Peace in Our Time?

The Oxymorons:  The House Intelligence Committee, the very example of an oxymoron, issued its one-sided report on Friday.  One sided because the report was issued by the committee’s Republicans since the committee had long given up even pretending to be bipartisan.  The heavily redacted report basically cleared Trump and his team of wrongdoing while accusing the intelligence community and the FBI of failures in how they assessed and responded to the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election.  Oddly enough though it says investigators found “no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded, coordinated, or conspired with the Russian government,” the report details many contacts between campaign officials and Russians or Russian intermediaries but concludes that they must have just been exchanging borscht recipes.  The committee’s Democrats issued a rebuttal detailing how the committee’s Republican leadership refused to really do their job, didn’t interview all of the players, and accepted half-truths and convenient silence from those they interviewed.  They specifically pointed out an ID blocked call that they believe took place between Don Jr and Don Sr right before Don Jr finalized plans for the infamous Trump Tower meeting as something that the Republicans refused to look into.  The Democrats assert that the Republicans had rushed to end their work prematurely in “a systematic effort to muddy the waters and to deflect attention away” from Trump.  To no one’s surprise, Trump seized on the report to once again call the investigation a witch hunt and screamed to all who would listen, and his base was definitely listening, that there was no collusion, except at the FBI.  He also called for the arrest of the usual cast of characters.  One of those characters, former FBI Director Jim Comey, said that the House probe became politicized "and it wrecked the committee, and it damaged relationships with the FISA Court, the intelligence communities. It's just a wreck." He also said that based on what he knew, the report was inaccurate. Around the same time that the report was issued,  the New York Times reported that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer at the center of the infamous Trump Tower meeting, the one hosted by Don Jr, was even more closely tied to the Kremlin than initially recognized and NBC aired a segment in which, after she was shown some of her newly obtained correspondence, she pretty much admitted that she was an FSB (Russian security agency) spy.  For their part, the House Intelligence Committee Republicans have no interest in further investigating that admission or anything else.  Over the weekend   Trey Gowdy, one of those Republicans questioned the value of his own committee’s report by saying that Congress isn’t really good at investigating anyway because that’s not really its job.  Though he defended parts of the report, he also said that it didn’t vindicate Trump, that Comey shouldn’t be arrested and that he was waiting for the results of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation to learn what really happened.  Last night, Independent Maine Senator Angus King said that the Senate Intelligence Committee was still toiling away and that based on what he’s seen, that their report will contradict many of the House committee’s conclusions.      

Stupidity Abounds:  While the White House correspondents held their annual dinner, Trump flew off to Michigan to engage in some counter programming.  Though the correspondents were suppose to be celebrating their collective Pulitzer Prizes and trumpeting the importance of the First Amendment, they instead found themselves mired in controversy after the featured comedienne, Michelle Wolf, crossed the line with some of her jokes, by targeting Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway, both of whom were in attendance.  That said, Wolf’s rude jokes paled in comparison to Trump’s speech, where he lambasted the Democrats, awarded himself the Nobel Prize for solving the as yet unsolved Korean situation, and went after Montana’s Senator Tester for going public with the list of accusations against one time VA Secretary nominee, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson.  Trump insisted that he knew things about Tester that would blow up his reelection campaign.  It’s not clear that he knows anything about Tester, but he certainly is now making him his number one enemy at least for this week, if not longer.  Although he is a Democrat in a heavily Republican, Trump friendly state, Tester is fairly popular.  The Republicans don’t yet have a candidate to run against him, but after Trump’s speech a few may be lining up for the chance.  As to Dr. Jackson, though some of the accusations against him may be incorrect, especially the one that said he’d had crashed a government car while under the influence, he’s out and not only won’t he move forward to any VA confirmation hearings, he is also not returning to the White House physician position. Though Trump wants all the blame for Jackson’s demise to rest with Senator Tester, many Republicans blame the White House for proposing an unqualified and possibly unfit nominee, for failing to do any vetting and then for providing him with little or no support.  The suggestion is that as the Jackson situation started to blow up, Trump abandoned Jackson instead coming up with an alternative strategy, one that hung Jackson out to dry while allowing Trump to turn the mess into an attack against Tester.

Peace in Our Time:  No one really knows what’s motivating North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and whether or not he really is serious about giving up all his testing facilities and his nuclear arsenal.  That said, he is making all the right moves for now.  Only time will tell, what happens next.  Trump remains incredibly optimistic, so much so that others in the region, especially Japan, are worried that he is so eager for success that he will settle for an end to North Korea’s long range inter ballistic missile program, leaving Japan and South Korea vulnerable to the shorter distance missile delivery system that North Korea has already perfected.  To the extent that Kim Jong Un is serious  he might be just a little put off by statements from John Bolton, the new national security director.  Bolton has taken to comparing North Korea to Libya, citing that experience as a good model. Kim Jong Un is well aware that the Libya model didn’t turn out all that well for that country’s former leader the very late Moammar Khaddafy.  The Iran nuclear deal is also treading water.  Many expect that Trump will blow it up on May 12, though there is a very small chance that he will continue to press Iran to cut out its bad behavior and to limit its missile program instead of completely trashing the agreement.  Newly appointed Secretary of State Pompeo went to the Middle East for meetings with leaders in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to drum up support for whatever the administration does on Iran.  While there he has no plans to meet with any Palestinian leaders to try to defuse the rapidly growing tensions on the Gaza border.  The trade war is also likely to heat up this week, the temporary tariff exemptions that Trump granted to several countries are due to expire and no one seems to know what’s next.  So much for peace everywhere.

