Side Dishes

Stuffing:   After pardoning Peas and Carrots, the joint winners of this year’s lucky Turkey award, the nation’s biggest turkey flew south to his Mar a Lago retreat for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Before departing the White House lawn he also exonerated Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his role in the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  Trump decided to ignore the conclusion of the CIA that MBS was guilty as sin, a conclusion that had been leaked to the press over the weekend, probably by someone very senior at the CIA, in an effort to shame him into doing the right thing.  However, since doing the right thing isn’t a bigly priority for Trump, he stuck with both his gut and the Crown Prince’s position that Khashoggi was a bad guy and that “whoever” had authorized the killing had done a good thing.  To further justify his conclusion, Trump repeated his “Putin” refrain, that MBS was innocent because he said he was several times and he, Trump, believes him because he really meant it.  Trump also said that it was in the US’s best interest to stick by MBS because of the huge amount of weapons that Saudi Arabia has committed to purchase from US arms manufacturers, once again wildly exaggerating both those commitments and the number of related American jobs.  And of course, despite the number of times that he has bragged about doing business with Saudi Arabian interests, he denied that he had any personal financial relationships with anyone in or related to the country.  It’s not surprising that the US has decided to stick by Saudi Arabia, we’ve been ignoring their transgressions for years, however, the decision to stick by MBS isn’t necessary, sanctioning him wouldn’t put the US relationship with Saudi Arabia at risk and neither would it cause a spike in oil prices or destroy the US economy, two of Trump’s other excuses for letting MBS off the hook.  Although Secretary of State Pompeo defended Trump’s decision by saying that “it’s a mean, nasty world out there” so who cares if MBS sliced and diced a dissident journalist, a number of Senators from both sides of the aisle immediately slammed Trump’s MBS love. Notably Lindsey Graham who seems to be listening to his inner McCain this week called MBS a “wrecking ball” and then threatened that “It will be hard to get a deal to fund the government without doing something that will send a clear message to Saudi leadership.”  Lame duck Senator Bob Corker, who until January is the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee tweeted “I’d never thought I’d see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.” Shortly after that tweet he and Senator Robert Menendez, the ranking member on the committee invoked their authority under the Magnitsky Act through which they can force Trump to weigh sanctioning officials implicated in human rights offenses.  And Senator-elect Mitt Romney who many hope will assume the Flake “moral conscience” role but with more teeth said Trump and Pompeo’s “Khashoggi statements to date are inconsistent with an enduring foreign policy, with our national interest, with basic human rights, and with American greatness, sanctions do not necessarily require ending the alliance; they do demand real and painful consequence.”  

Carrot Pudding:  Late yesterday the New York Times revealed that Trump was and probably remains serious about getting “his” Justice Department and FBI to prosecute Hillary Clinton, for everything she did and didn’t do, and former FBI Director Comey for the leaking of confidential information, even if the information included in his now famous contemporaneous notes wasn’t really confidential.  The NY Times reports that Don McGahn, then White House counsel, pushed back against Trump’s very serious request, warning him that since the US isn’t a banana republic it wasn’t considered proper for its leader to act like a petty dictator.  McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo to Trump “warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.”  It doesn’t appear that Trump read, or if he did, understood that memo as he has continued to press FBI Director Wray to go after Clinton and has called him “weak” for failing to take action against her. It’s also worth noting that new Acting Attorney General Whitaker is on record saying that Clinton should be imprisoned for all her crimes, especially her email problem, a problem for her but not, according to daddy Trump, much of a problem for Ivanka because she is Ivanka. One of the many things that got former President Nixon into trouble and by trouble think articles of impeachment were his efforts to get the then head of the IRS to go after his political opponents, but then again, Trump, who is not all that up on history probably doesn’t know that and probably wouldn’t pick up the analogy if he did.  On the impeachment, I mean, Mueller front, yesterday Trump submitted his very pared down written responses to some of Mueller’s questions but only questions related to actions that took place before the 2016 election.  Trump and his lawyers have decided that anything that took place after the election isn’t relevant, probably a really good indication that Trump and his team did a lot of really bad things after the election results were in.  It’s unlikely that Mueller will be satisfied with the scope of Trump’s responses though he probably will be rather happy when he picks up some obvious lies.  Despite Trump’s frequent assertions that he would be happy to sit down with Mueller he now says that he won’t on the advice of counsel.  Trump and his team are assuming that Mueller won’t try to issue a subpoena for him to testify and that if he does that “Roy Cohn” Whitaker would refuse to sign off on it. While it’s likely that Whitaker would do his best to squelch any subpoena, its possible that Mueller is already in the process of litigating one, there have been a number of reports about a case very quietly proceeding through the courts right now that some in the know believe is related to the ability to indict or subpoena Trump.  In any case it’s also possible that despite Trump’s best efforts, Whitaker’s days at Justice may be numbered.  He has a big target on his back and it doesn’t help that in addition to a number of lawsuits questioning the legitimacy of his appointment, it is also now being asserted that he’s been leaking information about the Mueller case back to Trump and his lawyers.  Yesterday, Senator Chuck Schumer sent a letter to the Justice Department’s Inspector General requesting that he open an investigation into Whitaker’s questionable behavior.  As to Whitaker, last night it was revealed that the purveyor of specially equipped toilets and other such things revised his ethics disclosure forms at least five times since his appointment.  Just another member of the ethically challenged Trump team.      

Sweet Potatoes:  The House Democratic wave is nearing a very sweet 40. For a while it looked like Utah Congresswoman Mia Love, the Republican’s sole female African American representative was going to eke out a victory but with the final votes in, it looks like her days in the house are numbered, her seat represents the Democrats 39^th net pick-up.  One more California seat still remains too close to call but could also turn into a Democratic victory and if it does, the Democratic pick-up will reach 40, a pretty impressive number for a wave that early on was characterized as just a ripple.  It is also looking more and more likely that Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi will become the Speaker come January.  Though sixteen “never Pelosi” Democrats led by Ohio’s Tim Ryan and Massachusetts’ Seth Moulton have signed a letter saying that they won’t vote for her, her most likely challenger, Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, has pulled her name out of contention for the role in exchange for a committee leadership role.  She has thrown her support to Pelosi, making it highly likely that Pelosi will get the votes she needs to reassume the role of Speaker of the House. The wily Pelosi spent part of last week reminding Fudge that being Speaker was about more than the title, it requires lots of exhausting travel and huge fund raising skills, leaving Fudge just a bit wary of the responsibility.  It also didn’t help that a guy that Fudge once supported as not really much of a wife beater turned out to be a wife slayer.   Last night in the last remaining Senatorial election the two remaining Mississippi candidates faced off in a debate where the very white Republican candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith, who not too long ago posted a picture of herself in a Confederate hate on FaceBook, apologized to any of the people who were offended by her lynching joke.  Her opponent Mike Espy is “hanging” his hopes on a huge turnout by some of those offended people: Mississippi’s Black community combined with enough moderate white voters to turn the typically red state just a little bit blue.  That election takes place next week. In the meantime a number Hyde-Smith’s corporate contributors have asked for their money back.  It turns out that supporting someone who joked about lynching isn’t good for business.  One of those companies, Walmart actually made its donation after Hyde-Smith’s hanging joke went public but now recognizes the error of its ways, or more likely realizes that supporting her makes Walmart look a bit racist.