Stupidity and Betrayal

Cyber Wars:  The White House daily press conference doesn’t take place on a daily basis anymore so it came as a surprise when one was hastily added to yesterday’s White House schedule. The purpose of the press pop-up was to give national security advisor John Bolton a forum to show that the Trump White House really takes election security seriously despite all indications to the contrary and Trump’s assertion that the only threat to the elections is the voter fraud that rarely happens.  It’s worth noting that Bolton recently explained that Putin’s visit to Washington was being pushed off to next year because it would be awkward for him to stop by while the Mueller “witch hunt” was in progress and that he fired and has failed to replace Tom Bossert and Rob Joyce, the two White House officials focused on cybersecurity.  In addition to Bolton, Director of National Intelligence Coats, FBI Director Wray, Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen and head of the National Security Agency Nakasone attended the press show.  For the most part, with the exception of Nielsen who has grown increasingly difficult to take seriously in the wake of her separated children catastrophe, each of the officials sounded convincingly concerned as they acknowledged that the US election system is still being attacked and that our democracy is in the “crosshairs.”  Wray said that he didn’t believe that Russian interference had risen to the level it was at during the 2016 elections but warned that the Russians could ramp up their attack at a moment’s notice and added that “Russian efforts to inject divisive misinformation into American social media were continuing daily, even when elections are not on the horizon.”  DNI Coats said that “The threat. It is real. It is continuing, we are doing everything we can to have a legitimate election that everyone can have trust in.” Disturbingly when he was asked what Trump said about all that during his private Helsinki meeting with Putin, Coats responded that he still doesn’t have a clue what was said because even though he is supposed to know everything about national intelligence, Trump still hasn’t found the time to fill him in.  Though the attention being paid by each of the officials and their respective agencies was impressive, there is still no coordinated effort that formally crosses all agencies and departments because leadership from the top remains absent and Trump is more interested in paying lip service than anything else.  To that end, though the White House press office insists that the press pop up took place at the direction of Trump because of his concern, the likely reality is that it took place to blunt some of the withering criticism that has come Trump’s way as a result of his Helsinki performance and because of his increasing concern that the Mueller investigation is getting closer to him and his family.

Press Wars:  After the assembled security professionals did their thing Sarah Huckabee Sanders invited general questions and that’s when things really deteriorated.  CNN’s Jim Acosta, who had been subjected to some extra jeers and venom during Trump’s recent Florida rally, asked Huckabee Sanders to disavow President Trump’s description of journalists as the “enemy of the people.”  Sanders refused to do so, instead she listed all the times that she had been personally attacked in the media and had faced threats since starting her job. The impassioned Acosta tried again saying “But for the sake of this room, for the people in this room, this democracy, this country, all the people around the world are watching what you’re saying, Sarah, and the White House for the USA, the president of the United States should not refer to us as the enemy of the people? His own daughter acknowledges that and all I’m asking is you to do, Sarah, is to acknowledge that right now and right here.” Sanders stuck to her pathetic position saying “I’m here to speak on behalf of the president. He’s made his statements clear.”  Acosta’s reference to Ivanka came in response to her comments earlier in the day at an Axios conference where she responded to a question about the press by saying that she didn’t believe that the media was the enemy of the people.  Ivanka’s statement generated a considerable amount of attention given how much it contradicts her father’s stated position.  When asked about the separation of families at the border, another one of her father’s policies, she said that  "was a low point, I felt very strongly about that and I am very vehemently against family separation and the separation of parents and children so I would agree with that sentiment. Immigration is incredibly complex as a topic. Illegal immigration is incredibly complicated."  She should have stopped there but then she went on to say "I am the daughter of an immigrant, my mother grew up in communist Czech Republic, but we are a country of laws. She came to this country legally and we have to be very careful about incentivizing behavior that puts children at risk.”  For the record, last year in her book about her life experience Ivanka’s mother Ivana detailed her immigrant experience, suffice it to say that her pathway to US citizenship was questionable at best.  The first Mrs. Trump admits entering into a sham marriage to get an Austrian passport.  She then moved to Canada and crossed into the US to work illegally as a ski instructor, all before marrying the Donald.  She didn’t become a US citizen for eleven more years.  As to Ivanka though she called her father’s family separation policy a low point, it’s worth noting that she never appeared at the border to comfort any of the separated children but did post pictures of her own children getting ready for camp while the separations were ongoing.  Yesterday, the Justice Department told the Judge overseeing the reunification of the families that the Trump administration doesn’t believe it is its responsibility to reunify children with any of the parents who have already been deported. The government’s position is that the ACLU should just take care of that because they are the ones who think continued separation is a problem.  No comment yet from Ivanka on whether that Trump low point just went lower.