Lunatic Rantings

Freeform on Fox:  Maybe it was his disappointment over having to pull the cabinet nomination of his underqualified and questionable doctor Ronny Jackson, maybe it was his increasing panic over the Michael Cohen problem and the Russia investigation, or maybe it was just because he was trying to avoid Melania after  forgetting to buy her a birthday present; whatever the reason, yesterday Trump called his buddies at the Fox and Friends morning show and launched into a freeform meandering rant that was “characteristically bizarre.”  He touched on many of the subjects that his lawyers made him promise never to discuss, but then again, as evidenced by the note reminding him not to congratulate Putin on his election victory, Trump’s lawyers should know by now that telling Trump not to talk about something is the best way to guarantee that he does.  Most notably Trump contradicted his earlier dubious assertion that his lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen had acted on his own when he paid off Stormy Daniels, he did that by admitting for the first time that Cohen represented him in the “crazy Stormy Daniels thing,” that was also the first time that he even uttered Stormy’s name in public.  He then went on to distance himself from Cohen saying that while he, Trump, had lots of lawyers, Cohen was really mostly a business man who only represented him on a teeny, tiny fraction of his legal work.  Even before the lengthy interview ended, US Attorneys ran to the NY Federal court to argue that Trump had just more or less admitted that most of the work papers and electronic equipment, including Cohen’s collection of his more than a dozen old data filled cell phones and Blackberry’s, obtained in the raid weren’t protected by attorney-client privilege citing Trump’s Fox rant as proof.  Later in the day, Kimba Woods, the judge in that case appointed Barbara Jones, a former judge, to serve as a special master to determine what is and isn’t protected attorney-client material, a job now made much easier by Trump’s assertion.  For his part Michael Avenotti, Stormy’s lawyer who was appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe at the same time that Trump was spilling his guts on Fox, started celebrating.  In addition to discussing Cohen, Trump also lambasted the Justice Department, threatening to intervene in their activities if they didn’t clean up their act by dropping all the investigations into his campaign activities and financial improprieties pronto, replacing them with actions that would lead to the arrest of former FBI Director Comey, the liar and criminal leaker, former deputy director McCabe who he accused of holding on to more than $700,000 of his wife’s campaign funds, and Hillary Clinton, the presidential aspirant who is the one who really belongs in jail.  For some inexplicable reason, Trump also said that presidential elections should be decided by the popular vote rather than the Electoral College; no doubt Hillary would agree with him on that one.  Possibly in response to his suggestion that he was thinking about ramping up his war against the Justice Department, later in the day the Senator Grassley led Justice Committee voted for legislation intended to protect Special Counsel Mueller with four Republicans including Grassley, Graham, Tillis and Flake joining their Democratic colleagues in support.  At least for now, Senator Majority Leader McConnell insists that he has no plans to let the whole Senate vote on the bill, an indefensible but typical response from the complicit McConnell.  Lastly, Trump attacked Montana’s Democratic Senator Tester, holding him responsible for Dr. Jackson’s demise, threatening to throw the full weight of the Republican party against him during his upcoming reelection campaign, even though many of Jackson’s opponents were Republicans.  Initially the Fox team was thrilled with their morning “get,”  but thirty minutes in, when it became obvious that Trump was hurting himself while doing a lot to advance the cause of his adversaries, someone in Fox management, possibly even Rupert Murdoch, who had been one of the anointed invited to attend this week’s Macron state dinner, tried to cut Trump off by insisting that they had to go to a commercial message. Trump went on for a few more minutes before finally hanging up or running down his battery.  As to poor Michael Cohen, the Wall Street Journal reports that after Trump’s victory, he had expected to join the Trump administration as either the Chief of Staff or the White House Counsel, they also report that he’s called Trump several times to tell him how much he misses him.  If he doesn’t get that pardon, maybe Trump will visit him or better yet, hang with him, in jail

The Cabinet Shuffle:  Mike Pompeo is now officially the Secretary of State.  Once Senator Paul agreed to vote for him, Pompeo’s ascension was more or less guaranteed.  He ended up passing through the Senate by a vote of 57 to 42, with six vulnerable red state Democratic Senators, including Heitkamp, Donnelly, McCaskill, Nelson, Jones and Manchin, together with Maine’s independent Senator Angus King, joining their Republican colleagues to vote him in.  After the vote, Pompeo flew off to a NATO meeting to start trying to act diplomatic.  As expected Scott Pruitt had a tough day facing two different Congressional Committees.  He followed his playbook, pushing back at criticism about his questionable and highly unethical behavior by blaming most of his decisions on the actions of his staff who “forced” him to do things like fly first class on the taxpayer’s dime and construct a hugely expensive “cone of silence.”  He did finally admit that he might have had something to do with the inappropriate pay increases for two of his staff members, something that he did over the objections of the White House. Normally, that would be enough to get him canned, but these aren’t normal times, and Trump might keep Pruitt around just to punish the rest of us for Dr. Jackson’s demise.          

The Korean Peninsula:  The Korean war may, or may not, have ended this morning.  Kim Jong Un crossed the demilitarized zone to meet with his counterpart South Korean president Moon Jae-in.  After a really chummy meeting, the two reported plans to end the Korean War by the end of the year after an as yet unscheduled joint meeting with China and the USA.  They also said that they share the mutual goal of moving towards denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, though it remains unclear what North Korea means by denuclearization.  Assuming this is for real, It may be time for a limited episode reboot of MASH, this time they can end the series with real peace, maybe.

Just Weird:  In a day full of surprising news, the oddest thing to come out was an item concerning the dismissal of the House Chaplain Jesuit Father Pat Conroy by House Speaker and blue eyed choir boy Paul Ryan.  It’s suggested that Ryan was less than pleased when, before the vote on the tax “reform” package, the Chaplain offered up a prayer for a different tax plan, one that fairly treated everyone, and then was equally distressed when he invited a Muslim Iman to lead a prayer.  It’s not clear why we even have a House Chaplain, but to the extent that we do, the reasons for this ones dismissal are questionable at best.       

No Planet B

Cabinet Mess:  Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson is either the victim of a concerted effort to trash his reputation or is a really bad player.  More accusations about him came to the surface yesterday and, to the extent they are true, he’s in bigly trouble.  Montana Senator Tester, the ranking Democrat on the Veterans Affairs committee, released a list of the complaints provided to his staff by more than twenty active and retired military professionals, complaints that have also been shared with Republican staff members. These additions to the earlier list of accusations against Jackson include a claim that the “candyman” doctor provided a “large supply” of Percocet to a White House Military Office staff member and that he “threw his own medical staff into a panic” when they couldn’t account for the missing drugs; that he crashed an official  car after an alcohol infused party for a departing secret service officer; and that he wrote himself prescriptions and then, when caught, had a physician’s assistant cover up his infraction. It’s also been suggested that he treated his minions poorly but that he was skilled at managing up, something that was evident when he provided his over the top assessment of Trump’s physical condition and mental “acuity.”  Last night, Jackson denied all of the accusations and a number of the Obama era and Trump era staff members who have benefited from his care and lax drug dispensing still say that they never witnessed any of the alleged bad behavior.  That said, despite a show of support from the White House, reports are that Jackson is about to request that his nomination to head up the VA be pulled. At this point to the extent that any of the accusations against him are shown to be true, it’s not clear that he will even be able to stay on at the White House or in the Navy.  EPA Head Scott Pruitt is likely to have a tough day as well.  Pruitt is scheduled to appear before two Congressional committees today and though his testimony is supposed to focus on policy and budget it is expected that he will be grilled about his ethics lapses.  The overconfident Pruitt is going it alone, reports are that he refused White House assistance with his testimony preparation and instead has prepared a set of talking points, all of which blame his staff for his personal failings.  It’s not likely that his strategy will work.  Though Mick Mulvaney is probably going to survive his gaffe, the one where he said that he gave preferential treatment to the lobbyists who contributed to his campaigns, he’s also facing some blowback and a possible, though unlikely to go anywhere, investigation.  At the very least he has provided the Democrats with really good fodder for their 2018 campaign ads.  So much for draining the swamp.  Lastly, HUD head Dr. Ben Carson, the guy who ordered the most expensive table that he could find for his office, is expected to announce large rent increases for low-income Americans receiving federal housing subsidies because someone has to help pay for the hole in the budget created by the tax cuts.    

Russia and Cohen:  Last week when Rudy Giuiliani joined the Trump team he bragged that he would speed up the Mueller investigation, ending it in two weeks.  One week has passed and it doesn’t look like he’s made much progress, reports are that he has already told the Trump team that he didn’t mean to be taken literally.  However, together with Trump’s other lawyers including his other new hires Florida based white collar crime experts Marty and Jane Raskin, he has met with Special Counsel Mueller.  Apparently they reopened the discussion of the possibility of Trump meeting with Mueller’s team, something that Mueller still wants to pursue but that most legal experts believe is unlikely to happen without a subpoena mostly because of Trump’s congenital inability to speak the truth. Things on the Michael Cohen front are heating up too. Yesterday, under the advice of his counsel, Cohen told the judge overseeing the lawsuit brought by adult film star Stormy Daniels that he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself to protect himself in the ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI and US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.  Remember when Trump said that only “the mob takes the Fifth” because “if you are innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”  Hmm, good question.  As to the Southern District of New York case, Trump who apparently isn’t busy enough with his day job, wants an opportunity to personally review all of the files related to him that were obtained during the raid on Cohen’s facilities.  Lawyers for Cohen, Trump and the Trump Organization told Kimba Wood, the Judge handling that case, that they were ready to put in place the significant amount of resources necessary to quickly review all of those documents and that Trump would be available “as needed” to assist.  The Judge is expected to rule as early as today on a procedure to facilitate that review.  Expectations are that she will appoint a neutral “special master” for the review.       

