Clueless Trolling

Contradictions:  Just another normal day in Trump world.  While Trump spent the day tweet attacking his “enemies,” first lady Melania called out cyber-bullying as “destructive and harmful when used incorrectly.” She’s either trolling him or is totally clueless, or both.  While the Russians ramped up their attacks on political websites, this time attacking Republican think tanks who aren’t pro-Trump enough to their liking, Trump again refused to admit that the Russians were clearly responsible for election interference, instead telling Reuters that Special Counsel Mueller’s probe into election meddling “played right into the Russians – if it was Russians – they played right into the Russians’ hands.”  While Rudy Giuliani tried to walk back his much ridiculed “truth isn’t truth” comment, clarifying it to say that sometimes it’s hard to tell who is telling the truth, Trump expressed his fears to Reuters that Mueller’s investigators would compare his statements with that of others who have testified in the probe, such as former FBI Director James Comey, and that any discrepancies could be used against him, saying “So if I say something and he (Comey) says something, and it’s my word against his, and he’s best friends with Mueller, so Mueller might say: ‘Well, I believe Comey,’ and even if I’m telling the truth, that makes me a liar. That’s no good.”  Apparently Trump who until now has insisted that he wants to speak with Mueller has finally absorbed his lawyers fears that were he to meet with Mueller he would most definitely perjure himself the second he started talking, especially if Mueller started the interview by complementing him on his hair or his attractive orange glow.  While more than 175 former State Department and Pentagon officials added their names to a statement signed by former national security officials criticizing his decision to cancel the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, Trump continued his attack on Brennan by tweet taunting him to follow through on his weekend threat to sue, saying “I hope John Brennan, the worst CIA Director in our country’s history, brings a lawsuit. It will then be very easy to get all of his records, texts, emails and documents to show not only the poor job he did, but how he was involved with the Mueller Rigged Witch Hunt. He won’t sue!”  As to that threat, Giuliani quickly jumped on board tweeting at Brennan that today Trump “granted our request (Jay Sekulow and me) to handle your case. After threatening if you don’t it would be just like Obama’s red lines. Come on John you’re not a blowhard?” Apparently the concept of security clearance revocation isn’t new, Trump has been considering the use of punitive stripping for a while now.  In March of 2017, when he accused Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower, some of his staff pushed him to pull the clearances of many Obama era security clearances, not because they’d done anything wrong but because they were considered rivals, staff even suggested and Trump seriously considered cutting Obama’s access to the intelligence briefings routinely provided to past presidents.  At that time, HR McMaster who was serving as security adviser talked Trump out of it. With McMaster out of the picture, Trump continues to expand his list of targets, a list that right now doesn’t include either Obama or Mueller but could at some point soon.  Yesterday in addition to ramping up his attack against current Justice Department employee Bruce Ohr by tweeting  “Will Bruce Ohr, whose family received big money for helping to create the phony, dirty and discredited Dossier, ever be fired from the Jeff Sessions ‘Justice’ Department? A total joke,” Trump added another name to his enemies list, this time going after former intelligence official Phillip Mudd who vociferously slammed Trump’s security clearance revocations during one of those CNN talking head moments.  Trump called him “unglued” and “weird” saying that he is in “no mental condition to have such a Clearance.”  Former CIA Director and NSA head General Michael Hayden responded by tweeting that “Phil is a hero. Counter terrorism giant,” he also dared Trump to revoke his security clearance too.      

Crony Update:  The Manafort jury made up for their early departure on Friday by sticking around until 6:30 pm last night.  They will be back at it today since they still haven’t reached a verdict.  Depending on who you ask, they are either mired in all of the back-up documentation that Judge Ellis wouldn’t allow them to review during the trial and are doing a thorough job or are hung up on one or more of the indictments.  We won’t know which is true until they are ready to tell us.  It turns out that George Papadopoulos wasn’t much of a cooperating witness after all.  Papadopoulos is the campaign foreign policy advisor who got drunk and told an Australian diplomat that the Russians were planning to dump Hillary emails during the campaign.  Though his alcohol fueled statements triggered the investigation into Russian meddling, Papadopoulos kept lying to Mueller’s investigators even after he promised to cooperate.  He withheld crucial information and is probably responsible for the flight of another Russian tool, Professor Joseph Mifsud, who managed to slip out of London to places unknown before he could be detained by authorities. Despite his lawyers’ assertion that Papadopoulos should serve no prison time, he is likely to receive a sentence of up to six months, notable when you compare his crimes to Rick Gates who appears to be getting off without incarceration because of his real and ongoing cooperation with Mueller. Papadopoulos’ wife has been publicly calling for him to withdraw from his deal with Mueller although it’s probably too late for that to happen.  As to Papadopoulos, last night he cryptically tweeted “Been a hell of a year. Decisions,” whatever that means.  Though he’s not embroiled in the Russian affair, late last week Darren Beattie, a speechwriter hired by and working with favorite Trump aide Stephen Miller was quietly fired after the Washington Post revealed that he had spoken at a conference held by the Mencken Club, a group favored by white nationalists.  Beattie represents just another example of how Trump hires only the best people.

More Politics:  Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, signed a plan that will allow states to set their own emissions standards for coal-fueled power plants, a significant pushback from the clean air rules put into effect during the Obama administration. Trump is expected to brag about the move when he visits West Virginia this week to campaign against Democratic Senator Joe Manchin who is up for reelection in November in the state that Trump won by more than 40 points. Trump is hoping that his visit and his coal friendly policies will help eat into the popular Manchin’s current advantage in the polls.  Ironically, given that he represents West Virginia, Manchin’s views on the importance of coal don’t differ much from Trump’s. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process keeps rolling along. Though many of his papers remain trapped in archive bureaucracy, yesterday, we learned that he was responsible for drafting some fairly explicit questions for Ken Starr’s prosecutors to use during former President Clinton’s interview about his sexual exploits with Monica Lewinsky.  Kavanaugh asserts that he’s changed his mind about all that stuff, he feels bad about the way that things proceeded with Clinton and that he thinks that presidents should be more or less exempt from prosecution until they leave office, that is as long as they are Republicans.