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.