Other Legal News:  On Tuesday a Federal Judge for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of keeping the DACA program alive.  The ruling by Judge John Bates, a Republican appointee, went a step further than earlier rulings by judges from Brooklyn and San Francisco in that he said that if the Department of Homeland Security couldn’t provide a better reason for ending the DACA program than it would have to start accepting new applicants, prior rulings benefited only those who were already participants in the DACA program.  For now potential new applicants remain in limbo because the judge stayed his ruling in order to give Homeland Security an opportunity to gin up a better rationale for ending DACA.  Yesterday lawyers for and against the administration’s newest travel ban appeared in front of the Supreme Court to argue their positions.  The court appeared split with the conservative justices seeming willing to ignore Trump’s anti-Muslim campaign rhetoric and tweets with the more liberal judges sounding much less forgiving.  The final decision may rest in the hands of frequent swing Justice Anthony Kennedy.   

The French Bro:  French President Emmanuel Macron spoke in front of a joint session of Congress, sounding more like an Obamaphile than a Trumpist, he defended the Iran nuclear agreement, saying that France would stick with it no matter what Trump decides to do.  The complication for France and the other European parties to the agreement is that to the extent Trump pulls the US from the agreement, the re-imposition of  US sanctions against companies doing business with Iran would significantly impact major European companies, limiting their ability to transact US related business if they do business with Iran.  Additionally, Iran would likely restart its nuclear program. Macron also rejected nationalism and argued for the importance of protecting the environment pointing out that we have an obligation to build a  better world for our children and that with regard to the Paris climate accords there is no Planet B. The Trump-Macron bromance may have just hit a pretty big speedbump. Trump may or may not have made his mind up about the Iran agreement but with his key advisors Mike Pompeo and John Bolton both on record against the agreement, there is a good chance that Macron will go home emptyhanded.  As to that other nuclear power wannabee, the one who already has more than a few nukes of his own, it’s looking more and more like Kim Jong Un’s willingness to give up his nuclear testing had more to do with the cratering of his test site than a sign of his interest in giving up his whole nuclear program in response to Trump’s pressure.  Scientists report that the site has collapsed, is unusable and now represents an environmental hazard.       

The Bromance

Le Bromance:  Like the Marquis de Lafayette before him, Emmanuel Macron is on a mission.  He’s in the US, not to help us in a war against the British but to try to save the country from Trump’s worse instincts.  To that end he’s doing his best to convince Trump to remain in the Iran agreement.  Yesterday, at a joint news conference, he said that he and Trump have agreed to work on a new deal, one that includes the original 2015 Obama era nuclear agreement but incorporates additional measures intended to extend its term,  place limits on Iran’s ballistic missile development and it’s regional interference, particularly in Syria and Yemen.  For his part, though he appears to adore Macron and went out of his way to maximize their physical contact, so much so that he removed a illusory dandruff fleck from Macron’s jacket in order to “keep him perfect,” Trump played coy, he didn’t promise to renew the Iran sanctions waivers on May 12, the next deadline for the Iran agreement.  He does appear to be warming to Macron’s suggestion.  However, as we all know by now, Trump can be mercurial and though he frequently expresses flexibility he tends to revert back to his original position as soon as the source of his flexibility moves on.  To the extent that anyone was in doubt about his true feelings about the Iran agreement, Trump reiterated those views, calling the agreement out as a “bad deal” based on a “bad structure,” one that is “falling down, It should never, ever been made.”  Trump went on to say that “nobody knows what I’m going to do on the 12^th, although Mr. President, you have a pretty good idea.”  The generally confident Macron, who is subjecting himself to some political risk at home by looking so chummy with Trump, didn’t look all that sure.  During the same press conference Trump addressed the upcoming meeting with Kim Jong Un, calling the repressive dictator, the guy that he previously called a madman, honorable, a description that baffles the mind. Some fear that though he insists that Kim agree to total denuclearization and though he promises to walk away if he can’t achieve that lofty goal, Trump will ultimately agree to almost anything to appear successful.  Negotiating nuclear agreements is another one of those complicated things.     

Republicans Behaving Badly:  Staffing a cabinet is complicated too.  Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, the man who lacks the credentials to run the VA, is still in the running for that position but just barely.  Though still not proven the accusations against him mount.  More than twenty individuals have come forward claiming that he became so inebriated during at least one overseas trip that he couldn’t be wakened from a drunken stupor when he was needed to attend to members of the presidential travel squad.  In addition, some have accused him of  over prescribing sleeping pills and perk me ups during long trips, an accusation that sounds a little bit righteous, since many if not all of the beneficiaries of those drugs were probably members of the traveling squad who had to hit the ground running to perform their jobs.  He was also accused of fighting with another doctor as the two competed for the White House medical position that Jackson ultimately won.  That accusation is documented in an earlier inspector general report that recommended that Jackson be reassigned.  Nevertheless, Jackson also has quite a few supporters and received good reviews for his job performance from both Obama and Trump.  Early in the day Trump said that Jackson would be better off if he pulled himself from contention, saying that he was a good man and that he didn’t deserve the treatment he was getting, Trump also blamed that treatment on the “obstructionist Democrat” even though the concerns about Jackson came from both sides of the aisle.  Later in the day, after meeting with Jackson who denied that any of the attacks against his character were true, Trump backtracked throwing his full support behind Jackson’s nomination.  Despite that support, Jackson’s nomination is probably destined for the waste bin.   EPA head Pruitt is still running the EPA but has lost the support of his biggest and earliest advocate, Oklahoma Senator Imhofe who agrees with Pruitt’s disdain for climate science and environment protecting regulations but is disgusted by all of his many ethical lapses.  None of this seems to be distracting Pruitt, yesterday he proposed new rules intended to limit the kinds of scientific studies that could be used as the basis of EPA regulations.  Suffice it to say, those rules which will require that qualifying scientific studies reveal the names of all the individuals whose medical information was included in studies of the health effects of chemicals, information that is generally kept confidential, were immediately bashed by the scientific community and will probably end up in court well before they can go into effect.  Budget Director Mick Mulvaney who also serves as the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that is supposed to protect the interests of consumers, spoke to a group of bank executives yesterday.  He advised them to aggressively “pursue their agenda” with their legislators and to generously pay lobbyists to act on their behalf, revealing that when he was a congressman he only accepted meetings with those who made contributions to his campaigns. Mulvaney who received $63,000 from payday lenders is doing his best to ignore the lenders’ infractions now that he is in control of the “consumer” protection bureau.

