Karma Chameleon

Dogs or Burgers:   Tuesday afternoon,while most people were planning their July 4^th bar-b-ques and Joey Chestnut was prepping for another annual hotdog eating contest, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a summary of its examination of the Intelligence Community Assessment, the January 2017 report that laid out the case of Russian election meddling.  The Senate panel concluded that the intelligence community was spot on with its conclusions that the Russians had indeed meddled in the 2016 presidential election and that the intent of the meddling was to boost Trump’s chance of victory while denigrating Hillary Clinton.  The Senate also found that the so-called Steele Dossier, the one that Trump and his House quislings and buddies at Fox, have spent a lot of time attacking, did not “in any way inform the analysis in the Intelligence Community Assessment – including the key findings.” The Senate’s overall investigation into Russian election meddling is still ongoing, the committee is still in the process of investigating whether or not there was any collusion between the Trump team and the Russians, this was just an interim report.   Notably, the Senate report is at odds with the House Intelligence Committee report mostly because the House Committee, led by Trump ally Devon Nunes and a number of Trump’s most dedicated excusers chose to ignore the evidence, opting instead to attack the intelligence community for their “significant intelligence tradecraft failings.”  When asked about the report Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesmen said Trump “has been very clear and has said it many times that he feels the Russians meddled in the election.”  It’s not clear that Gidley has spent much time reading his boss’ tweets, as recently as last week Trump tweeted that “the Russians are innocent because they say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election” while at the same time going after one of his favorite whipping boys "Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t Shady James Comey and the now disgraced FBI agents take and closely examine it? ….Why isn’t Hillary/Russia being looked at? So many questions, so much corruption!"  Trump spent a good portion of the lead up to the holiday tweeting, although he did wish the country a happy fourth he also tweeted out some rather absurd lies and distortions, including one where he attacked Obama, another one of his favorite whipping boys.  He tweeted “Just out that the Obama administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians, including to [sic] government officials. How big (and bad) is that?” Trump based that tweet on a story he saw on Fox news, one that the Fox geniuses picked up from an outspoken Iranian cleric named Mojtaba Zoinour, a critic of both Iran’s President Rouhani and the Iran nuclear agreement, who has been spreading the accusation in an attempt to discredit Rouhani, who by Iranian standards is a moderate.  Had Trump bothered to check with his intelligence gurus, he would have known that the accusation is false, but where’s the fun in that?  Besides tweeting about Obama collusion with Iran is just another way to distract from accusations about the possibility, okay likelihood, that he colluded with the Russians.  As to the whole tweet thing, Michael Cohen, Trump’s one time fixer/lawyer has now removed any reference of his affiliation with Trump from his twitter account and Trump, who must be truly concerned about Cohen, probably on the advice of counsel, continues to remain strangely silent about him. 

Court Tease:  As of now Trump plans to formally announce his Supreme Court nominee on Monday, waiting until after the weekend in order to build suspense and maximize publicity.  Though he’s interviewed a few more candidates, including Utah Senator Mike Lee, who has been lobbying for the position, expectations are that his final choice will be between Brett Kavanaugh, Raymond Kethledge and Amy Coney Barrett.  Kavanaugh remains the first choice of the mainstream Republican community and is being pushed by White House Counsel Don McGahn but is facing pushback because of his association with the Bush administration and because the evangelist and anti-Obamacare crowd fear that he’s not a sure thing, and by sure thing they mean someone who will adhere to their views on everything.  Senator Rand Paul is also expressing concerns about Kavanaugh’s Bush era work and possible contributions to post 9-11 warrantless wiretapping and enhanced interrogation programs.  Trump can’t afford to lose Paul’s vote, especially if he loses either one of the pro-choice Republican Senators Collins or Murkowski, but Paul will probably get on board since generally he is an attention getting irritant more than a firm anti-Trump voter.  As to Amy Coney Barrett, Trump likes her because he thinks he’d win points by appointing an attractive conservative woman to the court, and because he’d love to stick it to Senator Diane Feinstein who raised concerns about Barrett’s religious views during her October 2017 confirmation hearing.  At that time Feinstein questioned whether or not Barrett who is a member of People of Praise, a very conservative and charasmatic Catholic group that some call a cult, would be able to “render judicial opinsions faithful to the law” given her religious views saying “ The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that people have fought for for years in this country.” Feinstein’s questioning has turned Barrett into a bit of a cause celebre to the fundamentalist community something that Trump finds very appealing.  Her confirmation would be far from a sure thing, but Trump might relish the fight, as another way to further energize his base to come out for the midterm elections.  Anyway, we probably have to wait until Monday to find out who will be winning Celebrity Apprentice Judicial edition, unless of course, Trump, who has a hard time holding on to secrets, decides to announce his winner earlier.

International Arena:  Trump continues to insist that the North Koreans have the best of intentions and has sent Secretary of State Pompeo back to Pyongyang to get them to give up the nukes that they don’t plan to give up anytime soon or anytime at all.  Trump is scheduled to attend the NATO meetings which start on July 11, NATO allies are rightfully nervous about what he will say or do during those meetings.  After he does his best to disrupt the NATO alliance, Trump will move on to his meeting in Helsinki, Finland with Putin.  Contrary to usual practice followed by prior presidents, he’s told his aides that he plans to leave them out of the meeting with Putin because he wants to keep it to just the two of them and their interpreters.  No point in having anyone present when he agrees to formally recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea or formally hands control of all things related to Syria to his BFF.  In all likelihood the rest of us will have to wait for Putin’s press release to find out what gets said and agreed to during that meeting.  Over the holiday, we also learned that Trump has been seriously considering invading Venezuela to overthrow Venezuela’s leader Nicoloas Maduro.  Trump’s advisors, including one time National Security aide McMaster have warned him that an invasion could backfire, explaining that US allies in the region were firmly opposed to such drastic action. His aides want us to believe that Trump has just been ruminating out loud and that no military plans have been formulated. Conditions are very bad in Venezuela but Trump’s main interest is probably less about providing relief to economically strapped and oppressed Venezuelans and more about getting control over the country’s oil assets, particularly at a time when he’s pressing “allies” to abide by sanctions against Iran and pressing OPEC countries to increase supply and reduce prices.  After all, Increasing gas prices is just another one of those things that could influence the midterm elections.  

MeToo Strikes Again:  Representative Jim Jordan, a leader of the House Freedom Caucus and one of Trump’s loudest and most annoying supporters is now facing a few accusations of his own.  Apparently from 1986 to 1994, before he was a Congressman, Jordan was the assistant coach for the Ohio State wrestling team.  Three former members of the wrestling team say that it was common knowledge that a team doctor sexually abused team members and that Jordan was aware of the doctor’s actions.  Jordan denies that he ever knew anything about the abuse and goes on to claim that no one from Ohio State has contacted him about what is now an ongoing investigation into the students’ accusations even though a law firm participating in the investigation says that it contacted Jordan’s office several times but couldn’t get anyone to respond to inquiries and one of the former student wrestlers says that he spoke with Jordan about the abuse.  Jordan’s days in the House are probably not numbered, yet, but the accusation certainly has him rattled.  Wonder if he’ll get the fair treatment that he’s been giving people like Rod Rosenstein, Jim Comey, Bob Mueller and all those other people looking into Russian meddling and collusion? Karma strikes again.