The Blame Game

Shutdown Shenanigans:  Late yesterday, by a vote of 230 to 197, the House passed another short term funding resolution after members of the right wing Freedom Caucus were convinced to join in with a promise from Speaker Ryan that their concerns would be addressed in any future immigration legislation, a truly frightening thought.  Only six Democrats voted yes, while eleven Republicans voted no.  Republican support for the House resolution, which extends government funding through mid-February and funds the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years but includes nothing to resolve the DACA problem, was almost upended after Trump sent out an early morning tweet saying that “"CHIP should be part of a long term solution, not a 30 Day, or short term, extension!" The clueless Trump didn’t realize that the plan calls for a six year extension of the children’s health care plan either because he’s so out of the loop or doesn’t understand the details.  Like the mistaken tweet he sent out last week which almost upended the House vote on FISA surveillance legislation, this error left Republican leadership scurrying to get a correction from Trump in order to reassure House Republicans that, despite his stupidity, their fearless leader Trump was on board.  The funding resolution is now in the hands of the Senate where the outcome is far less certain.  As of now Majority Leader McConnell does not have the sixty votes he needs for passage.  On the Republican side, though he supports the resolution, Senator McCain is recuperating in Arizona and won’t be casting a vote, Lindsey Graham is a no over DACA and because he wants more defense spending,  South Dakota’s Mike Rounds is a no over defense spending, and Rand Paul is a no because he generally is a no on anything related to spending.  On the Democratic side only  West Virginia Senator Manchin, one of the most vulnerable red state Democrats, has said that he will vote yes.  A number of other Senators in both parties, including the remaining red state vulnerable Democrats who have grown less fearful of the consequences of voting against Trump, remain up in the air.  Things got pretty testy on the Senate floor last night between Minority Leader Schumer and McConnell when Schumer tried to force a vote to highlight that it wasn’t just Democrats who were against the short term resolution.  He and McConnell threw nasty barbs at each other until finally agreeing to recess for the night.  A number of outcomes are possible, including one that resuscitates DACA.  A small group of Senators and Representatives are working behind the scene on a DACA and immigration solution, to the extent that they agree on a plan, it could get included in this funding resolution or alternatively another very short term, four or five day, resolution could get voted on to give them more time to finalize details and build support.  Alternatively, it’s also possible, in fact quite likely, that no resolution gets passed pushing the government into a shutdown in which case there will be a lot of finger pointing.  Trump will blame everyone, especially the Democrats, even though he triggered the crisis in the first place with his irrational DACA and immigration shenanigans.  The Republicans will blame the Democrats, the Democrats will blame the Republicans and Trump. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called the situation amateur hour at its worst and then, sticking with the theme of the past week but avoiding any expletives, added it was another bowl of doggy doo with a cherry on top.  She has a point.     

The End of the Honeymoon:  By all accounts things aren’t all that hunky-dory between Trump and Chief of Staff General Kelly.  After the General dissed Trump by saying that his wall position was “uninformed” and “evolving.” Trump took umbrage, tweeting out “The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it. Parts will be, of necessity, see through and it was never intended to be built in areas where there is natural protection such as mountains, wastelands or tough rivers or water.....”  With the door open to Kelly criticism, White House staff and Trump BFFs leaked countless stories to their favorite press contacts about Kelly, calling him out for his lack of legislative know-how, for running a too-tight ship and most of all for refusing to give them unfettered access to Trump.  The New York Time’s Maggie Haberman, one of the Trump family’s favorites, reported that Kelly has a temper, storms out of meetings and can be very confrontational.  We haven’t heard this kind of criticism about chaos in the White House or a chief of staff since the old Reince Priebus days.  Yesterday, for what it’s worth, Trump said that Kelly was a fine man and that he liked him very much.  One thing is for certain, Kelly is not a moderating influence when it comes to the subject of immigration primarily because he, like Trump, is a hardliner on immigration.  Minority Leader Schumer blames Kelly for bringing Senator Cotton and Representative Goodlatte, the two most intractable, hardline anti-immigrant Republican legislators, into last week’s “doo doo” meeting and, in a private chat with Trump, told him that Democrats won’t discuss immigrations issues with Trump again in their presence.            

Russia, Russia, Russia:  The National Rifle Association has now been pulled further into the Russia investigation.  A few months ago we learned that Don Jr sat next to Alexander Torshin, a long term NRA member as well as a Deputy Governor of the Russian Central Bank and a Putin crony, during last year’s NRA convention gala. Yesterday, The McClatchy Report revealed that the FBI is investigating the source of the disproportionately high amount of contributions made by the NRA to Trump’s campaign.  The suspicion is that Torshin, who Spanish authorities have accused of money laundering, made outsized contributions to the NRA and that the Russian money was then funneled to the Trump campaign.  Overall, the NRA reported spending $55 million on the 2016 election, with $30 million going to Trump’s coffers, three times the amount that they had contributed to Mitt Romney when he ran against Obama and although $55 million was reported, it’s suspected that the actual number spent by the NRA on the election was as high as $70 million, that funds a lot of pro Second Amendment speeches and ultimately results in far too many AK 47 like weapons showing up in the hands of lunatics in places like Sandy Hook and Las Vegas.  In other investigation news, plans for Steve Bannon to return to the House Intelligence Committee are now on hold and the much awaited testimony of Hope Hicks has also been delayed.  As to gal Friday, communications guru Hicks, it’s not clear if her postponement is due to the need for her to be around to organize the communication strategy for the possible government shutdown or whether it’s just because Trump wants to keep her as silent as possible about everything she’s heard.  Negotiations are ongoing between Trump’s lawyers and Special Counsel Mueller’s team in preparation for the much awaited Trump interview.  Ty Cobb, one of Trump’s lawyers  reports that  Trump is eager to cooperate, he also reports that he has warned Trump to be wary of Mueller springing a “perjury trap” on him.  One foolproof way for Trump to avoid such a trap would be to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth but to do that he’d have to actually speak the truth something Trump isn’t all that good at.  Ty Cobb has reason to worry.

Sloppy Squelching:  Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer and porn star fixer, did a pretty good job preventing Stormy Daniels from coming forward with the smarmy details of her affair with Trump days before the 2016 election.  Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that the $130,000 check that she received to stay quiet came from a private Delaware LLC named Essential Consultants that Cohen set up using a series of pseudonyms intended to obfuscate the source of the hush money payment.  Unfortunately for us, the tactic worked for a while, getting Trump through the election without a nasty, poorly timed bimbo eruption.  Unfortunately for Cohen, he was a little sloppy, in one case he goofed by filing some paper work under his own name.  In his Fire and Fury book Michael Woolf reported Steve Bannon’s claim that there are hundreds of Stormy Daniels out there.  Could this be the beginning of the deluge?  In the meantime, you can check out Wednesday’s In Touch magazine for more details about what Ms. Stormy had to say about Trump in his tighty whities from the interview that she gave, and apparently many of us missed, in 2011.