Russia, Russia, Russia:  We generally don’t hear much from Special Counsel Mueller but during the past few days we’ve learned a little more about his process as a result of the actions of Paul Manafort’s lawyers.  Manafort’s lawyers have questioned the rationale behind his indictments and the raid of his home, suggesting that Mueller and his team have acted outside of the boundaries of their mandate. In response Mueller’s team has submitted several court filings revealing that Manafort has been under the watchful eyes of the FBI for a number of years and that among other things, the FBI agents who “raided” his apartment were searching for notes and information related to the infamous Trump Tower meeting, the one between Don Jr and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.  That meeting is under the Mueller microscope, something that should concern many members of the Trump team including Manafort, Kushner, and Don Jr who all attended the meeting and Trump Sr who crafted the deceptive language about the meeting, the language that claimed that the meeting was about Russian adoptions but failed to mention that the meeting was about getting Hillary dirt.    

Election Results:  Republican Candidate Lesko prevailed over her Democratic rival Dr. Tipernini in yesterday’s special election in Arizona’s 8^th Congressional District.  Despite her victory Republicans remain concerned about the election outcome since Lesko only won by 5 points in the very conservative district that Trump won by 21 points during the 2016 election.  Republicans spent more than $1 million in a district that should have seen a big Republican victory and fear that Tipernini’s ability to close what should have been a much bigger gap is another sign of “Democratic enthusiasm, organizational muscle and determination to send a message” about Trump and his party.                              

Dr. Feelgood

Cabinet Shuffle:  When White House physician Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson announced that Trump was the picture of health and a beneficiary of good genes and then went on to exaggerate Trump’s height while understating his weight, many suspected that he might have been under the influence of something.  It turns out that those suspicions might not have been all that off base.  Late yesterday, several news sources reported that Dr. Jackson’s confirmation hearing to serve as VA Secretary have been postponed to some unspecified future date. Although senators from both sides of the aisle had already raised concerns about Jackson’s qualifications to run the massive VA system the hearings are being put off not because of his lack of managerial experience but because of new concerns about character issues.  Anonymous sources have accused Dr. Jackson of creating a hostile work environment, for excessive on the job drinking and for improperly dispensing medicines.  At this point its not clear that the accusations are true but, to the extent they are, Jackson can say goodbye to serving on the cabinet and may also lose his position as White House physician.  As to Trump, he surprised everyone, including his chief of staff, when he nominated Jackson because he hadn’t taken the time to have him adequately vetted, not too surprising since as we known by now, Trump isn’t all that into vetting. The Jackson situation is just one of the White House’s cabinet problems, EPA head Pruitt is still on the job but in recognition of the ever growing list of controversies surrounding his service, Bloomberg News reports that the White House has directed allies to stop defending him, a sign that he may be eased out of his position in the not so distant future.  Coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler was recently installed as Pruitt’s deputy administrator so Pruitt may now be dispensable, and since there is little doubt that a former coal lobbyist would be happy to continue stripping environmental protections, Pruitt isn’t really needed anymore.  The news isn’t all that bad for Trump, yesterday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee backed the nomination of former CIA head Mike Pompeo to serve as Secretary of State.  The vote was close, but after a firm shove from Trump, the attention grabbing Senator Rand Paul who had expressed concerns about Pompeo switched his vote to yes.  Despite concerns about his strong anti-Muslim views and frequent rejection of diplomatic solutions when war is an option,  Pompeo is expected to win the support of the full Senate.  The vote is expected to be largely partisan with no more than three Democrats including West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp and Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, all up for reelection in red “Trump” states, expected to support him.  As to his stated views on Muslims, Pompeo won’t be alone, he joins national security director John Bolton who until last month chaired a nonprofit that has promoted misleading and false anti-Muslim news, some of which was amplified by a Russian troll factory.  It’s worth noting, that both Pompeo and Bolton are on record opposing the Iran Nuclear Agreement which is up for recertification in early May.  The preservation of that deal is high on the list of items that France’s President Macron will be discussing with Trump during his visit.  Macron, who stated the case for staying in the agreement over the weekend on Fox TV in the hope of getting Trump’s attention is expected to forcefully but with oodles of his French charm argue that the agreement is the only thing preventing Iran from becoming a member of the nuclear “club.”  Germany’s Chancellor Merkel is expected to press the same argument during her visit later in the week, she will make the same points but unfortunately is likely to be less effective since Trump finds her far less charming.  Both leaders are all for pushing for further limits on Iran, but believe that trashing the nuclear deal would be a bigly problem, one that would make any positive outcome with North Korea that much less likely.  Macron has a full plate, he also plans to argue against tariffs and to push for Trump to reconsider joining the Paris Climate accords.  As to the Paris pact, former NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced that he plans to pick up the $4.5 million bill to fulfil the US commitment.  Bloomberg’s comment is that  “America made a commitment and as an American if the government’s not going to do it we all have responsibility.  I’m able to do it. So, yes, I’m going to send them a check for the monies that America had promised to the organization as though they got it from the federal government.”   

More Comey Fallout:  During his many interviews former FBI Director Comey talked about how concerned Trump was about the Steele Dossier, particularly the dossier’s report that he had spent some time in the company of prostitutes during his visit to Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.  Trump dismissed the assertions saying that because he was a  germaphobe, it was ridiculous to think that he could have been any kind of participant in that  “pee tape thing.”  Trump bolstered his claim that he hadn’t hung with the prostitutes by asserting that his Moscow trip had been so brief that he hadn’t spent the night.  He repeated that assertion several times even though Comey never asked him for any details about his trip.  Trump probably should have remained silent.  Over the weekend NBC showed social media postings and pictures of Trump in Moscow which prove that he was there for more than one day and yesterday Bloomberg News produced flight records that prove that Trump was in Moscow for 45 hours and 43 minutes. Yesterday, Alana Evans, a friend of adult film star Stormy Daniels said that she plans to sue Trump’s fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen for defamation for claiming that she was lying when she corroborated parts of Daniels’ story about her encounters with Trump as well as Daniels’ assertion that she had been threatened with physical harm. Evans also says that Trump offered her $10,000 to come up to his hotel room, another one of those accusations that makes it easier to believe that Trump has no problem hanging with prostitutes. Separately, it was also reported that Trump encouraged Attorney General Sessions and current FBI Director Christopher Wray to find damaging information about senior FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and turn it over to congressional Republicans investigating alleged anti-Trump bias and corruption within the FBI and Justice Department.  Strzok and Page are the two FBI agents who engaged in some questionable texting and across the board politician bashing in the course of their inappropriate but not illegal relationship.  Trump’s targeting of Page and Strzok came after he was told by his then-criminal defense attorney, John Dowd, that Page was likely a witness against him in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.  Page is one of the people who Comey kept in the loop after each of his Trump meetings, the meetings that he then memorialized in his contemporaneous memo.  Trump has been doing his best to push all of the people who Comey confided in to the curb and to a large extent he’s been successful though Page and Strzok, who are both career civil servants and harder to fire, are still employed.  

Today’s Special Election: Republican Debbie Lesko is expected to beat out her Democratic challenger Dr. Hiral Tiperneni in today’s special election in Arizona.  The two women are competing for the seat left vacant by Congressman Trent Franks, the conservative family values Republican who was forced to step down after he tried to get one or more of his female staffers to agree to be serve as a surrogate for his wife who was having fertility issues.  Since Trump won the district by 21 points it is highly unlikely that Tiperneni will pull an upset so the focus will instead be on the comparative size of Lesko’s margin of victory.      