Tribulations:  Though Judge Ellis, the judge presiding over Manafort’s Virginia trial, refused to reconsider his decision to limit the sharing of more evidence documenting Manafort’s lavish lifestyle because in his view being rich isn’t the crime, prosecutors have gotten enough in to demonstrate that Manafort’s expenditures were over the top and have moved on to more mundane stuff.  Yesterday,  they called Manafort’s bookkeeper to the stand.  She testified that he “was very knowledgeable. He was very detail-oriented. He approved every penny of everything we paid," contradicting Manafort’s lawyers’ assertions that Manafort’s partner Rick Gates, who is once again expected to testify against him,  was really much more involved in all that trivial stuff.  The bookkeeper also said that financially things started to go south for Manafort around 2014, the same time that Manafort lost his big ticket Ukrainian client.  She testified that by 2016 Manafort didn’t have the money to pay her or many of his other bills including his health insurance premiums.  She testified that though she didn’t know about his foreign bank accounts, she was aware that he had started doctoring financial records in an effort to inflate his income something he did to persuade banks to lend him money, the money he then used to sustain his lavish lifestyle.  Despite his dire financial circumstances, Manafort didn’t try to obtain any more lucrative consulting jobs, instead he sought out the position he ultimately obtained working for Trump, the one he curiously took on for no pay, something that won’t be presented to this jury because the focus of this case is on tax crimes and bank fraud, but that is integral to the whole Russian collusion thing. More of Lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen’s career endeavors came to light yesterday too.  Though not a licensed lobbyist he appears to have been lobbying on behalf of Trump donor Franklin Haney who sought his help getting a $5 billion in government loan approved for a nuclear power plant project that he had recently acquired from the Tennessee Valley Authority.  Haney’s  agreement with Cohen, which was reached shortly before Cohen’s offices were raided, called for Cohen to receive an unusually lucrative $10 million success fee if he managed to help Haney secure the large loan.  In other Russia news, NBC reports that Special Counsel Mueller  is trying to arrange an interview with Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, who helped set up the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya.  It’s not clear why Agalarov, the son of a powerful Putin oligarch,  would cooperate however, he like many others involved in this Russian mess is very quirky and may have aspirations to further his rock star career in the US.  Refusing to cooperate and getting placed on a list of Russians banned from traveling to the US would hardly advance those aspirations.

Emissions: The Trump administration has announced its intent to freeze an Obama era rule mandating that automakers work to make cars substantially more fuel efficient.  The Trump position is that more efficient cars would lead to lower fuel costs which would lead to more driving and that more drivers on the road would result in more accidents and more deaths than a little bit more noxious pollution.  Who can argue with that logic? The administration also proposed a withdrawal of California's Clean Air Act preemption waiver because California and about a dozen states that follow its rules account for about a third of all the passenger vehicles sold in the United States. California Governor Jerry Brown called the proposal "reckless,” going on to say that destroying a law first enacted by Ronald Reagan is “a betrayal and an assault on the health of Americans everywhere. California will fight this stupidity in every conceivable way possible." Twenty states plan to join California’s suit.