Hold That Letter

North Korean Backtracking:  Citing his “transformative efforts to bring peace to the Korean peninsula," seven Republican governors joined eighteen Republican congressman by sending their own letter to the Nobel committee nominating Trump for a Nobel peace prize.  They might want to consider pulling that letter back, at least for now.  Yesterday, North Korean officials cancelled a planned meeting with their South Korean counterparts and threatened to cancel the Trump-Kim Jong Un Singapore summit that is supposed to take place in June.  The North Koreans placed the blame for their somewhat shocking, or shocking to some, change of plans on the routine joint military exercises currently underway between the US and South Korea, exercises that they knew would take place and that they previously said wouldn’t impact the planned “denuclearization” summit.  They also lashed out at national security advisor John Bolton’s weekend assertion that he wants to see North Korea commit to follow the Libya disarmament model, the one where former Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program in return for sanctions relief but that ultimately resulted in him being overthrown and brutally killed. A North Korean Vice Minister said that the “world knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq, which have met a miserable fate, we shed light on the quality of Bolton already …and we do not hide a feeling of repugnance towards him.”  The North Korean actions shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to Trump and his team, the North Koreans have a history of taking two steps backwards for every one forward.  Experts, to the extent that they know much, expect that the summit will still proceed, that Kim Jong Un is just doing his best to make it clear that he won’t be rolled, he doesn’t plan to give up all his nukes and that he wants some sanctions relief before he makes any more moves.. Those requirements fly in the face of Trump’s position, the one where he induces Kim to give up all of his nukes first, improves his ratings at home, saves the midterms, wins reelection, gets awarded that Nobel peace prize and becomes president for life.  Kim, who Secretary of State Pompeo has described as very smart, may have concluded that Trump wants the summit so much that he will concede some points to see it happen.  The smart and strategic Kim may be right, at least about that last point.

The Mueller Front:  Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the beginning of the Special Counsel Mueller investigation into Russian election meddling and Trump team collusion and obstruction.  Thanks to Rudy Giuliani we now know that Trump and his team plan to celebrate by attacking the investigation.  Giuliani told Bloomberg, “We are going to try as best we can to put the message out there that it has been a year, there has been no evidence presented of collusion or obstruction, and it is about time for them to end the investigation.  We don’t want to signal our action if this doesn’t work—we are going to hope they listen to us—but obviously we have a Plan B and C.”  Giuliani wants Mueller to say that Trump is in the clear and oddly enough he cites Comey’s statement, the one where he cleared Hillary of email crimes, before he reopened his investigation only to clear her again, as a good example of what he wants to see Mueller do.  While Giuliani was posturing and pontificating,  Trump’s one time lawyer  Jay Goldberg, who says that he still talks with Trump and that he still considers their conversations covered by attorney client privilege, criticized Giuliani saying that Trump made a mistake by hiring him to his team.  He went on to say that Giuliani was just trying to “aggrandize himself” and hog the spotlight instead of representing Trump to the best of his ability. Goldberg didn’t catch the irony  that by going on TV and seeking the “spotlight” he was doing the same thing that he accused Giuliani of doing.  Kudos to Trump, he surrounds himself with only the best people.  As to Mueller, he just keeps plodding along.  Yesterday Judge Amy Berman, the federal judge presiding over the Manafort case in Washington refused to throw out criminal charges brought against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.  She said that the “indictment ‘falls squarely within that portion of the authority granted to the Special Counsel that Manafort finds unobjectionable,’ namely the order to investigate any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign.”  Mueller filed similar criminal charges in Alexandria, Virginia, where Manafort’s lawyers have pressed the presiding judge, who appeared to be more sympathetic, to toss them out too.  That case is still pending.  Though its not clear that Mueller’s team is involved, Cambridge Analytica continues to have problems.  Yesterday the NY Times revealed that the FBI and the Justice Department are investigating the now defunct firm’s financial dealings and data shenanigans. Steve Bannon Trump’s former strategic advisor and the Trump Mercer family contributors who were heavily involved with Cambridge Analytica are probably entwined in that investigation and not in a good way.

Tuesday Politics:  Yesterday primaries were held in four states:  Pennsylvania, Idaho, Oregon and Nebraska.  Of those the results in Pennsylvania are the most relevant because they are expected to have the most significant impact on the outcome of the November midterms. With all of the districts recently withdrawn after court decisions had mandated a new map to undo overly Republicans friendly gerrymandering, the Democrats have their best chance of picking up crucial Congressional seats.  Pennsylvania Republican candidates largely stuck to the Trump party line.  One of those candidates, Rick Saccone, who had earlier lost a special to Democratic centrist Conor Lamb, lost again and will not be making his way to Congress.  Four of the winning Democratic candidates are women, particularly notable because Pennsylvania’s current representation is all male, at least two of those women are seen as favorites in November so that will change.  Though his name wasn’t on any of Tuesday’s tickets, Vanity Fair reports that Pence has quietly taken the lead on virtually all the midterm drudgery usually overseen by the president—making endorsements, conferring with party power brokers, meeting with voters in battleground states.”  They report that he has “one eye on the throne.”  The current occupant of that throne appears to be paying attention.  Trump who hadn’t planned to attend the NRA annual meeting, did attend and speak after he found out that Pence was scheduled to be the keynote speaker.  Likewise, he now plans to be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Susan B Anthony gala next week, upstaging Pence who will also be in attendance at the anti-abortion group festivities.  The Pence political action committee has now hired Trump’s former campaign manager and close buddy Corey Lewandowski.  Lewandowski, who has a record of being really bombastic and has been known to tackle a reporter or two, was dispensed by Trump to keep an eye on the obsequious but cunning Pence. Trump knows a silver fox when he sees one.