Peepers and Magoo

Who’s Worried Now:  After the NY Times published a story co-authored by Trump’s once favorite reporter Maggie Haberman that suggested that Trump’s lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen would, in the not so distant future, flip on Trump in part because Trump has a history of treating Cohen with disdain and in part because Cohen ultimately will decide that he would rather see his kids grow up from the vantage point of an NYC apartment, rather than from the distance of a prison cell, Trump blew up on twitter.  He slammed Haberman, calling the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, a third rate flunky who relied on “non-existent ‘sources’ and a drunk/drugged up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family. Michael is  a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected.”  Not cowed by Trump’s verbal onslaught, Haberman slammed back, attacking Trump’s  use of "drugged up" as showing little compassion for those struggling with drug problems, such as victims of the opioid crisis. She then named Trump’s onetime campaign aide Sam Nunberg as the target of Trump’s vicious dig. Although Trump insists that Cohen will stick by him,  he’s not once argued that Cohen has nothing to spill.  In any case Haberman doesn’t stand alone with her assertion that Cohen spells trouble for Trump, virtually every other armchair shrink and pundit agrees with her assessment. As to Cohen, Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniel’s loquacious lawyer, believes that Cohen will be indicted sooner rather than later and while it’s easy to discount Avenatti given that he represents the adult movie star who may have triggered the investigation into Cohen’s possible illegal campaign contributions, Avenatti has been right more often than he’s been wrong so he probably shouldn’t be ignored.  It doesn’t help Cohen’s case that Keith Davidson, the other lawyer involved in the “hush” agreement payoffs, the guy who not so ably represented Stormy and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, is now cooperating with the federal authorities investigating Cohen.  Davidson has now hired his own attorney, one with extensive white collar crime experience.  Trump also lashed out at his other major irritant, the equally talkative James Comey. He called the former FBI Director a leaker and a liar profiting from a “third rate book,” just days after calling him a slime ball who belonged in jail.  Comey’s consistency is notable, few beyond Trump’s circle of Republican flunkies believe that he’s a liar and though many of them continue to assert that Comey illegally leaked his memos, most legal pundits agree that Comey is in the clear on that front and that the information that he provided was not classified, especially when he provided it.  As to his book, though some have suggested that it hurts Mueller’s investigation, Mueller and the FBI read drafts and Comey was careful to remove anything that concerned them.  He’s also been careful not to address any issues or respond to any questions that might reveal anything that remains classified or that Mueller would prefer him not to address.  Trump has also been raging against both Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and his boss, Attorney General Sessions. Though he’s denied that he calls them Mr. Peepers and Mr. Magoo in private claiming he doesn’t even know who those well known 60s era cartoon characters are.  The Washington Post, Trump’s other newspaper nemesis, reports that last week Sessions, AKA Mr. Magoo, told White House Counsel McGahn that he “would consider resigning” if Trump fires Rosenstein, AKA Mr. Magoo.  It’s not clear that he would quit, but he clearly was trying to send a message to the White House that firing Rosenstein would be a really, really bad thing.  As of now Rosenstein, who this week will fulfil his lifetime goal by arguing a case in front of the Supreme Court, is still employed.  

Financial Deception:  Given his various bankruptcy filings and questionable financial history, not to mention all of those Trump branded products that failed, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump has worked hard to inflate reports of his wealth.   Still his efforts during the 1980s to convince Jonathan Greenberg, a reporter from Forbes magazine, is notable both for the stream of lies he advanced and the fact that he posed as John Barron, a fabricated spokesperson, to get on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest individuals.  Greenberg recently rediscovered the tape of his conversations with Barron/Trump and decided that his promise that the conversations were confidential don’t apply since Trump was acting deceptively so he’s shared them with the press.  Using a barely disguised voice Barron/Trump lied about the ownership of the Trump family properties, alleging that they had all been transferred into his name.  Though Greenberg didn’t buy into all of what Trump/Barron had to say, he did include him on the list, assigning him a net worth of about  $100 million, though now he realizes that the mendacious Trump probably was worth no more than $5 million at the time.  Given Trump’s history of deception, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that EPA head Scott Pruitt is still a member of his cabinet. It should also surprise no one that Pruitt has a long history of deception and financial manipulation, one that predates his appointment to the cabinet.  The NY Times reports that he’s long benefitted from questionable financial dealings with people and companies seeking favors from him, in one case he managed to purchase a house he shouldn’t have been able to afford at a deep discount with the help of a representative of a telecom company lobbying him for favorable regulatory treatment.  Trump’s appointees aren’t the only ones engaging in odd business practices.  Yesterday The Guardian reported that Trump booster and advisor Sean is “linked to a web of shell companies that spent at least $90 million buying more than 870 homes across seven states over the past 10 years,” and that many of these homes were in foreclosure.  HUD helped him get mortgages worth $17.9 million to fund the purchases by insuring the loans under a National Housing Act program.  Not surprisingly Hannity has never mentioned these investments or his interaction with HUD during any of the times that HUD Secretary Ben Carson appeared on his show. Hannity’s lawyer defended the failure to disclose his investments by saying "most people prefer to keep their legal and personal financial issues private. Mr. Hannity is no different."  Most people don’t host a widely watched national talk show.  Though no one is accusing her of any financial improprieties, Kellyanne Conway proved once again that irony is a word not in her vocabulary.  Yesterday she “flipped out” at CNN’s Dana Bash when asked a question about her husband, George Conway’s snippy tweet retorts to some of Trump’s most ridiculous tweets and statements.  Kellyanne who has gone after Hillary Clinton for her husband’s transgressions, attacked Bash for holding her to an unfair standard.  No one, least of all Bash bought Kellyanne’s assertion, particularly in light of the repeated attacks that Trump has made on Andrew McCabe related to his wife’s run to serve as a Virginia legislator.  It’s also worth noting that a number of Republican operatives have recently questioned NBC’s Chuck Todd  because his wife is a “Democrat” and many of the same people are outraged that former FBI Director James Comey’s wife and daughters marched in the Women’s marches that followed Trump’s election.        

The International Front:  North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un says that his country will be suspending nuclear testing ahead of this week’s planned talks with South Korea and the anticipated meeting with Trump. Trump followed this announcement with a series of tweets, the first one celebrating North Korea’s promise to “denuclearize,” the second one walking back the first after his aides advised him that Kim only promised to hold off future tests, that, as of now, there is no promise of denuclearization.  To that end, though Trump deserves some credit for helping to push Kim to the negotiating table it’s worth noting that the North Korean’s have followed this playbook before and in the past, after extracting more agricultural aid, the North Koreans have backtracked, returning to form.  At this point, most experts believe that it is highly unlikely that Kim will give up his nukes.  As to nukes, and the value of the US as a negotiating partner, the Iran deal is up for recertification.  To that end, during his state visit, France’s Macron is expected to press Trump to keep the US in the deal.  Macron is also expected to ask Trump to revisit the Paris climate accords.  On Sunday, Macron told Chris Wallace of Fox News that his message to Trump is that "It's too complicated if you make war against everybody. You make trade war against China, trade war against Europe, war in Syria, war against Iran. Come on ... You need allies."

