Silent Fall?

A Day of Contrasts:  While mourners in Arizona celebrated the life and accomplishments of the departed Senator McCain, Trump went off on one of his more notable tweetathons.  In Arizona, McCain’s adopted state, a racially and ethnically diverse group including Vice President Biden and football star Larry Fitzgerald spoke about McCain’s life and what he meant to each of them.  An emotional Biden, who lost his first wife and a child in a tragic car accident and one of his adult sons to the same brain cancer that took McCain, recounted their times together, their long friendship, their ability to reach cross the “aisle” and how their political differences couldn’t diminish their mutual affection.  His speech, was typical Biden:  long, touching and teary.  His most notable remark was a statement that McCain “could not stand the abuse of power wherever he saw it, in whatever form, in whatever country,” a not so subtle dig at Trump and his preferred world leaders.  If his speech was a warm-up for a presidential run, it was quite an effective one.  In notable contrast, Trump who spent the Viet Nam war years nursing his faux bone spurs, mostly concerned about catching a sexually transmitted diseases or two, while McCain spent five years in the hellish Hanoi Hilton, must have hated to see all the love and attention going McCain’s way so to cope he spent his morning tweeting like there was no tomorrow.  He raged against the “totally dishonest press” lashing out at CNN and NBC, and actually claimed that the tape of his Lester Holt interview, the one where he admitted to firing former FBI Director Comey, had been “fudged,” an echo of an earlier claim that it wasn’t his voice heard on the infamous Access Hollywood tape.  To nip that assertion in the bud NBC released the entire, unedited tape, suffice it to say there was no fudging.  He also attacked “fake books,” a reference to Omarosa Manigault’s Unhinged and Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, but also a reflection of just how concerned he is about the book about to be released  by the far more respected and believable Watergate reporter and author Bob Woodward.  That book is due out on September 11.  Trump also continued to rage about biased Google searches and rigged social media like Facebook and Twitter, the two social media platforms that probably contributed to what may well have been his faux election victory.  While Trump was calling the press the enemy of the people, the FBI arrested the man who had threatened to violently kill reporters at the Boston Globe, his notes eerily echoed many of the words that Trump spoke at the rally.  Despite the optics of traveling and campaigning while McCain’s casket was being transported back to Washington where it will lie in state  at the Capitol Rotunda before going to its final resting place at the Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, Trump flew off to a campaign rally in Indiana for Mike Braun, the Republican nominee for Senate who stands a good chance of knocking out current Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly. While there he continued to rant, claiming that the FBI and Justice Department aren’t doing their jobs but they “better start doing it now” because “people are angry.” In a picture that has now gone viral on the “unfair” twitterverse, one of those angry people, a Trump rally volunteer, got caught on camera physically blocking a photographer as he attempt to get a picture of an anti-Trump protester.  Trump again threatened to step in and get involved in the Russia investigation, because he can since he’s president, he went to the best schools and he can do anything.  To cap off the evening he also implied that Hillary Clinton would face criminal charges soon, again because he’s president and she’s not.  Depressingly, his receptive crowd responded with cheers of “lock her up.”  According to Trump, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders hasn’t been all that happy with the way he responded to McCain’s death, to the extent that her dismay was real, she probably didn’t find any solace in his Indiana performance either.  It certainly was not in keeping with any part of McCain’s legacy.  Before flying off to Indiana, Trump found time for a Bloomberg News interview.  Among other things, he mentioned that he was giving serious consideration to pulling the US out of the World Trade Organization, he talked tariffs, denied that he was worried about anything that Trump organization financial guy Alan Weisselberg told investigators, refused to respond to a question about when he knew about the payment that fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen made to Stormy Daniels and most notably said that he couldn’t be impeached because he was doing such a great job, and presidents doing a great job can’t be impeached, a message that must not have reached the Republican members of Congress who once impeached Bill Clinton for his sexual improprieties, at a time that Clinton, like him or not, was being a far more effective leader.   He also said that he was seriously looking into lowering capital gains taxes by inflation adjusting appreciated asset values, a somewhat controversial proposal previously mentioned by Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. That plan would be another gift to the wealthy, already the chief beneficiaries of Trump’s tax cuts but would do little if anything to help any of the government employees who would lose out if Congress lets him get away with another one of his plans.  That plan, which he also announced yesterday, would freeze Federal employee’s salaries, cancelling their expected cost of living increases. Trump says that he needs to freeze those wages to offset some of the Federal deficit, the deficit that has imploded as a result of the tax cuts granted to the same wealthy people who will benefit from his capital gains tax reduction plan.  He didn’t seem to care about the irony of his plans or the optics of taking more from the middle class in the run up to the midterms.  However, a number of vulnerable Republican members of Congress from districts with large numbers of Federal employees aren’t all that happy. Virginia Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, one of those at risk members, quickly responded that she would oppose those cuts while her opponent gleefully made hay off of Trump’s plan by immediately releasing a campaign message.      

