midterm election. The unprogrammable Trump must have missed that memo.  As to the 2018 elections, McConnell wants to throw support behind more mainstream candidates in order to avoid another Moore debacle, however, Trump doesn’t appear to be on board with that plan either.  With Steve Bannon whispering in one ear and the other one tuned in to Fox News, Trump endorsed right wing Congressman Ron DeSantis for Governor of Florida.  DeSantis’ chief  qualification for the job is that he is a frequent and vocal critic of Special Counsel Mueller’s Russia investigation who early on called for a limitation on the investigation’s funding. He also supported the ill-fated Moore candidacy. DeSantis was one of the representatives who flew with Trump to his all in for Moore Pensacola rally. Trump isn’t the only one who isn’t on board with the infrastructure plan, having achieved his goal of cutting taxes, House Speaker Ryan wants to move on to an overhaul of welfare programs and Medicaid, and would even like to tackle the partial privatization of Medicare, a particularly strange brew to take up in an election year but having just blown a $1.5 trillion hole in the budget, Ryan is hypermotivated to continue with the second leg of his long term plan.  Ryan, McConnell, and Trump are scheduled to have a sit down at the White House to discuss legislative strategy very soon, it should be a very animated discussion.             

Mueller Lives Too:  Efforts to muddy Mueller and the FBI continue.  Yesterday, former Congressman Chaffetz, now a Fox commentator, spoke about the infamous Steele Dossier on Fox and Friends calling it “bogus” and questioning its financing.  Trump, who likes to say that he never watches TV, was watching very carefully.  He almost immediately tweeted “WOW, @foxandfrlends ‘Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.’ And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!”  Apparently, this was the Trump approved theme of the day.  Shortly after Trump’s tweet, Florida Congressman Rooney stuck to the plan, telling a stunned Katy Tur of MSNBC that he was very concerned that the Department of Justice and the FBI, “whether you want to call it ‘deep state' or what, are kind of off the rails."  He then called for them to be “purged,” by purged he likely means that any and all FBI agents or Justice attorneys who are Democrats, are related to Democrats or who think Obama was born in the US should be fired immediately and replaced with die hard Republicans.  Rooney seems not to know that Mueller is one of those die hard Republicans, as is the current head of the FBI Christopher Wray, a frequent and large contributor to Republican candidates.  As to Mueller, he probably wasn’t reading Alice Donovan’s latest article, or at Alice’s Restaurant, the garbage dump or even on line at Target returning any Christmas presents while all the tweet smacking and calls for an FBI purge were taking place. He was busy on other stuff.  The Daily Beast reports that he is working on a “superceding” indictment of Paul Manafort and his sidekick Rick Gates, one that more closely follows their money trail. Mueller’s increasing focus on money laundering may be one of those things that’s keeping Trump up at night, fueling that twitchy twitter finger.