The President is Missing?

Pardons and Tampering:  Trump’s lawyer/spokesperson Giuliani raised quite a few eyebrows with his assertion that Trump’s pardon power was so broad that it would include self-pardoning. After hearing that, Iowa Senator Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said "If I were President of the United States and I had a lawyer that told me I could pardon myself, I think I would hire a new lawyer." Louisiana Senator Kennedy said that if Trump did that he’d end up at the Supreme Court and South Carolina Senator Graham said that it wouldn’t be a good idea from a political perspective. The oh so charming Senator Cruz tried to outrun a reporter asking his view before finally spitting out that it was not an issue he had studied. For his part, Trump, not much of a studier, sees eye to eye with Giuliani, yesterday he started the day by tweeting “As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong? In the meantime, the never ending Witch Hunt, led by 13 very Angry and Conflicted Democrats (& others) continues into the mid-terms!”  He then went on to call the Mueller investigation “UNCONSTITUTIONAL.”  Giuliani’s opinion and Trump’s protestations aside, the Washington Post reports that Trump’s real lawyer, Emmet Flood, has advised him that though its not clear that Mueller can force his testimony, its also not clear that he can’t and that fighting a subpoena would likely result in a Supreme Court battle, one with an uncertain outcome, so while Trump and Giuliani continue to try to manipulate public opinion, inside the White House attempts are being made to prepare Trump for some type of sit down with Mueller.  Reports are that those sessions aren’t going well since Trump gets angry whenever the Mueller probe is brought up. As to Giuliani, late Sunday he told the Huffington Post that Trump couldn’t even be prosecuted for shooting former FBI head James Comey if he was so inclined because that pardon power is so broad it would cover murder. Giuliani did say that in all likelihood he would then be impeached for the crime. On Monday he doubled down on his very inappropriate example, by predicting that Comey’s head would soon role anyway, once the Inspector General’s report comes out on his handling of the Clinton email controversy, because it will provide the “final nail in Comey’s coffin.”  Giuliani, who has an explanation for everything, then “swore to God” that no one on the Trump team had intentionally lied about the purpose of the Trump Tower “Veselnitskaya” meeting or about Trump’s role in crafting the letter about that meeting, justifying the ever changing and conflicting explanations as the result of a series of unintentional mistakes.  Paul Manafort, is another guy who has a lot of explaining to do.  Late yesterday, it was revealed that Mueller’s prosecutors have asked the Washington DC judge handling a part of his case to revise or even revoke his bail and have also forwarded information about his transgressions to the Virginia Judge handling his other case.  The prosecutors provided evidence that Manafort has been trying to tamper with two witnesses, communicating initially by cell phone but then through an encrypted app.  One of the approached individuals told the FBI that he “understood Manafort’s outreach to be an effort to ‘suborn perjury’. ”   Trump may have known this was coming, though he spent part of last week winking support to Manafort with his questionable pardons and pardon plans, over the weekend he tweeted that the FBI should have warned him about Manafort’s shady past before he hired him for his campaign, hardly a message that you should be send someone you are trying to silence.  As to Manafort, it’s highly likely that the DC judge won’t be all that happy about his actions, she’s already chastised him once before for trying to manipulate the Ukrainian press.  He could get a taste of life inside prison sooner than he expected.  Lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen is another guy who shouldn’t be all that happy right now.  Yesterday it was reported that very, very few of his files have been identified as privileged, something that Trump should be worried about, too.        

The Culture Wars:  Yesterday, by a vote of 7 to 2 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the baker who had refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple. The basis for the court’s decision was narrow, it left open the larger question of whether a business can discriminate against gay people based on rights protected by the First Amendment.  Instead of issuing a broad opinion that further supported same sex marriage or one that weighed in on the side of religious rights, the opinion, written by Justice Kennedy who previously authored the opinion legalizing gay marriage, concluded that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had been hostile to religion because of the remarks of one of its members.  Not surprisingly, Trump misunderstood the decision.  Without reading the decision or even a summary of the decision, he called it out as a major success for religious rights because of the final vote count.  In any case, the court may soon get a chance to further address the bigger issue since a number of similar cases are pending. As to racial politics, after many members of the Philadelphia Eagles football team decided to skip celebrating their Super Bowl victory with a traditional visit to the White House mostly because they didn’t want to spend time with him, Trump revoked the invitation, explaining his decision by tweeting  “The Philadelphia Eagles Football Team was invited to the White House. Unfortunately, only a small number of players decided to come, and we canceled the event. Staying in the Locker Room for the playing of our National Anthem is as disrespectful to our country as kneeling. Sorry!”  The real bottom line here is that Trump has elevated #TakeAKnee to culture war status and has concluded gaining points with his largely white base is more important than trying to address the underlying issues that spurred the movement in the first place. Proving that he too can be clueless, Bill Clinton mangled his response to a question from NBC’s Chris Melvin’s about whether or not he had adequately apologized to Monica Lewinsky especially in light of the #MeToo movement.  Though he was out marketing his new novel, “The President is Missing”  co-authored with James Patterson, Clinton should have anticipated that the Monica question would come up and should have had a more thoughtful response ready. He did just a little bit better during a later interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo.  By the way, the new book is about a president about to be impeached, a topical political thriller or an accurate depiction of current events, take your pick. 

Primary Jungle: It’s primary day in eight states including New Jersey, Alabama, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota and California.  Most eyes are on California because its  “jungle primary” system provides for candidates from all parties - Republican, Democratic, and other – to run against each other with the top two vote getters advancing to the November general election. Democrats are hoping to swing a few previously red districts blue but to do that they will need their candidates to come in first or second place in each district.  Right now the concern is that with so many Democrats running, Republicans could end up winning the top two slots  in a few districts providing certain “red” victories in November in districts that would otherwise turn blue. Another concern is that a Republican candidate will win one of the two Governor slots. In all likelihood that candidate would not win in the end, but his presence on the ticket would bring out Republican voters that the Democrats would rather see stay home in November.