Domestic Abuse

A Tale of the Pauls:  Although you might have missed it, the government shut down last night.  Senator Rand Paul, the gadfly from Kentucky, held up a vote on the budget bill for hours.  Rand, one of the few Republicans who still thinks that ballooning deficits are a bad thing, argued for the reinstatement of strict spending caps.  He criticized his Republican colleagues, the ones who consistently attacked and stymied Obama for spending his way out of the Bush recession when he was trying to stimulate a failing economy, for only caring about deficits when Democrats are in office.  Paul’s criticism of his Republican colleagues is spot on, many of them won their seats by attacking “rampant” spending and deficits, but have now suspended their concerns about deficits because who cares about deficits when there is no Democratic president to attack. Paul’s principled position would be easier to admire if he showed more consistency, it’s hard to forget that he voted for Trump’s deficit expanding tax bill.  Despite Paul’s irritating performance, the sleepy and agitated Senate finally got to vote and sometime around 2 AM this morning passed the budget bill by a vote of 71-28.  Though the outcome of the Senate vote was never in doubt, for a while the outcome of the House vote was uncertain because of the other Paul, Speaker Ryan, his refusal to make an unqualified commitment to take up DACA legislation infuriates many Democrats.  Unlike Senate Majority Leader McConnell who says that he will allow DACA legislation to proceed in the Senate through a free wielding, regular way process, Ryan continues to hedge his commitment.  Though he says that no one should “doubt his real commitment to DACA” Ryan has only committed to vote on a plan that has Trump’s support and any plan with Trump’s support is unlikely to please Democrats and other DACA supporters. As a result of Ryan’s reluctance to go all in on a finding a reasonable DACA solution a good number of Democratic progressives joined their Freedom Caucus rivals in opposing the budget bill.  Nevertheless, shortly before 6 AM this morning, enough Democrats signed on, the House joined their Senate colleagues, voting 240-186 to pass the budget bill.  As soon as Trump signs the bill the government will end its brief shutdown and open for business.

The Porter Problem:  It turns out that quite a few people knew about White House aide Rob Porter’s history of wife beating.  White House Counsel Don McGahn has known for a year and Chief of Staff Kelly has known for several months.   McGahn was happy to have Porter around because he thought that he was an “influential gatekeeper” to Trump so he chose to believe Porter’s assertions that that abuse stuff was no bigly.  Kelly, short on help, particularly once his former right hand woman was promoted to Secretary of Homeland Security, handed Porter even more responsibilities after learning about his past, because “revering women” only goes so far.  Both McGahn and Kelly were easily persuaded by Porter’s assertions that the accusations against him were blown out of proportion by his two ex-wives and neither were all that concerned about Porter’s inability to obtain a permanent security clearance.  In fact, when Kelly learned about Porter’s history of abuse, he seemed more surprised that Porter had actually been married twice than concerned about his past actions. Porter’s history of abuse started closing in on him only after one of his ex-girlfriends, an unnamed administration employee, went to the FBI to complain about him after she learned that he was dating Communications guru Hope Hicks.  Already aware of his past, the FBI followed up with additional interviews of his ex-wives and discovered that Porter had reached out to one of them to try to get her to deny that she had been the victim of “violent” abuse.  Although the party line is that Kelly wasn’t fully up to speed about the extent of Porter’s history, that’s probably just a ruse, reports are that he knew about the abuse but was willing to overlook Porters “problems” until the pictures of one of those ex-wives sporting a shiner went public, forcing him to withdraw his support.  Porter is gone from the White House but Kelly is still there, though he is now under the gun, with some suggesting his White House days are numbered. Hope Hicks, who wrote the initial press releases supporting Porter despite the inappropriateness of her involvement given her relationship with him, is also getting some unwanted attention but no one thinks that her career at the White House will be at all impacted by her association with Porter, to the extent that she is still associated with Porter, because she remains Trump’s favorite.  As to Trump, the party line at the White House is that Trump knew little if anything about Porter’s past and that he didn’t even know that Porter and Hicks were an item. Probably not true, but what else would we expect to hear from this White House.  When asked about all of this, VP Pence, who is now hanging out in Korea, said that he knew nothing and knows nothing about anything.  Pence remains really good at distancing himself from anything controversial.

The Nunes Chronicles:  Trump still hasn’t formally signed off on the Democratic rebuttal to the Nunes memo but expectations are that he will sign off today as late as possible and probably with a few key redactions so that no one notices or can tell what the memo reveals.  In the meantime, in anticipation of Nunes’ next memo, the one that Nunes claims will prove that the State Department is as corrupt as FBI and Justice, Jonathan Winer, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State published details of his not very controversial relationship and interactions with dossier writer Christopher Steele in today’s Washington Post.   Winer writes that his relationship with the highly respected former British agent was totally above board and that Steele routinely provided State with useful intelligence that covered a number of subjects and was both appreciated and valuable.  Nevertheless, it’s likely that Nunes will spin Winer’s Steele relationship into more evidence about the evil deep state anti-Trump conspiracy.  Winer and the State Department are not the only ones under fire, Senator Warner, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee is currently experiencing his own Trump and Fox assault for his attempts to reach out to Steele last year.  Yesterday with attention focused on the Porter affair and the possibility of a government shutdown, Trump found time to tweet “Wow! -Senator Mark Warner got caught having extensive contact with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch. Warner did not want a ‘paper trail’ on a ‘private’ meeting (in London) he requested with Steele of fraudulent Dossier fame. All tied into Crooked Hillary.”   Trump’s tweet was a response to something he had just watched on Fox News.  Even the Washington Examiner, a conservative, Trump friendly paper called Trump out for his accusation referring to it as more of his “Crooked Hillary” shtick.  In any case, Warner’s texts were not a  secret, his committee already knows about his unsuccessful efforts to contact Steele, efforts that took place early in the investigation process well before Steele had spent time speaking with Special Counsel Mueller.  Notably, Trump and Fox seemed to have conveniently forgotten that Nunes secretly sent two of his guys to London to track down Steele for an interview of his own.  Wouldn’t it be nice if Trump directed a little more of his time to ferreting out abusers closer to home, like in the White House.