Politics Unusual:  Mitt Romney will probably be the Republican candidate for Senator in 2018, but his path to that spot just got a little bit more complicated.  He failed to get the required 60% of the vote at the Utah Republican convention, in fact he didn’t even get the most votes, he came in second to Utah State Representative Mike Kennedy.  Apparently the convention delegates were peeved that Romney had gone around them, securing a position on the primary ballot by obtaining signatures, a method that circumvents the convention process.  Romney is still expected to win his primary.  Senator Bob Corker has doubled down on his comments about the upcoming Senatorial election is his home state Tennessee, the retiring Corker still has only nice things to say about the Democratic candidate, much to the chagrin of Republicans in the state, but not much to say about his Republican opponent.  Needless to say Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell isn’t all that happy either, losing Tennessee to a Democrat is not in his plans.  As to the Democrats, Tom Perez, the DNC chairman, announced the filing of a civil suit against the Russian government, various members of the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks for their “alleged” nefarious acts during the 2016 presidential campaign.  Although a number of pundits, a lot of Republicans, and even a few Democrats have criticized his action, it’s worth noting that there is precedent for this lawsuit.  The Democrats sued the Republicans for $1 million, an amount of money that used to be considered a bigly amount, during the Watergate era and though they were initially widely ridiculed for that action, once the facts about Watergate came out and after several Nixon era characters were sent to jail, the Democrats collected a $750,000 settlement from the Nixon campaign committee.          

Mommy and Me

More Legal Beagles:  Trump has finally found a few lawyers willing to take him on as a client.  Rudy Giuliani and two Florida attorneys, Jane and Marty Raskin, are now part of Team Trump.  All three are former US attorneys. The bombastic Giuliani who was one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders during the 2016 campaign, is known to be a legal pit-bull and a publicity seeker.  As former FBI Director Comey put it in his book, the “most dangerous place to be in New York is between Rudy and a microphone.”   Guiliani asserts that his role will be limited in time and scope, that he’s coming on board to improve relations with Special Counsel Mueller who he has worked with before in order to help bring the investigation into Trump to a rapid conclusion, because it “needs a little push.”  For some reason, Giuiliani thinks that his presence will help end the investigation in two weeks. Should we mark that in our calendars or was that just part of his pitch to Trump?  Apparently Guiliani is being tasked with working out a strategy for the on again, off again Trump interview with Mueller and his team, the interview that most of Trump’s other lawyers and TV advocates think should never happen given Trump’s difficulties telling the truth and the one that Trump decided against after his fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen’s facilities were raided.   For now at least, Giuliani has taken a leave from the Greenberg, Traurig law firm; it’s reported that a number of his partners are less than happy that he’s joined the Trump team so it’s not clear how happy they will be to get him back after his “brief” assignment.  Mired in divorce proceedings Giuliani may just be looking for a new challenge to keep himself out of trouble or he might be angling to become the new Attorney General, when and if Trump ever gets around to firing Jeff Sessions.  Giuliani has wanted that job for a while but had been overlooked in part over concerns that given some of his sketchy clients, including a Turkish gold trader on the Iran sanctions list, he would find it difficult making it through a Senate confirmation. It’s also worth noting that it’s quite possible that Giuliani has been the subject of an FBI investigation.  A few weeks before Comey upturned the election by revealing that the FBI was analyzing the thousands of emails that Clinton aide Huma Abadin had left on her husband Anthony Weiner’s laptop, Giuliani  bragged about being told by his NYC FBI contacts that an October surprise was imminent. Yesterday, Comey revealed that those remarks prompted an investigation into those FBI leaks.  Comey doesn’t know how that investigation turned out because he was long gone before it was completed but it’s possible that Giuliani is knowingly or unknowingly embroiled in another FBI investigation, making him another questionable Trump hire and possibly another person who, to the extent he needs to go through one, will have a hard time passing his security review.  As to Trump’s lawyer/fixer Cohen, yesterday he dropped his libel case against Buzzfeed and Fusion GPS, the firm that hired ex-British spy Christopher Steele.  Cohen asserted that though he still feels that he was libeled he dropped the case because he’s otherwise occupied.  The Kushner family is also facing some additional legal pressure, yesterday it was revealed that they have been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors for information related to an AP report that the company filed dozens of false documents about its buildings in NYC.       

The Comey Memos:  Under pressure from the Nunes wing of House wackadoos, the beleaguered Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein finally relented and released former FBI Director Comey’s infamous contemporaneous memos, the ones that Comey wrote after each and every one of his meetings with Trump.  It’s against policy to release information that is the subject of an ongoing investigation but the House wackadoos were threatening Rosenstein’s very existence so he finally gave up, providing redacted versions of the memos for their review late yesterday and, of course, within minutes the memos were released to the press.  Unredacted versions will be made available for review in the house SCIF (cone of silence), and given this crowd’s propensity to share secrets, we’ll probably hear more about the memos’ contents as soon as they are reviewed by one or more of the talkative members of the House Intelligence Committee from either side of the aisle.  Between Comey’s Congressional testimony, his book and his book tour there isn’t all that much in the memos that most of us haven’t read or heard about. However, there are a few interesting new tidbits.  Though we already knew that Trump wasn’t all that concerned about former security advisor Flynn’s inappropriate business dealings or talks with Russia’s ambassador about sanctions relief, Trump was quite annoyed about Flynn’s poor judgment because he had taken a call from Putin, one in which Putin congratulated the new administration on the Trump victory, and then had taken days to tell Trump about it.  Trump felt that as a result of Flynn’s omission he had been put in the position of dissing his BFF Putin by taking a full six days to return his call. Trump also showed a lot of interest in Andrew McCabe, querying Comey about whether McCabe had hard feelings about the way he and his wife had been slammed by Trump during the campaign.  Given yesterday’s news that McCabe’s failure to be fully transparent about some of his conversations with the press, the reason given for his sudden dismissal, has now been referred to prosecutors for possible charges, those questions about McCabe feed the argument that he is being unfairly targeted and treated unduly harshly for his infractions.  For the record, yesterday Comey said that though McCabe should have been more open about his conversations with the press, he was fully authorized to have those conversations.  Others report that though it is normal for issues like McCabe’s to be referred to prosecutors it would be highly unusual for any charges to be pressed, but then again Trump is itching to throw someone into jail and McCabe may be his man.   Finally, the memos also reveal how upset Trump was about the Steele Dossier’s “pee tape” assertions.  Oddly enough, while claiming a guy like him didn’t have to seek the services of prostitutes, Trump also told Comey that Putin had told him that the prostitutes in Russia were among the most beautiful in the world, certainly an odd conversation to reveal at the same time that you are asserting that you have no interest in prostitutes.  In any case, Trump’s dalliance with playmate Karen McDougal make his assertion about never hanging with prostitutes less credible. Though their relationship went on for around ten months and  McDougal is not a prostitute, she reports that Trump tried to pay her after their first “date.” As to the memos, they don’t directly claim that Trump colluded but neither does he come off all that concerned about Russian interference, they also don’t show that Comey did anything illegal by writing or sharing them,  so of course Trump tweeted   “James Comey Memos just out show clearly that there was NO COLLUSION and NO OBSTRUCTION. Also, he leaked classified information. WOW! Will the Witch Hunt continue?”

