Spiritual Spawn

Kindred Spirits:  Omarosa Manigault is a compromised messenger but she is totally a Trumpian creation.  She’s outrageous and she punches back.  She may be compromised and is most certainly flawed but she‘s scarily calculating and knows how to push Trump’s buttons.  So yesterday instead of ignoring her and speeding her news cycle, Trump fed her flame calling her a “crazed, crying lowlife” and “that dog” making it appear more and more believable that someone somewhere has a tape of him using the “N word.”  Who knows, maybe Putin has it stored right next to that illusory “Pee tape.”  After Katrina Pierson, a Trump campaign spokesperson, denied that she had ever discussed or believed that Trump had used the racist expletive, Omarosa released a tape of her 2016 conversation with  Pierson and Lynne Patton, another campaign aide who started her Trump career as Lara and Eric’s wedding planner and now runs the NY office of HUD. Omarosa’s tape reveals the three women talking about what they would say if an “N tape” every showed up with Pierson saying “he said it. He is embarrassed by it."  When confronted with her taped remarks, Pierson explained away her comment by saying that she was just humoring Omarosa because she “is the complete epitome of annoying to where you absolutely have to finally give in in order to get on about your day." Later in the day, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched a similarly weak defense.  She argued that Trump would never use such a word because he’s not racist, citing as proof of his innocence the fact that Bill and Hillary Clinton had attended his wedding to Melania.  Apparently, though Trump thinks the Clintons belong in jail and routinely calls Hillary crooked, Trumpian logic sees their willingness to see him walk down the aisle as all it takes to prove that he’s not a racist.  When pressed to say that no tape of Trump using the “N word” exists, Sanders, who usually has no problem lying, said  that she “can’t guarantee that a recording of Trump using the ‘N word’ will never be heard.”  She then pivoted quickly away from the possibility of a tape by using invented statistics to assert that Trump had created far more jobs for minorities than Obama.  Late last night, when no one was paying much attention, she tweeted out a correction of that prevarication.  For his part, Trump remains furious with Omarosa, possibly because he was watching MSNBC when Omarosa told Katy Tur that he knew about the WikiLeaks DNC emails before they were released, so he’s directed the Trump campaign organization to go after her for breaching the non-disclosure agreement she signed when she joined his 2016 campaign. To the extent that it is enforceable that NDA would cover the things that she’s said and written about the campaign but would do nothing about anything she’s said about her days at the White House.  Although Trump requires all of his White House aides to sign NDAs, Omarosa didn’t sign one when she joined the White House staff.  It’s notable that although he prepared the White House NDAs and pressed staff to sign them, White House Counsel Don McGahn doesn’t believe that they are enforceable.  For her part Sanders refused to confirm whether or not she ever signed one of those probably worthless NDAs.  As to Omarosa’s assertion about Trump knowing in advance about the WikiLeaks email drop, she didn’t provide any back-up proof, yet, however she did reveal that she’s been interviewed by Special Counsel Mueller, adding that she’d be happy to talk with him again if asked.

Manafort Trial:  To no one’s surprise former campaign manager Paul Manafort won’t  be testifying at his trial nor are his defense attorneys presenting any other witnesses, there may or may not be something going on with one or more of the jurors and Mueller’s prosecutors have requested that Judge Ellis include an admonition to ignore some of his more biased outbursts when he provides his instructions to the jury.  To the extent that whatever went on among the jurors isn’t enough to cause a mistrial, both sides are expected to provide no more than two hours of closing remarks to the jury today.  A verdict is expected by the end of the week, in time for Manafort and his lawyers to gear up for his Washington case which is scheduled to begin shortly.  Also on the legal front, as of this morning former FBI agent, Peter Strzok’s Go Fund Me page has raised more than $380,000 to help him pay all of his legal bills.  And Mueller is apparently now looking into threatening emails that Trump’s long-time associate Roger Stone sent to his one-time friend Randy Credico who is also a friend of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange.  Mueller wants to know if Stone threats had anything to do with Credico’s assertion that he served as a “go between” for Stone and Assange.

Election Fever:  Yesterday there a few more primaries took place across the country.  Tina Smith, the Senator who replaced Al Franken easily won her Minnesota primary and received a tweet of support from the gracious Franken who encouraged everyone in Minnesota to vote for her in November even though many of them would rather he was still on the ticket.  Despite last minute allegations that he had abused a prior girlfriend, DNC Co-chairman Keith Ellison who is leaving his House seat easily won the Democratic primary for Minnesota Attorney General.  Randy Bryce, the self-named Ironstache won the Democratic nomination to run for the Wisconsin House seat being vacated by Speaker Paul Ryan and former Governor Tim Pawlenty who had previously called Trump “unfit and unhinged“ failed to secure the Republican nomination to run as governor of Minnesota possibly because of those remarks; he lost to a Trump supporting county commissioner named Jeff Johnson who will now run against Congressman Tim Walz who won a three-way Democratic primary.  In Kansas, incumbent Governor Jeff Colyer threw in the towel ceding last week’s very, very close Republican primary to Kris Kobach, Trump’s preferred candidate, the guy who sees fraud everywhere, especially among Democratic voters.   November can’t come soon enough.