Honestly Pathological

Cohen Conniption: Rudy Giuliani was out in force this weekend.  The chief purpose of his multiple talk show appearances was to deliver the message that Trump’s former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen is a pathological liar and manipulator, a message that would have had far greater impact if Rudy hadn’t been on all the same talk shows in May spreading the word that Cohen was an honest and honorable lawyer.  Then again, at least in Trump land, consistency, like truth telling, is over rated.  Giuliani also announced the blatantly obvious, that Trump and Cohen’s joint defense agreement is over, something he did while attacking Cohen for violating attorney client privilege, a statement that was immediately destroyed by Cohen’s lawyer/PR guy Lanny Davis who called Giuliani confused, saying "He expressly waived attorney-client privilege last week and repeatedly and inaccurately -- as proven by the tape -- talked and talked about the recording, forfeiting all confidentiality." As to that Cohen-Trump tape, the one that was released last week, Giuliani now asserts that it was doctored and reports that the Trump team has hired a forensic expert to analyze it, a variation on Trump’s claim that he didn’t really say the things he said on the infamous Access Hollywood tape.  Last week’s biggest bombshell was Cohen’s assertion that Trump knew all about the Trump Tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the meeting that Donald Jr, Kushner, and Manafort attended because they hoped to get dirt on Hillary but instead got an earful about “adoptions,” code word for the Magnitsky Act sanctions, though in all likelihood they also got a promise of future assistance, the one that Trump appears to have taken up when he publicly called for the Russians to release Hillary’s emails.  If they haven’t already, there is no doubt that Special Counsel Mueller and his team are working hard to find some corroboration for Cohen’s assertion, something like another witness or two or detail about who exactly Don Jr called when he dialed a “private” number right before and again right after the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians took place.  For his part, Trump must be very concerned, he had an especially bad case of twitter mania on Sunday.  He attacked Mueller again, calling him out by saying that the two had a nasty and contentious relationship, possibly a reference to the years ago dispute that Mueller and one of Trump’s golf clubs had over fees, and then going on to attack him for being Comey’s bestie, for hiring only disreputable Democrats and for not investigating Democrats and their Russian collusion. Coincidentally, Mueller and Don Jr were seen waiting for their plane at different ends of the same Reagan National Airport gate on Friday as they both escaped a weekend in Washington D.C.  It’s worth noting that Don Jr was accompanied by a Secret Service agent while Mueller, the man who hopefully will someday save us from the Trump mess, appeared to be traveling alone. 

Electioneering: In an effort to appear to be concerned about Russian election interference in the 2018 midterms, Trump chaired an all hands on meeting of his National Security Council on Friday.  The meeting lasted for a whopping thirty minutes, an indication that the assembled Cabinet members and advisors were fast speakers, incredibly efficient, and had already safely secured the country’s election apparatus or, more likely, that Trump just wanted a good photo op and to be able to say that he was focusing on improving election security.  Following the meeting it was reported that, nothing has changed, there is still no plan to coordinate pushback against Russian, or any other, interference in the upcoming election. Providing further evidence, over the weekend New Hampshire’s Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen revealed that her office has been hit with a series of phishing attacks, the GRU’s favorite technique for breaking into office systems.   

The Real Enemy of the People: Trump also launched a series of tweet bombs at the “fake press,”  this time engaging in a war of word with AG Sulzberger, the publisher of the NY Times.  During a recent meeting that was supposed to be off the record Sulzberger had told Trump that his portrayal of the press as an enemy of the people is “dangerous and harmful” to the country going on to tell Trump that his “language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous” and was contributing to a “rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.”  Apparently that message didn’t sit well with Trump who left the meeting convinced that the NY Times had admitted to spreading fake news so on Sunday he decided to go on the record, tweeting that he “will not allow our great country to be sold out by anti-Trump haters in the dying newspaper industry.”  Just to be fair he called out the Washington Post too, another victim of what he and his allies are now calling Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Economic Update: Taking a page from former Clinton Strategist, James Carville who famously coined the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid” to deliver the message that at the end of the day voters vote their pocketbooks, Trump went to the White House lawn to take a victory lap following the announcement that the GDP growth rate for the second quarter had reached 4.1%.  While the number is impressive, it’s just a quarterly number, we’ve been here before.  In fact the quarterly growth rate exceeded 4% three times during the  Obama administration and actually made it to 5.2% during the third quarter of 2014.  Many experts believe trade tensions have contributed to growth by “prompting foreign buyers to stock up on American products before their governments impose retaliatory tariffs,” citing as example the growth in soybean exports which have surged, rising more than 50 percent in May from a year earlier.  Annual GDP growth will probably come in somewhere around 3%, in and of itself a good number, but don’t expect to hear Trump or his economic advisor Larry Kudlow say that, until they have to.  For now the party line is that the 4% growth rate is sustainable because 4% sounds better than 3% especially in the lead up to an election, one that increasingly concerns Republican leadership fearful of losing their House majority and starting to grow concerned over their more secure Senate position as well. In another ploy to rile his base to show up to vote because the midterms are typically all about which party shows up in force,  Trump is going back to his old populist standby, so he’s threatening to shut down the government over immigration and wall funding.  On Sunday he tweeted “I would be willing to ‘shut down’ government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!” Don’t take Trump seriously on that one, Republican leadership doesn’t want a shutdown because while exploiting fears and hatred of immigrants might get Trump’s base to show up at their polling places,  shutting down the government in the run up to the midterm elections when your party controls the House, Senate and the presidency would be a bigly problem.  In any case Senate Majority Leader McConnell isn’t on board, he is totally focused on getting Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination through the Senate and a government shutdown would ruin his plans.  So just more Trump nonsense and another attempt to divert attention from Cohen, his tapes and the messy family reunification process, the one that still remains incomplete despite the administration’s assertion that they’ve done all they can do to fix the mess that they created in the first place.