Rules Update:  It’s kind of crazy that it took so long for the Senate to have to reconsider its rules to make an accommodation for a legislator and her newborn but thanks to Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth and her newborn baby girl Maile Pearl Bowsbey, it finally has.  Senator Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran and a double amputee is taking some time off for maternity leave but plans to remain available for any close votes and had requested permission to bring her baby onto the Senate chambers as necessary, something that had been prohibited. At one point some of her less than helpful Senate colleagues were so resistant to the presence of a “screaming baby” that they had suggested she instead use a room right off the Senate floor, one no bigger than a closet and were only dissuaded when Duckworth pointed out that her wheelchair wouldn’t fit through that room’s doors.  With the help of another Senate mother, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Duckworth was finally able to convince Senate leadership to change the rules.  Still a number of the older, stodgier mostly Republican Senators weren’t all that happy about the change.  Yesterday Duckworth and little Maile made history, rolling on to the floor so that the Senator could cast a vote against the confirmation of the new head of NASA, he was confirmed anyway.  Still Duckworth and little Maile made history  It’s about time.     

Comatose or Useless

Testy Times:  Through Trump’s ups and downs, inexplicable Russia love and many misstatements, UN Ambassador Niki Haley and VP Mike Pence have managed to lay low, avoid controversy and stay in his good graces, until now.  Haley was very publicly thrown under the bus over the weekend when Trump let everyone think that she erred by announcing what had been the planned impending sanctions against Russia.  When the Syrian attack plans were made, Trump’s military advisers decided to avoid hitting any Russian targets but wanted to make sure that the Russians got the message that they were being held accountable for the chemical attacks, the sanctions were intended to be part of the message.  However, Trump reneged on that part of the strategy, forgot to inform Haley and then grew enraged when he heard her announce them on last Sunday’s talk shows.  His anger was partly fueled by concerns that Haley, whose performance as UN Ambassador has impressed many, even those who don’t agree with all of her positions, is getting too much good press.  Trump is now worried that Haley could become one of his rivals in 2020. Similarly, last week he had a relatively public split with the generally obsequious and amiable, at least to him, VP Pence.  After Pence tried to add a new security advisor to his team Trump protested his preferred candidate, not because of his qualifications but  because the person in question, someone currently working for Haley, had been a never Trumper during the 2016 election.  Apparently Trump is also concerned that Pence has presidential ambitions and may, like Haley, have his eyes focused on 2020.  

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Yesterday during a press conference with Japan’s Prime Minister Abe, Trump was asked whether he had plans to fire Special Counsel Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein.  He launched into one of his meandering tirades, again asserting that everyone knows that there’s been no collusion, citing the highly dysfunctional House Intelligence Committee’s report that he had never, ever done anything wrong as proof.  He went on with his usual counterattack, saying that the Democrats and crooked Hillary were the real colluders and that the Russian stuff they accused him of was just part of their efforts to invalidate his presidency even though they had the edge in the electoral column.  If that sounds rambling, its because it was.  He never denied that he might fire Mueller and/or Rosenstein but did mention with a certain amount of disgust that as of now they still had their jobs despite all of the rumors that he had plans to fire either one of them, hardly much of a reassurance.  As to securing Mueller’s position, Senate Majority Leader McConnell still asserts that no protective legislation is necessary and that he has no plans to introduce any, however his hand may be forced soon.  Senator Grassley, the Republican head of the Judiciary Committee, plans to move ahead with bipartisan legislation intended to protect Mueller and the Russia investigation and it’s expected that the bill will make it out of his committee where a few Republicans including Senators Graham and Tillis are expected to vote with Democrats.  It’s not clear what will happen when and if the bill makes it to the floor, if McConnell will stand by his decision to refuse to take it up and whether or not it would have enough votes to pass the Senate if it is brought up for a vote.  As to the House, the wackadoodle faction, a group of Trump stalwarts, have decided that the real problem isn’t what might have happened between Trump and Russia so eleven of them have signed a joint letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling for the criminal prosecution of Hillary and a variety of other Obama administration appointees and career FBI officials. They area also calling for the prosecution of “all DOJ and FBI personnel responsible for signing the Carter Page warrant application,” including former FBI Director Comey, former Acting Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and former US attorney (and current FBI general counsel) Dana Boente for allegedly violating Page’s civil liberties.  Their letter probably won’t result in any action but it does provide an indication of just how dysfunctional and polarized the House has become.  As to Prime Minister Abe, his hastily planned summit with Trump was supposed to provide him with some reassurance that Trump won’t sell his country out during the planned upcoming meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.  Facing his own problems at home, he had also hoped to obtain some sanctions relief and was trying to convince Trump to come back into the Trans Pacific Trade Agreement.  Its not clear that he will be going home happy on either of those fronts.  Trump reported that they had a great round of golf, provided a few nice words about Japan’s strategic importance but remained resistant on trade and has taken back the comments he made last week about reconsidering the TPP agreement.

The Cohen Conundrum:  Trump is pretty rattled about the raid on his lawyer/fixer Cohen’s homes and office, so much so that he’s been calling around seeking advice where ever he can find it.  The Wall Street Journal reports that he has spoken with Jay Goldberg, one of his former long-time lawyers and a sometime informal advisor.  Goldberg warned Trump not to trust Cohen, he believes that on a scale of 1 to 100 the chances of Cohen of remaining loyal to Trump is zero.   He is so sure that Cohen will turn on Trump to save his own skin that he warned Trump not to talk with Cohen because of his belief that Cohen could already being wearing a wire.  It’s worth remembering that last week Trump called Cohen directly and although Cohen probably wasn’t wearing a wire at that time, the call was probably being tapped by the FBI.  Goldberg also warned Trump that he should avoid talking with Mueller because “they can jam you up even if you are telling the truth.”  Goldberg also told him to get himself some better lawyers for the Russia probe, gave him a few names to call, but so far those he recommended have refused to sign on.  On the “women problem” front, Trump has broken his silence about adult film star Stormy Daniels.  Responding to the composite drawing of the man that Stormy says threatened her and her daughter back in 2011, Trump tweeted “A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!  That sketch may be kind of sketchy and may not do much to catch the threatening thug to the extent there ever was such a thug, but it did achieve one of Daniels’ and her wily attorney Michael Avenatti’s objectives, it provoked Trump into tweeting, and that may have been the real reason for it’s release.  Although Stormy’s lawsuit against Trump remains intact, former playmate Karen McDougal’s has been settled.  She reached a settlement on Wednesday, freeing her from her 2016 legal agreement with AMI, the owners of The National Enquirer.  McDougal is now free to talk about her much longer term relationship with Trump as much as she wants.  She gets to keep the $150,000 that she was initially paid as part of the AMI catch and kill arrangement but has to share up to $75,000 of any money she earns for her story with The National Enquirer.  AMI is spared from having to go through a discovery process that would have opened up their correspondence files to McDougal’s lawyers.  However, since much if not all of that information is probably already available or accessible to the FBI agents investigating Cohen’s alleged criminal activities, neither Trump nor Cohen should breathe a sigh of relief, the information will not remain secret for long.  And many of those other women who signed similar hush agreements are probably about to emerge from hiding.

Quote of the Day:  Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, who has decided not to seek reelection in November, said that "Any Republican senator who hasn't been conflicted over this presidency is either comatose or is pretty useless in their blindness." He also went on to compliment the Democratic candidate running for his seat, former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen.  Corker went on to say that he considers Bredesen a friend with a lot of crossover appeal.  He added that he has no plans to campaign against him.  Bredesen is currently leading the likely Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn in the polls by about six points. Liddle Bob Corker’s seat may be on the verge of turning blue.    