Planning for the Worst:  A few weeks ago, Michael Cohen released one of his taped conversations with Trump.  In that tape the two were heard discussing a possible payment to National Enquirer owner David Pecker.  At the time, we all thought that Trump and Cohen were talking about reimbursing Pecker for the “catch and kill” payment that he had made to Trump’s one time girlfriend, former Playmate Karen McDougal.  It turns out that their discussion was actually related to far more than the McDougal payoff.  According to the NY Times, the two were discussing plans to buy back all of the Trump related stories secreted away in the National Enquirer safe, stories that been accumulated over the years and that covered subjects ranging from other alleged affairs to “unscrupulous golf.” It appears that the plan was never executed and it’s not clear where all of the back-up information has gone, apparently after the election it was moved out of the National Enquirer safe to either another secret secure location or the shredder.  However it’s likely that those stories and the plan to obtain them and any relevant back-up information in the run up to the election is another one of those things that the Southern District Federal prosecutors have been discussing with Weisselberg and Cohen. To be clear, though they might find any uncovered dirty secrets titillating and Trump and Melania might find the release of the vault’s contents embarrassing, the stash would only be relevant to one or more of the investigations if a campaign law violation was involved.  As to Mueller and his investigation, both appear to be on borrowed time.  Trump made it clear yesterday that he considers the investigation and Mueller’s appointment to be illegal and though he stated that Attorney General Session’s position in the administration was safe through the midterms, he more than implied that he plans to sack him as soon after the midterms as he can because shutting down the Mueller investigation remains his priority.  Even if Republicans lose control of Congress in the midterms, Trump would have plenty of time to damage the Mueller investigation during the period between the elections and the seating of the new Congress in January. As to the Democrats their victory in November is far from assured, though they might manage to take control of the House, and even that isn’t certain, taking over the Senate will be very difficult, they could gain a few seats in states like Nevada or Arizona, but could have a hard time holding seats in Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and even Florida. That said, Axios reports that Republicans are planning for a worst case scenario, particularly one that involves losing control of the House.  They have already prepared and are circulating a list of all the subpoenas and hearings that they believe the Democrats would initiate were they to take over.  Preparing the list was easy, all Republican leadership had to do was look to the list of infractions and crimes they’ve been ignoring since the beginning of the Trump administration.  Republicans are now using their list to energize their base, warning them that they’d better come out and vote or else suffer the consequences.  Likewise Democrats are using the Republican list to encourage their voters to make themselves heard at the ballot box.  And now everyone, including Trump, is talking impeachment out in the open, not just behind closed doors.

To the extent that Mueller plans on going dark after Labor Day in the run up to the election, today could be busy, or not, because, despite Rudy Giuliani’s persistent and loud assertions we still don’t know what the silent Mueller plans to do.  Stay tuned and have a happy Labor Day.