Tweeting Against Interest

Weekend Tweet Eruption: Trump managed to stay quiet about former security advisor Flynn’s guilty plea for all of a day before moving back into tweet mode over the weekend.  He exploded with the usual stuff, a Hillary attack, a slam at former FBI director Comey and a takedown of the entire FBI, calling it “in tatters.”  Then he threw in a real humdinger, tweeting "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"  With that tweet Trump inadvertently acknowledged for the first time that he knew that Flynn lied to the FBI when he asked Comey to lay off Flynn and stop the Russia investigation, providing further evidence that he fired Comey for refusing to halt his investigation, in other words Trump confessed to obstructing justice.  Reaction to Trump’s tweet was swift, raising so much concern at the White House that John Dowd, his outside lawyer, claimed that he had originated the problematic tweet by dictating its content to Dan Scavino, Trump’s head of social media, who then tweeted it out under Trump’s handle.  Dowd said that the implication that Trump knew about Flynn’s lie was his “drafting” mistake.  When asked if he’d ever written any of Trump’s other tweets, he said no, just this one.  It’s unlikely that the erudite Dowd really wrote the grammatically challenged tweet, but because he claimed that he did, he and Scavino are now fair game for Special Counsel Mueller and will likely be called in to testify about its origins where they will be reminded that though lying to the American public is bad, lying to Mueller is a federal crime.  While Dowd tried to cover for Trump, Trump kept at it, tweeting that he “never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn” calling that "Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!"  Unfortunately for Trump, the train left the station on that one a long time ago, just about anyone who matters believes Comey’s assertion.  As to all that Russian collusion stuff, a fairly damning email from KT Mcfarland, the former deputy national security advisor, surfaced over the weekend in which McFarland said that the sanctions imposed by Obama on the Russians in late December would make it harder for Trump to ease tensions with Russia “which has just thrown the USA election to him.” The White House tried to explain that email away by saying that McFarland just meant that the Democrats were portraying the election that way.  Like Dowd, McFarland has earned herself a visit with Mueller and if Democratic Senator Warner, the co-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee has his way, an invitation to testify in front of his committee too.  

Sometimes He’s Right:  Trump was right about one thing, it probably wasn’t much of a crime for Flynn to be calling around to foreign governments during the transition period, but lying about his conversations with Kislyak was stupid, a crime and raised alarms.  Stupid because Flynn should have known that any conversation with the Russian Ambassador was being taped, a crime because lying to the FBI is a crime, alarm raising because it made no sense for him to lie about his conversations unless he was covering for something else, like collusion. On that collusion subject, it’s increasingly clear that the Russians were trying very hard to get their fangs into Trump, so much so that Paul Erikson, a member of the National Rifle Association emailed the Trump campaign offering to arrange a backchannel meeting between Trump and Putin using the annual NRA conference to make a first contact.  He appears to be the second person who tried to organize a Russian meeting at that NRA conference.  Yesterday on NBC’s Meet The Press, Senator Diane Feinstein, vice chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that an obstruction of justice case is being built against Trump, adding that over the past two weeks she had become convinced that he was no longer capable of being president.  Feinstein is far from a reactionary so a statement like that is an implication that she recently learned something that hasn’t yet gone public. Expect another really big shoe to drop soon.  Flynn spent his weekend wondering how he was left holding the bag when all he did was follow Trump’s orders.      

Tax Plan: House and Senate Republicans are rushing back to Washington today, a day earlier than planned to get back to tackling their favorite subject tax reform so that they can vote to get the tax bill moved on to a House-Senate conference committee.  Their speed is driven by fears that the government will shut down at the end of the week, concerns that too much time in the light will reveal more about the special lobbyist favors included in the 500 plus page Senate plan, and worries that Senators Collins and Flake might actually wake up and realize that the promises that they extracted from Majority Leader McConnell to safeguard  Medicare, fix the Obamacare subsidy payments and protect the Dreamers are worthless.  On Sunday morning Senator Collins again said that her vote was contingent on those commitments being met but it’s not clear that she would really convert her vote to a no if the likelihood of getting her promises fulfilled fades. Remarks made during the past few days by other leading Republicans go far towards explaining the party’s mindset about providing service to anyone outside of the top 1 or 2%.  Iowa’s Senator Chuck Grassley defended reducing and eventually eliminating the inheritance tax by saying that “not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”  And Utah’s Senator Orrin Hatch, said that given that tax cuts have used up all the available funds there isn’t any money left to reauthorize the previously uncontroversial Children’s Health Insurance Program that he helped create in the first place, but that’s okay with him because he has “a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves – won’t lift a finger – and expect the federal government to do everything.” In other words those five year-olds, toddlers and pregnant women need to go get jobs!  He tried to walk back his comments but it’s kind of hard to forget such memorably revealing words.

Oh Jerusalem:  Talk about timing.  Last week, Trump further railed against Muslim immigrants by retweeting a series of racist videos from a rightwing British fringe party causing concerns about the safety of US embassies in Muslim countries.  This week he is expected to further fan those flames by announcing that he will be fulfilling another campaign promise, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.  Like presidents before him he will once again waive moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, limiting his recognition to a statement.  Nevertheless, his move is likely to further complicate his son in law’s efforts to achieve Middle East peace and is also likely to aggravate regional tensions.  Just another one of those really complicated things.

Men Behaving Badly:  Senator McConnell has backed off overtly criticizing child molester and Senator wannabee Roy Moore in case he needs Moore’s vote to pass his coveted tax cut plan.  Billy Bush, the former Today Show host whose career was derailed when he laughed at Trump’s jokes about grabbing women’s body parts, starting implementing his redemption plan.  Yesterday, in a NY Times Op-Ed, a remorseful Bush confirmed that despite Trump’s attempts at revisionist history it was in fact Trump who said “Grab’em by the pussy” on the infamous Access Hollywood Tape. Bush also tied the accusations of Trump’s harassment accusers to each of the remarks Trump made on the tape, expressing his belief that every one of the women was telling the truth.  Bush may be angling for a return to his old gig, there is an opening at NBC and he only laughed when others at the station did far worse.