Alternative Reality

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy:  It turns out that Rudy Giuliani’s riff on Sean Hannity’s show was part of a harebrained scheme that he ginned up with Trump in an attempt to move past the Stormy Daniels problem.  Having decided that it was time to “open up” about the payment made to Stormy Daniels, they decided that Rudy would go on Fox, also known as Trump TV, to present a revised, though not necessarily improved version of the Stormy story to the public. Everyone at the White House, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the rest of the communications team and the White House and outside lawyers, including newest hire Emmet Flood, were left in the dark about their plan.  While talking to Sean Hannity, Rudy said a lot of remarkable things.  Invoking a Nazi analogy, he called the NY FBI Agents who raided Michael Cohen’s office and homes stormtroopers.  Although he claimed that the payment to Stormy was done to protect Trump’s family, he then contradicted himself by adding that you could only imagine how bad it would have been if the Stormy story came out in October 2016, just weeks before the election, basically an admission that it was a campaign related payment.  According to Rudy, Trump paid an ongoing monthly stipend to Michael Cohen which, since Cohen did virtually no legal work for him,  was meant to facilitate Stormy like payments. By saying that Cohen was a fixer rather than a lawyer, he basically threw the argument that Trump’s communication with Cohen was protected out the window.  Rudy added that Cohen went ahead and made the payment to Stormy without Trump’s knowledge because that’s what fixers do for their really rich clients, something he knows about because he’s helped out a few clients with similar “problems” and anyway $130,000 is a bargain, a nothing burger to a billionaire like Trump.   He then asserted that Trump didn’t know about the payment to Stormy until after the election, which is when he started reimbursing Cohen for his “advance.”  Yesterday, in a series of tweets Trump backed up Rudy’s story, but added that Stormy was a liar and an extortionist.  Rudy also managed to cover a few other topics.  He explained away Trump’s firing of former FBI Director Comey by saying that Trump rightfully fired Comey after Comey refused to publicly acknowledge that he wasn’t a subject of the FBI Russia investigation, an explanation that conflicts with Trump’s earlier justifications, including his very public statement to NBC’s Lester Holt and his overheard statement to Russians Lavrov and Kislyak.  Rudy also said that Special Counsel Mueller better stay away from first daughter Ivanka, because going after her would be a step too far and that the public would never let him get away with it, he added that if Mueller needs to  go after a Kushner, Trump would consider Jared to be fair game.  As to Cohen, NBC reported that his phones had been wiretapped and that at least one call caught had been from a White House number. In response Rudy attacked the Justice Department, calling for Attorney General Sessions to step up and end the investigations.  NBC later retracted that the phones had been tapped saying that they had only been monitored, meaning that the FBI had only obtained a log of calls in and out but had not actually taped any of their content.  Sessions just stayed quiet.  As to Mueller, it was also revealed that he requested 70 blank subpoenas from the courts in connection with the Manafort case yesterday. While Trump ratchets up his attacks against the Justice Department and Mueller, Mueller remains on the case, conducting business as usual, assuming anyone thinks that investigating a president and his assorted cronies for so many crimes is all that usual.

Other Stuff:  Yesterday, Pat Conroy, the Jesuit priest who had involuntarily resign from his position as the House chaplain rescinded his resignation by writing House Speaker Paul Ryan a letter saying "While you never spoke with me in person, nor did you send me any correspondence, on Friday, April 13, 2018 your Chief of Staff, Jonathon Burks, came to me and informed me that you were asking for my letter of resignation. I inquired as to whether or not it was 'for cause,' and Mr. Burks mentioned dismissively something like, 'maybe it's time that we had a Chaplain that wasn't a Catholic.’ ”  Ryan, who had clearly goofed and mishandled the situation responded by reinstating Father Conroy, saying "I have accepted Father Conroy's letter and decided that he will remain in his position as chaplain of the House"  He went on to say that his “original decision was made in what I believed to be in the best interest of this institution. To be clear, that decision was based on my duty to ensure that the House has the kind of pastoral services that it deserves." Ryan has now achieved a trifecta, he’s managed to outrage most Catholics, Conroy’s defenders of all faiths, and the fundamentalist Christian contingent that pushed for Conroy’s dismissal in the first place.  No wonder he’s decided to leave Congress at year’s end.  During his Fox appearance Rudy unofficially announced that three American’s held by North Korea would be released shortly.  He didn’t have the authority to make that announcement in part because he doesn’t have security clearance to even know those details.  Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to comment on Rudy’s statement as did Heather Nuaert at the State Department.  Nevertheless it is highly likely that the three prisoners will be released as a North Korean sweetener prior to Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un.  This is great news for them and their families but instead of just letting their release, or at least their potential release, speak for itself, Trump attacked Obama claiming that it was his fault that these prisoners weren’t released earlier.  Of course, with regard to two of them, that would have been impossible since they were taken prisoner during Trump’s term.  So much for reality.  Lastly, Trump has been having a lot of buyer’s remorse about the huge deficit enlarging budget that Congress passed and he signed.  At one point it was reported that he was planning to ask Congress to shrink that budget by $60 billion.  He’s given up that plan but will still be clawing back $11 billion, going after unspent money authorized in prior years. Maybe he could start by slashing cabinet secretaries’ travel budgets, starting with EPA Head Pruitt.  Apparently before he became the subject of heightened scrutiny he’d been planning several international junkets.