Out With the Prince?

Desert Deception:  Saudi Arabian efforts to explain away the murder of journalist Kamal Khashoggi as a rogue interrogation run amuck got a bit more difficult yesterday after Turkish authorities leaked tapes revealing the members of the Saudi hit team involved in the murder and dismemberment “caper.”  A number of them were identified as close associates, bodyguards and/or travel partners of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salam (MBS) providing yet another strong indication that he was behind the “interrogation/murder” fiasco.  A Turkish paper confirmed that Salah Al Tabiqi, Saudi Arabia’s preeminent forensics expert was another member of the team, his presence is another indication that the mission was authorized by high ranking Saudi officials because only someone very high up could have commanded his involvement.  Additionally Turkish intelligence officials have indicated that Khashoggi was killed in a gruesome manner, probably within two hours of entering the Saudi consulate, making it likely that interrogation was never the Saudi objective and that the murder was no “accident.” Though Trump acknowledges that the Khashoggi murder is a horrible thing, despite the mounting evidence he still refuses to blame MBS, Saudi King Salman, or any Saudis for the heinous crime, instead saying “here we go again with you know you’re guilty until proven innocent.” Wonder how Justice Kavanaugh feels about being grouped with the Saudi contingent?  While Trump was reaching for straws, Secretary of State Pompeo made the rounds, first participating in a handshaking and smiling session with the Saudi royals before flying off to Istanbul to meet with Turkey’s President Erdogan.  Though the Saudi’s still haven’t issued a formal explanation/excuse they did “coincidentally” deliver $100 million that they had promised Trump a while back but had failed to deliver until now, money that is to help pay for the stabilization of the parts of Syria recaptured from ISIS.  As to money, Trump, who earlier bragged about his business relations with Saudi entities, primarily loans and property sales, now denies that he’s ever had any business of significance with Saudi Arabia, an assertion that even his friends at Fox find ridiculous, so much so that yesterday they tweeted out a list of the Saudi related items that he had previously bragged about.  While they were busy tweeting, Senator Lindsey Graham, long a champion of Saudi Arabia, said that MBS has “got to go,” adding "Saudi Arabia, if you're listening, there are a lot of good people you can choose, but MBS has tainted your country and tainted yourself.”  He might be surprised to learn that Former CIA Director Brennan, once the CIA station head for Saudi Arabia and now on the Trump enemies list, is in agreement, he likened MBS to a cancerous growth that had to be cut out for the rest of the body to survive.

Human Relations:  Trump won a small victory earlier in the week when a Federal judge dismissed Stormy Daniels’ defamation case against him, ordering her to pay his legal fees. Yesterday, with no appointments on his schedule Trump took to twitter to celebrate, calling Stormy who he had once compared to his favorite daughter Ivanka, a “horse face” and a “total con.”  Because attacking one woman wasn’t enough for one day, he then went after Senator Elizabeth Warren, calling out her ancestry proving DNA test as a sham and telling her that she owed the Cherokee nation, who don’t appear eager to have her as a member of their tribe, an apology. Later in the day, during an interview with the AP, he went after his former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen, claiming that he had lied to prosecutors by representing that Trump had authorized him to break campaign finance laws by arranging the hush payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. In the same interview he said that if the Democrats manage to take over the House in the midterms it won’t be his fault because he’s the best president ever except for maybe George Washington, who he acknowledges was pretty good too.  As to climate science, he said that his uncle John Trump had been a professor at MIT and though he’d never discussed climate change within him, due to familiar DNA he has a “natural instinct for science” and his gut tells him that climate change is bunk.  He again doubled down on that wonderful zero tolerance policy, this time justifying it by saying that most of the separated children were taken away from people who weren’t really their parents but were instead using them as tickets into the country. He again said that to the extent there were Russian hackers, they were working to elect Hillary and then he went on to confirm his plans to run for reelection and if some of those Russian hackers want to help him again, that’s okay too.  As to those plans, he has already raised $100 million for his campaign. In other personnel news, the Acting Inspector General for the Department of the Interior, Mary Kendall, who has served in that position for ten years, is being pushed aside to be replaced by a political appointee from HUD, someone who is unlikely to pursue any of the fourteen separate investigations into Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s alleged misdeeds.  Kendall learned about her dismissal only after The Hill broke the news. If this works out well for Zinke, who’s to say that a similar strategy won’t help Trump rid himself of his Mueller problem.  On the UN front, another name is now in the mix as a possible replacement for outgoing Ambassador Nikki Haley.  Apparently, State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert is now under consideration.  Nauert who was promoted to Acting Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs after Rex Tillerson was booted has little diplomatic experience but as a former Fox correspondent, she is good in front of the cameras, wouldn’t care if the UN Ambassador slot fell out of the cabinet, and would likely have no problem reporting directly to Secretary Pompeo.   

One More Big Thing:  The deficit has grown by 17% to $779 billion and is well on its way to $1 trillion, primarily due to higher spending and stagnating tax revenues, the former partially attributable to large the increase in defense spending, the latter due to last year’s tax cut legislation.  Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s response is that the ballooning deficit is “very disturbing.”  He blames it not on the tax cuts but on all those inflated expenditures on social programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, a situation that he attributes to the Democrats’ unwillingness to cooperate on the dismantling of the social safety net.  Anyway, deficits are really only bad when the Democrats are in charge and with the Republicans controlling all three houses it’s just not a bigly problem, except that it is.