Whistle While You Google

First Kill the Lawyers:  The unnamed sources for yesterday’s early morning Axios story that White House counsel Don McGahn was planning to leave his job by year-end were none other than first daughter Ivanka and first son-in-law Jared.  The “leak” was part of their strategy to get McGahn out of the White House sooner than later.  It worked, shortly after the story appeared Trump pretty much fired McGahn by tweeting “White House Counsel Don McGahn will be leaving his position in the fall, shortly after the confirmation (hopefully) of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. I have worked with Don for a long time and truly appreciate his service!” That tweet stunned McGahn since he hadn’t yet spoken with Trump about his plans which isn’t all that surprising since the two of them rarely speak with each other, one of the reasons that Ivanka and Jared want him out.  In any case, McGahn should have seen the tweet coming, Trump’s been pretty upset with him ever since the news that he spent thirty hours spilling his guts to Special Counsel Mueller came out.  Ivanka has been furious about that too, and it’s never good to anger a member of the Trump clan, particularly the first daughter. McGahn will have lots of company on the outside, three of his deputies have already left and a fourth, the White House compliance lawyer Stefan Passantino, is leaving at the end of the week. Once he leaves only one deputy will remain in the White House Counsel’s office.  Last night in a story based on no fewer than twenty-six sources, the Washington Post reported that Trump’s allies fear “winter is coming” and are concerned that he is failing to appreciate how much worse his legal woes will  become if the Democrats win control of the House in the November midterms. Trump’s allies believe that he needs to get some really good lawyers on board as soon as possible, even suggesting that he try to hire the well-regarded Abbe Lowell, who already represents Jared Kushner, even though Jared is unlikely to give him up and Lowell might have no interest in getting more involved in the Trump legal morass than he already is. Apparently Trump’s allies have forgotten that it hasn’t been easy for him to find competent representation because, at least to date, few legal stars have been willing to sign on to the Trump train, as lying clients who stiff their attorneys don’t attract those promised “best people,” possibly one of the reasons that Trump kept his lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen on board at the Trump organization for so long.  As to Trump,  he’s so clueless about assessing legal expertise that last year he tried several times to convince then White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter, who was ultimately fired for serial spouse abuse to take McGahn’s job.  Porter demurred, pointing out that he didn’t have the right experience.  As to that other lawyer, Attorney General Sessions, Politico reports that Trump has been on a charm offensive, working his wiles on Republican members of the Senate, trying to get as many as possible to sign-off on his plan to fire Sessions.  Whatever he’s doing or promising, it appears to be working as more and more of them are getting on board with the plan as long as he promises to wait until after the midterms, something that the impulsive Trump might find difficult to do especially since in addition to despising Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, he’s grown to hate Sessions’ southern drawl and thinks he’d be better served by someone with an ivy league pedigree and a neutral twang.

Whistling in the Sunshine:  The campaign for Florida Governor is off and running and it’s already gotten ugly. Yesterday, Republican nominee Ron DeSantis went with a page from the Trump playbook.  During an interview with Fox News,  DeSantis said Florida voters should not “monkey this up” by embracing the radical progressive agenda offered by his African American opponent, Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum.  He also pointed out that Gillum was “articulate” more or less implying that language skills were unusual for a black guy.  When asked if he thought that DeSantis was engaging in dog whistling, Gillum responded “Well, in the handbook of Donald Trump, they no longer do whistle calls, they are now using full bullhorns.”  Although DeSantis later claimed that his statement was misunderstood, even Fox News got that it was racially tinged.  Though the network remains firmly in DeSantis’s court and together with Trump advocated for him during the primary and will, no doubt, continue to support him in November, they distanced themselves from his comment pointing competing networks to a statement made by their anchor Sandra Smith on air in which she said, "We do not condone this language and wanted to make our viewers aware that he (DeSantis) has since clarified his statement." For his part Mayor Gillum is sticking with a campaign based on “progressive” policies, and though he has  Bernie Sanders on his side, his policies which include gun control and health insurance for all aren’t out of the mainstream for a typical Democratic candidate which isn’t all that surprising since Gillum was a Hillary Clinton delegate in 2016.  As to that racial divide, earlier this week Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proposed renaming the  Russell Senate Office Building to call it the McCain Senate building in honor of the departed maverick.  To his surprise that suggestion isn’t gaining much traction with Republicans.  Apparently a number are hesitant to remove the Russell name from the building which is odd because Senator Russell wasn’t a Republican, he was a Democrat, and also an arch segregationist and the key legislative leader of the white supremacist movement.  Alabama Republican Richard Shelby says Russell shouldn't be judged only on his civil rights record and Georgia Republican David Perdue said "this renaming thing because of one issue is somewhat troubling. The fact that it's been brought into this John McCain thing I think is inappropriate."  Senate Majority Leader McConnell is pushing back too, instead of moving forward with the name change he has suggested the formation of a bipartisan committee to address how best to honor McCain.

More Insanity:  After viewing a Fox segment that cited a story from the right wing Daily Caller, one that claimed that Hillary Clinton’s email server had been hacked by the Chinese, Trump tweeted “Report just out: 'China hacked Hillary Clinton’s private Email Server.' Are they sure it wasn’t Russia (just kidding!)? What are the odds that the FBI and DOJ are right on top of this? Actually, a very big story. Much classified information!" The only problem with the story and Trump’s tweet is that they are both false.  Yesterday an FBI spokesperson refuted the story, releasing a statement that the “FBI has not found any evidence the (Clinton) servers were compromised." Of course, Trump would have known this if instead of tweeting he had picked up the phone to call Christopher Wray, his handpicked FBI Director.  Devon Nunes, the ardent Trump supporter and Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee spent part of his summer vacation traveling to the United Kingdom where he tried to meet with the heads of the UK’s various intelligence services in the hope of getting some really good “dirt” about former British agent Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous Trump dossier.  The Brits who generally are deferential to Congressional committee heads refused to cooperate, both because they had no dirt to share and because, if they did, they wouldn’t consider sharing it with Nunes who they no longer trust with anything confidential.  Nunes is back in Washington, but former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort’s lawyers are trying to get him out to the whiter, more Republican suburbs, they’ve asked the judge presiding over his Washington DC case to consider moving the venue of his upcoming trial because they think that no one in the Washington DC jury pool would be willing to treat him fairly. As to fair treatment Trump is now calling for the investigation of the Google search engine.  Apparently, earlier this week instead of tweeting during his “executive time” he googled his name and was alarmed to see all the unflattering stories that popped up.  He is convinced that the “liberals” at Google have rigged their system to make him look bad. In response to his concern, economic advisor Larry Kudlow immediately announced that the administration would look into Google’s bias.  A Google spokesperson denied that the company’s search engine was biased saying instead that “When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds" adding “search is not used to set a political agenda and we don't bias our results toward any political ideology.”  Trump may not want to google “Puerto Rico and Trump” today because if he does he might find out that his continued assertion that he did a “fantastic job in Puerto Rico," in the face of recently updated and much higher hurricane Maria related death statistics is being treated with significant derision.  Truth hurts.