What Goes Up...

The Trump Slump:  Last year when it seemed that stock market indices could only head up, Trump reveled in their rise, and was quick to say that the market’s upward movement was fully attributable to his brilliant economic acumen and his push for deregulation. The true story was more complicated, yes the markets were responding to the loosening of regulatory reins but it was more than fair to say that much of the improvement in the general economy was just a continuation of a trend begun during the Obama years.  Still Trump was in charge, so it was his market and few if any politicians would have hesitated to take credit for a booming market taking place on their watch.  Those market gains helped many ignore Trump’s failings, what’s a little “bad people on both sides” when your 401 K or IRA are climbing. Now the stock markets are down 10% from their highs and 4% for the year, and this time it’s mostly about Trump. It turns out that imposing tariffs and getting into a trade war with China are not particularly good things, it also turns out that going after Amazon, a widely held stock, because you are angry with “liberal” Jeff Bezos and his “mouthpiece” the Washington Post is also a bad thing. It’s unlikely that a lawsuit against Trump for market manipulation would be successful but at least with regard to Amazon stock it would probably be warranted.  Interest rate movements and the likelihood that social media companies will be subjected to regulatory oversight are also influencing market trends but for now at least it’s Trump’s trade war and his unbridled attacks on Amazon that are contributing to volatility and leading the markets down.  At least one guy is happy, Peter Navarro, Trump’s pro tariff trade advisor isn’t all that concerned about the markets, he says everyone should just relax, and “kind of look at the chess board.”  As to Amazon, Trump’s attacks may have just begun, Vanity Fair reports that Trump is still looking for ways to “f-ck with” Jeff Bezos and wants to know if there is anything he can do to upend Amazon’s impending contract with the Pentagon.  Need toothpaste on the base, fuggetaboutit!

Media Madness:  Yesterday Sinclair Broadcasting’s promotional campaign went viral but not in a good way.  Sinclair is the conservative media company that’s been quietly buying up larger and larger chunks of the public television market.  Until recently most of the company’s stations were in smaller and midsized markets but if their pending $3.9 billion acquisition of  Tribune Media goes through they will own 200 stations covering two thirds of the country.  That Sinclair espouses a conservative viewpoint and provides canned commentary to its stations has been known for a while, after all this is the company that counts forever Trumpkin Boris Epstheyn as a chief political strategist and the disreputable Sebastian Gorka as a regular commentator.  Nevertheless, a video mash up of dozens of Sinclair Broadcasting anchors each delivering the exact same company dictated “public service” message criticizing the “troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country” was fairly frightening in a Stepford Wife kind of way and may well be a harbinger of things to come, particularly once the Sinclair-Tribune merger goes through.  While the mash-up video got lots of predictably negative press from much of the rest of the news world, Trump loved it.  He tweeted “So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased. Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke.” In addition to tweet defending Sinclair, attacking the mainstream media and disrupting the stock markets, Trump found time to attend the White House Easter Egg festivities where, with a large bespectacled bunny by his side, he railed against illegal immigrants and Democrats, touted the booming economy  but ignored the market slump in his remarks made to an audience made up mostly by young impressionable and somewhat baffled children, most of whom just wanted to find a few more chocolate eggs.

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Last week when Trump spoke with Vladimir Putin, in addition to congratulating him on his electoral win and failing to criticize him for poisoning ex-spies in London, Trump told Vlad that he was eager to meet with him again soon.  The invitation was a surprise to many, including Trump’s advisors who only learned about the invitation from the Kremlin, who seems to do a much better job these days providing full read outs of their leader’s conversations with world leaders than the staff at the White House.  Yesterday, the Kremlin provided more color about Trump’s meeting request, Trump didn’t just suggest a meeting, he invited Putin to come visit him, in the White House.  For his part Putin really wants to come hang with Trump because from his point of view a visit in the US would help prove that the silly poisoning stuff was no biggy.  At this point it’s still not clear when the meeting will take place since Trump’s got a lot on his plate right now, including an upcoming visit by France’s Macron and preparation, to the extent that he plans to do any, for his critical upcoming meeting with the Little Rocket Man, Kim Jung Un.  While plans for the Putin visit remain up in the air, Special Counsel Mueller remains on the case and seems to be staying well within the lines proscribed by his boss Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.  Last night in response to Paul Manafort’s arguments that the charges levied against him for his pre-Trump misdeeds were outside the scope of Mueller’s investigation, Mueller submitted a somewhat redacted copy of his Rosenstein mandate to the court.  Unfortunately for Manafort, Rosenstein specifically authorized the investigation into all of Manafort’s activities.  The pressure on Manafort to turn continues to mount.  Dr. Jill McCabe, the wife of Andrew McCabe, who’s run for a Virginia state senator provided ammunition to Trump in his efforts to discount her husband and the whole Mueller investigation by painting him as a Clinton acolyte, has finally come forward. Dr. McCabe isn’t just a dedicated emergency room pediatrician, she’s also a pretty good counter puncher.  While pointing out that her husband is a Republican and that she has been known to vote for candidates on both sides of the aisle, she said that her run for state office was driven by her desire to push Virginia to participate in the Medicaid expansion part of Obamacare so that more of her patients would be able to get preventive health care avoiding a visit to her emergency room.  She pushed back any and all suggestions that either she or her husband had done anything inappropriate or unethical, instead calling out the attacks against both of them as a politically motivated Trump nightmare and who can’t relate?       

Another Me Too Victim:  Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty, a Democrat from Connecticut, announced that she will not be seeking reelection in November.  The Congresswoman had been facing criticism for her failure to protect the women in her office by keeping her chief of staff Tony Baker on the payroll for months after he had been credibly accused of harassing and threatening a female member of her staff.  Esty had been trying to hold on but time and the pressures of the movement and her colleagues finally got to her.  Trump is still in office, still plans to run for reelection and despite everything seems to have gotten a bump up in his most recent approval ratings. Go figure.