Lunch at Trump's?

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Actually today this section could just as well be called pardon, pardon, pardon.  The NY Times reports that last year, as Special Counsel Mueller was closing in on former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former campaign manager Paul Manafort, John Dowd, then Trump’s lawyer for all things Russia, offered up Trump pardons in exchange for Manafort and Flynn’s silence about all those Russia involved things that they had been involved in during and after the 2016 election.  At the time that Dowd made this offer he didn’t know that Flynn had already accepted a plea deal.  The Times article which was based on a number of highly discrete sources, probably a mix of current and former Trumpkins, does not specify whether or not Trump knew about Dowd’s offer but it’s hard to believe that Dowd would have gone ahead and offered up any pardons without Trump’s permission.  Not so coincidentally, the timing of Dowd’s offer coincides with Trump’s twitter musings about his pardon power.  Everyone involved in the possible pardon, either denies or declines to comment on this story, but the Times stands by it and judging by his lack of cooperation, Manafort may be relying on it. Late Monday, Mueller’s team drew its first straight line and direct connection between a Trumpkin and the Russians when he disclosed in the sentencing recommendations for the complicit Skadden lawyer Van der Zwaan that there had been frequent communication between Manafort associate Rick Gates and an unnamed former Russian intelligence agent referred to as Person A, during the election.  We now know that the unnamed Russian is a “former” GRU agent named Konstantin Kilimnik, however since there is no such thing as a former Russian spy, it’s fair to just refer to Kilimnik as a Russian agent.  Kilimnik worked for years with Manafort and Rick Gates in their Ukraine office, he’s the guy that Manafort contacted as soon as he managed to secure his “I’ll work for free” role in the Trump campaign, querying whether his involvement with Trump, and the benefits it would bring, would satisfy his debts to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.  By including information about the Kilimnik connection in the sentencing papers, Mueller sent a signal to anyone still claiming that there had been no Russian collusion, that yes in fact there has been.  At this point it is fair to assume that Mueller has many more details and that Trump is growing increasingly nervous.  This may also explain why a number of Senators have reupped their calls for immediate legislative action to protect Mueller and his investigation.           

Shulkin Out, Jackson In:  Yesterday Trump finally fired VA Secretary David Shulkin.  Shulkin’s dismissal was hardly a surprise, he’d been a dead man walking for weeks.  Still the announcement, done of course by tweet, managed to raise quite a few eyebrows as Shulkin’s replacement is Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson.  Jackson is the White House doctor who performed Trump’s annual check-up, pronouncing him mentally fit, healthy, ridiculously energetic and conveniently raising his height so that his weight fell one pound under the obese category. His fawning review of Trump’s health status aside, Jackson is reportedly an excellent physician with an admirable military resume, however he has virtually no administrative experience.  His appointment to run the second biggest institution in the country is truly bizarre, apparently Trump’s first choice, a Fox TV army veteran wasn’t available or interested.  Jackson was chosen mostly because Trump likes him as a person.  As to Shulkin, ostensibly he was fired because of an ethical violation, he had taken his wife along on a trip to Europe and had accepted free tickets to Wimbledon but by Trump administration standards his ethical lapses were run of the mill, hardly shocking when you consider Pruitt, Carson and Zinke’s propensity for expensive furniture, first class and private travel, fancy doors and super secure and ridiculously expensive custom made communication “cones of silence.”  Shulkin, the rare holdover from the Obama administration, was actually pretty good at his job but had run into political headwinds for conflicting with Trump political appointees over the pace of privatization at the VA, the other secretaries all perform their jobs up to Trumpian standards, sufficiently cutting back or destroying their department’s government missions.  As to the VA, the Trumpkins are pushing for rapid changes, Shulkin was taking a more conservative approach due to his concern that the private sector was not ready to handle the volume of patients that would flow from the VA system if any privatization plan was to be rushed through. In an op-ed in today’s NY Times he said that that while working with community providers to adequately ensure that veterans’ needs are met is a good practice”…. “privatization leading to the dismantling of the department’s extensive health care system is a terrible idea.”  He then finished by saying that “it should not be this hard to serve your country.”  Oh but it is, especially these days.                    

Another Shooting:  Last week Stephon Clark, a young black man, was lethally shot for being in his grandparents backyard armed with that lethal of all weapons, a cell phone.  Police had responded in force with helicopters to a report that someone was breaking car windows in the neighborhood.  To be clear, there were no reports of gun shots or injuries. Clark was shot at least twenty times, immediately after he was mowed down the police muted their video cameras, possibly to hide their own despair at what had just happened.  Clearly this was a tragedy for all involved, the type of event that inspired the Black Lives Matter Movement and Colin Kaepernick and his controversial “take a knee protest.” Demonstrations have broken out throughout the city and to their credit, local officials have requested that the State of California investigate the shooting. During yesterday’s news conference Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about the administration’s response, she answered that it was just one of those “local matters,” when further pressed the clueless Sanders drifted off into a rambling soliloquy about school security.  Trump who tweets about almost everything, especially murders of white people by undocumented immigrants, has remained silent.  So much for bringing the country together.

Stay and Eat at Trumps:  A Maryland court has agreed to let a lawsuit alleging that Trump is in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution proceed.  In the case, the Attorneys General from Maryland and Washington, DC argue that the Trump International Hotel’s operations put other nearby hotel and entertainment properties at a competitive disadvantage by unfairly attracting visitors from foreign and domestic governments seeking to curry favor with Trump by enriching his personal pocket book.  This is the first time that one of these emoluments cases against Trump has been allowed to move forward.