Pickled Peckers

Flippity Do:  Yesterday morning, Fox and Friends aired Ainsley Earhardt’s softball Trump interview.  During the interview a large number of topics were covered, giving Trump the opportunity to make a significant number of remarkable comments. In addition to further implicating himself in the mess created by the pre-election hush payments made to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, he once again attacked Attorney General Sessions for never taking control of the Justice Department, for not being much of a man and for refusing to show sufficient loyalty with that whole recusal thing.  He also expressed his disgust for negotiated plea deals, especially those that involved granting defendants lesser penalties in exchange for their testimony.   He said that he knew a lot about those “flippers,” because many of the fine people that he’s hung out with over the years have managed to lessen fines and/or reduce sentences by ratting out friends and colleagues.  He called for the practice to be outlawed, presumably he means that to apply only to anyone flipping on him as flipping on his enemies or members of the MS-13 gang would still be okay.  He weighed in on impeachment, a subject that seems to be keeping him up at night and that Republicans appear to be publicly discussing more and more while Democrats mostly try to hold their tongues so as not to jinx the midterm elections.  He asserted that high crimes and misdemeanors or not, impeaching him would be a bigly mistake because if he “ever got impeached, the market would crash.  Everybody would be poor.”  The collective response to that comment was a big shrug with more than one investor pointing out that the market has learned to ignore Trump’s “endless controversies and crazy comments,” and as frightening as the concept of a President Pence might be, were he to ascend to Trump’s “throne,” the tax cuts would remain, the trade war might actually go away and “tweet” risk would diminish.  As to that whole flipping thing, another one of Trump’s good friends has turned on him.  Yesterday it was confirmed that in exchange for some immunity National Enquirer owner and publisher David Pecker has turned on Trump.  He confirms much of what lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen has been saying about the payments made to girlfriends Stormy and Karen.  As part of his long term relationship with Trump, his company, American Media has been blocking the publication of Trump dirt for awhile now.  To that end they worked with Cohen in order to “catch and kill” details of Karen McDougal and Trump’s ten month relationship and even worked with Cohen on squashing the Stormy Daniels story, although ultimately that payment didn’t pass through the American Media payment scheme.  Late yesterday, the Associated Press reported that at least until the election Pecker locked incriminating documents about all of his “high value” clients in a special safe in his office.  It’s not clear that all of that back-up material still exists but if it does, it’s fair to assume that the FBI now knows a lot about a number of other philanderers as well as any other Trump “girlfriends.” In addition to blocking negative Trump stories,  during the campaign Pecker, who was an early advocate of Trump’s presidential aspirations, published a litany of negative stories about Hilary Clinton’s “crimes,” health and imminent imprisonment.  He also published the article that claimed that Trump’s one time and possibly future opponent Senator Ted Cruz’s dad was involved in the JFK assassination.  Trump once expressed his belief that Pecker deserved a Pulitzer Prize for the keen investigative journalism that went into that fabrication. Pecker is now pickled, his days of advocating for Trump are behind him, its back to little green aliens for him.  However, the week hasn’t ended yet, nor have Trump’s problems.  Late yesterday, the NY Times reported that the Manhattan DA has now joined the crowd of authorities looking into the Trump organization’s business practices including the scheme that reimbursed Michael Cohen in excess of $400,000 for “legal” fees that really represented reimbursement for the funds he advanced to payoff Stormy Daniels as well as an amount to cover his related tax liabilities, to the extent that he ever intended to pay taxes.  Those payments were made with the help of at least two other Trump organization officials, one of whom was most likely Trump CFO Alan Weisselberg, the other as yet unknown.        

Exorcising Sessions:  Attorney General Sessions is finally striking back.  He pushed back at Trump’s Fox and Friends criticism by saying “While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action.” He defended his staff of prosecutors and then pointed out how much fun he was having “effectuating” Trump’s agenda, “one that protects the safety and security and rights of the American people, reduces violent crime, enforces our immigration laws, promotes economic growth, and advances religious liberty."  Despite his depressingly effective implementation of those things, he might want to consider updating his Linkedin profile sooner rather than later.  Apparently, a number of Trump’s best buddies in the Senate are warming up to the idea of letting Trump fire him after the midterms because by then they believe or want the rest of us to believe that Special Counsel Mueller will be substantially done with his investigation, or at least that’s the rationale that they are using. Senator Lindsey Graham, who previously said that “there would be hell to pay if Trump tried to replace Sessions, has changed his opinion.  Yesterday he told reporters that Trump is “entitled to an attorney general he has faith in,” and that he expects Trump to fire Sessions “sooner rather than later.”  Senator Grassley, the head of the Judiciary Committee who earlier said that Trump should stick with Sessions because he had no time in his schedule for any more confirmation hearings, now says that he’s got plenty of open slots. To the extent that anyone cares Trump’s usual critics disagree, Senator Sasse said that ditching Sessions, presumably to replace him with someone willing to sign a loyalty oath, would be a very, very, very bad idea.  Senator Flake who will soon be a Senate history burger said ditching Sessions would have a “domino effect” but even Senator Corker, another one of those soon to be history burgers acknowledged that Session’s demise was inevitable saying that at least until the election Sessions “owned” Trump but after that all bets were off.  Lastly, Rudy Giuliani, busy playing golf somewhere in Scotland took time from the links to admit that Trump has spoken to him about replacing Sessions, a conversation they probably had around the same time that Trump brought up granting a pardon to the now convicted former campaign manager Paul Manafort.  Giuliani, no doubt volunteered to squish his feet into Sessions’ little shoes.  As to that Manafort pardon, Giuliani admitted that it too has been discussed but that he and Trump’s other lawyers have advised Trump and his twitchy tweeter to hold off until after the midterms.      

Race Baiting:  Trump continues to spend his free time, that is the time when he’s not bashing Sessions, planning pardons or playing golf, watching lots of Fox TV.  Earlier this week he caught  a Tucker Carlson segment that featured the unfounded claim that white farmers in South Africa are being systematically killed as the government steals their land.  Though land reform in South Africa is a thorny issue, white farmers continue to own a disproportionate share of the land, a legacy of apartheid that is not easily remedied, white farmers are not being killed off. However, the story is one that a number of white supremacists have been promoting and one that appealed to Tucker Carlson and struck a chord with Trump. As a result immediately after seeing the segment, Trump tweeted “I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.”  To put it mildly the South African government was less than pleased, they couldn’t call in our ambassador to express their anger because Trump hasn’t appointed one so instead  they tweeted back “South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.”  First Lady Melania is supposed to be heading to Africa on her first official trip, so far her itinerary remains up in the air, it’s now not clear that she will be all that welcome in Pretoria, Cape Town or Bloemfontein.  Since it’s not enough to promote racial unrest around the world, Trump and his Congressional supporters are also doing their best to take advantage of the truly sad murder of Iowa student Mollie Tibbets, both to push their immigration views and to pivot away from this week’s Manafort and Cohen news. The Iowa student’s murderer was most likely an illegal immigrant, his status is still a bit murky, and Trump likes to broadcast any and all violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants.  That said, Tibbets’ family is grieving and isn’t all that pleased about Trump using her death to advance his views and immigration policies.  One of her family member posted "Please remember Evil comes in EVERY color, our family has been blessed to be surrounded by love, friendship and support throughout this entire ordeal by friends from all different nations and races."    

The week’s not over yet.