Only His Hairdresser Knows for Sure

Will He or Won’t He:  A lot of hullabaloo all weekend about whether or not Trump is planning to fire Special Counsel Mueller.  California Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told a local radio station that “the rumor on the Hill” was that Trump was going to “make a significant speech at the end of next week and that on December 22 after everyone’s gone home for the holidays, he “was going to fire Mueller.”  While out pushing the tax reform bill Steve Mnuchin did little to clarify what Trump was thinking when he told CNN’s Jake Tapper that though he and his “let them eat cake” trophy wife Louise had recently dined with Trump and Melania, he hadn’t heard anything about any firing plans and doesn’t have any reason to believe Trump is going to do that, adding “it’s obviously up to him,” hardly the reassuring words that anyone wanted to hear.  Surprisingly, it was Trump who put the issue to rest, at least for the moment, when upon returning to the White House on Sunday he told the press that he's not considering firing special counsel Robert Mueller.  He did add that “his people" are "very upset" about Mueller’s decision to obtain tens of thousands of emails from the Trump transition team.  The emails that he was referring to belonged to the Trump transition team. They were legally obtained by Mueller, however the transition team was caught by surprise, not knowing that the emails had been obtained, until a number of transition team members were asked questions at their Mueller interviews about subjects covered  only in the emails in question.  Kory Langhofer, a lawyer for the transition team sent letters to two Congressional Committees accusing Mueller of overreach and claiming that the emails were illegally obtained.  Mueller’s action wasn’t overreach but the claim by the Trump lawyer was, nevertheless it was picked up by the malevolent clowns at Fox News who ran with the story suggesting it was another one of those crimes that should lead to Mueller’s immediate dismissal. Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy, Chairman of the Oversight Committee, who general jumps on the accusation bandwagon, said that the legality of the release wasn’t an issue for his committee, that if there was a problem it should be taken up in the courts, a quiet way of admitting that he knows there is no problem.  Trump also said "I can't imagine there's anything on (the emails), frankly, because as we said, there's no collusion. No collusion whatsoever, but a lot of lawyers thought that was pretty sad."  Since Trump isn’t all that familiar with truth telling, it’s not clear that he isn’t giving serious consideration to firing Mueller, or setting the ball in motion by demanding that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein do the dirty deed, a request that would lead to Rosenstein’s departure and ultimately Mueller’s dismissal.  It wouldn’t be pretty, but it also wouldn’t mean that the investigation would go away since Manafort has already been indicted and Flynn has already plead guilty and, more significantly, as Trump probably knows, New York Attorney General Schneiderman is running a shadow investigation and would immediately step into Mueller’s shoes with state charges, the kind that Trump can’t pardon.  Besides, Trump has probably decided that at least for now maligning Mueller and questioning his legitimacy and fairness is just as effective.  Aided by Fox host Jeanine Pirro, that strategy is working.  She is calling for the FBI to be “cleansed” with offending agents taken out “in cuffs.” In response, the House Intelligence Committee now plans to call for testimony from two of her targets, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Agent Peter Strzok, the guy who confused politician bashing texts with foreplay.

Grand Old Tax Bill:  Get ready to watch the deficit grow by at least another $1.4 trillion, and if you live in a high state and local tax state, get ready to see your hard earned cash fly to Trump country where it might be used to pay for religious school tuition for the next generation of right wing religious fundamentalists.  Leadership plans to put their tax bill up for a final vote this week, first in the House and then in the Senate.  Absent any surprises, passage is likely.  John McCain won’t be there to give his thumbs up, he’s flown back to Arizona for the holidays and, though Trump claims he’d come back to Washington if his vote was needed and his family insists that he’s just suffering some chemo side effects, there’s a chance he won’t be coming back.  Senator Corker remains in the yes column for the plan that he calls “imperfect,” however he is facing withering criticism from voters who want to know if his unexpected support was bought by the inclusion of a last minute provision favoring real estate limited partnerships.  Corker a wealthy real estate investor will benefit handsomely from what is now being called the “Corker Kickback.”  He has some serious ‘splaining to do.           

Alternative Vocabulary:  The Center for Disease Control isn’t the only entity that’s received direction to avoid using words like fetus and entitlement, apparently several other Health and Human Service departments have gotten the same directive from “higher up,” and by higher up think holy roller Mike Pence and his acolytes.  HHS employees have also been told to always call the Affordable Care Act “Obamacare” because it’s a lot easier to rally the troops against Obama than to kill their health insurance. Though there is no evidence that Pence’s finger prints are on the language memo, the directive’s tone seems very much in line with his way of thinking particularly when you consider the version that was delivered to the State Department. Their Orwellian language handbook bans the term sex education, replacing it with “sexual risk avoidance,” a clunky term for no sex before marriage, which may explain why the term “evidence based” is also banned.

Attack Averted:  The CIA helped their Russian colleagues thwart an imminent terrorist attack in St. Petersburg by sharing some intelligence about the terrorists’ plans.  Putin called his good buddy Trump to praise the CIA and thank him for their help. We learned about the call and the shared intelligence after the Kremlin released details of Putin’s conversation with Trump. The sharing of intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks isn’t unusual, however it is unusual for the heads of state to get involved in the process, typically communication is done quietly among intelligence chiefs.  However, the wily Putin knows how much Trump enjoys having his ego stroked and how much the press likes to focus on their bromance, so calling him and then talking about the call falls into his old KGB handbook.  Later in the day the White House finally released their account of the call saying “ President Putin extended his thanks and congratulations to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Mike Pompeo and the CIA. President Trump then called Director Pompeo to congratulate him, his very talented people, and the entire intelligence community on a job well done!”  No doubt that the not so presidential exclamation point was Trump’s addition, special appreciation for his good buddy Pompeo, the soon to be Secretary of State, who edits those annoying Russian election interference assertions out of Trump’s daily security briefings and shares his dismissive attitude towards Mueller’s investigation.  In case you are keeping score, the CIA is very, very good, the FBI, not so much.