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.