Hannity's Legal Beagles

Cabinet Politics:  UN Ambassador Niki Haley is a tough and assertive woman, and for the record she is not confused.  In an effort to explain away Haley’s assertion that Trump was about to impose more sanctions on Russia after Trump had changed his mind but had forgotten to tell her even though his communications team had sent out to report that sanctions were imminent, economic advisor Larry Kudlow asserted that the problem wasn’t Trump, it was Haley.  From Mar a Lago, where he was busy kowtowing to Trump, Kudlow told reporters that Haley’s “done a great job. She’s a very effective ambassador, but there might have been some momentary confusion about that.”  Haley wasn’t all that happy about Kudlow’s remarks, in fact you could say that she was truly pissed.  She responded by telling the Fox Five that “with all due respect, I don’t get confused.”  Kudlow got the message, he called Haley and apologized.  His gaffe aside, the bigger question is why Trump reneged on the sanctions, and the only answer that anyone can provide is that he didn’t want to further offend Putin.  In other cabinet news, Scott Pruitt is still running the EPA and is still the subject of a lot of negative press for his paranoia and egregious spending habits.  In an editorial titled “Scott Pruitt is Ridiculous” the New York Times Editorial Board called for him to be ousted pointing out that in a cabinet populated by “ideologues and mediocrities” that he is the worst, a self-aggrandizing, thug who has got to go.  They also point out that despite Trump’s assertion that he is doing a great job, Pruitt has accomplished little, a good thing for those of us who think that the EPA should protect the environment but baffling considering his many pronouncements.  Yesterday, former CIA Director, almost Secretary of State Pompeo’s confirmation hit a stumbling block.  Two of the Democratic Senators on the Foreign Relations committee who previously supported his CIA nomination announced that they plan to vote against confirming him for the Secretary of State position.  Virginia’s Senator Kaine is withholding support because of concerns that with hawkish security advisor John Bolton already on board, Pompeo’s confirmation would “exacerbate President Trump’s weaknesses rather than uphold our diplomatic legacy.”   New Hampshire’s Senator Shaheen said she can’t vote for him because of concerns about his positions on gay rights, Muslim Americans and women’s reproductive rights. With Republican Senator Rand Paul, another member of the Foreign Relations Committee, already on record opposing Pompeo, his nomination will be sent to the floor of the Senate without the committee’s support.  To the extent that vulnerable red state Democrats crossover and vote for him, Pompeo could still be confirmed but at this point, his nomination is not a done deal.  Nevertheless he’s been busy, yesterday it was reported that in anticipation of the summit between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Pompeo secretly visited with Kim over Easter to get the lay of the land and to figure out if the Little Rocket Man is really on board to discuss denuclearization.  At this point the summit is still on so whatever was said must have satisfied Pompeo.  The South Koreans have also been talking with their North Korean counterparts and the two countries are discussing a peace deal, with the aim of officially ending the Korean war, a war that kind of ended but only with a truce, not with an official peace agreement.  To the extent that they reach an agreement, the US and China would also have to sign on.  Lastly, though he’s not an official member of the cabinet, Sean Hannity is one of Trump’s closest advisors.  The two speak several times a week with Trump consulting with him on so many decisions that those within the White House consider Hannity to be Trump’s shadow chief of staff.  On Monday we learned that Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer/fixer considers Hannity to be one of his three clients.  Yesterday it was revealed that Hannity has also been represented by Jay Sekulow, the lawyer currently serving as the head of Trump’s legal team for the Russia investigation.  And as if that isn’t enough, Hannity has also employed the legal services of Victoria Toensing, wife of Joseph diGenova significant because Trump considered officially adding Toensing and diGenova to his legal team but didn’t because of their less than sartorial dress habits and their representation of some former Trumpkins.  Still Trump seeks their advice, some of which he gets by watching them on Fox.  Another one of his TV legal advisors, Alan Dershowitz, who takes Trump’s side on most legal issues told Hannity and just about anyone else who would listen that he believes that Hannity should have disclosed his relationships with Cohen, Toensing and diGenova during one or more of the countless times that they appeared on his show.  Hannity disagrees and apparently so do his bosses at Fox who remain unconcerned about his conflicts.  As to Cohen, its possible that he really never represented Hannity on any legal issues but that he is making that assertion in order to protect their conversations, especially the questionable ones that he may have taped and that may have been swept up by the FBI during their raid of his office and homes.     

Election Update:  Although Democrats are hoping that a massive blue wave will help them take over both the House and the Senate during the upcoming midterm elections, taking over the Senate will be hard considering how many red state Democrats are up for reelection.  Two of those most vulnerable red state senators are getting a little help from messy Republican situations in their states.  Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill who won her last election in part because of her opponent’s absurd views on rape, is facing a tough election, probably against John Hawley who is leading in the Missouri Republican primary.  However, Missouri politics are once again mired in a sex controversy related to their Republican Governor Eric Greitens who is credibly accused of coercing his hairdresser into nonconsensual sex acts and taking nude photos of her as blackmail.  Although none of this involves Hawley, McCaskill may benefit from Greitens refusal to step down and the taint that his scandal is leaving on the Republican party.  West Virginia’s Senator Joe Manchin is also up for reelection and he also may be the beneficiary of some Republican disarray.  Three Republicans are competing for the right to run against him, one of them, Don Blankenship, is a convicted felon and coal baron who was jailed for violating mine safety regulations.  Republican leadership fears that Blankenship will win the three way primary, creating a Roy Moore like situation that makes it easier for Senator Manchin to hold his seat.  Regardless of what happens in the Senate, the environment in the house is looking more and more friendly for Democrats. An upcoming special election in Arizona’s 8^th District provides another indication of just how much the tide has turned in their favor.   A recent poll by Emerson College shows Democrat Hiral Tipirneni leading Republican state senator Debbie Lesko by a 46-45 margin, earlier polls had shown Lesko winning by double digits.  Although a Tipirneni victory would be a push, just the fact that she’s made the election competitive in a district that Trump won by 21 points is remarkable and a bad sign for Republicans.  The election takes place on April 24.

Health Updates:  Senator John McCain’s return to the Senate is unlikely to happen anytime soon, if at all.  He underwent intestinal surgery this week and though he is reported to be in stable condition, he’s clearly having a hard time of it, so much so that the Arizona governor is pushing legislation that would  delay a special election for his replacement, to the extent that one was needed, beyond November so that Arizona wouldn’t have two Senators up for election at the same time.  Though everyone focuses on the health of the older members of the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor had another hopefully minor health scare this week, she broke her shoulder during a fall at her house.  In January, Sotomayor who has diabetes was treated at her home by paramedics after suffering from a low blood sugar episode.  On the Supreme Court front, Trump was probably a bit surprised and not all that happy when his prize appointment joined with the court’s liberals, striking down a law calling for the deportation of legal immigrants committing certain serious crimes. He doesn’t mind felons being deported but he feels that the law was too vague and that it requires legislative clarity.  Its thought that his mentor the late Justice Scalia would have agreed with that assessment.  And former First Lady and presidential mom, Barbara Bush passed away yesterday at 92, just a day after her family announced that she didn’t want anything more than comfort care.