Your Sessions Has Expired

War Footing: Yesterday, Trump held a press conference to celebrate what he characterized as historically amazing midterm results.  Despite his assertion that the results couldn’t have been better for him, he was clearly fairly freaked out about losing the House to the Democrats. Sounding sleep deprived after a night spent counting subpoena toting sheep, he  took no responsibility for the House turnover instead blaming Republican losses on the number of Republican representatives who decided to leave rather than face the indignity of losing, failing to acknowledge that many of them didn’t run because their districts were so turned off by Trump that their reelection chances were somewhere between zero and nada.  He then blamed most of the other Republican losses on the fact that many of those losing candidates had refused to let him come anywhere near their districts during the campaign.  He actually slut-shamed the “losers,” including Virginia’s Barbara Comstock who lost because of her district’s overt hostility to all things Donald. He slammed Utah’s Mia Love, the Republican party’s sole Black Congresswoman for showing him no love, taunting her further by snidely adding “too bad, sorry about that Mia.”  He then continued down the list of “losers” as if he was summarizing a season of Celebrity Apprentice rather than saying goodbye to a list of loyal supplicants, most of whom had done their best to forward his agenda.  He  moved on to the Senate, bragging about Republican party gains, gains that were notable and may well have been attributable to his campaign support but even there he had a hard time sticking to the truth.  He slammed Nevada’s Dean Heller, the one incumbent Republican who did lose his seat because the thought that he, Trump, was persona non grata in Nevada despite his good friend Sheldon Adelson’s best efforts to buy the election was more than he could take.  As to billionaire support, he insisted that the Democratic House victory was attributable to all the money that the party  had received from unscrupulous billionaire investors because apparently taking money from the very rich is only okay if the rich people are Republicans, not so good when they have liberal views.  On the election front, a few more results trickled in during the day.  Montana’s Democratic Senator Jon Tester will be returning to the Senate but Dana Rohrabacher, Putin’s favorite Congressman won’t and Beto O’Rourke, now that he has time on his hands, is already being touted as the next Democratic presidential nominee.  Although Florida Republican Rick Scott has declared victory his announcement is premature since his margin over incumbent Senator Nelson is so small that a mandatory recount, one that Nelson has already requested, is likely,  A recount in Florida, how déjà vu!  Results are still trickling in in Arizona, where as of now Republican Martha McSally still has a 1% advantage over Democratic candidate Kyrsten Sinema, once again a Green Party candidate may be  playing the role of the spoiler.  Democratic Governor wannabee Stacy Abrams has not yet conceded, and says she won’t until every  ballot is counted, including the ones that her opponent Republican Brian Kemp, who has already declared victory, has hidden somewhere and he probably has hidden or disqualified a number of ballots because that’s what he does.  Though Trump has tried to diss the Democratic wave as a mere ripple, this morning’s NY Times actually said that it was actually quite remarkable given the current state of nationwide gerrymandering.  Moving back to the press conference, after his somewhat incoherent remarks, remarks that veered from promising to work with the Democrats on all that oft promised infrastructure, Trump said that he was prepared to wage war against the Democrats if they aren’t cooperative, even suggesting that he would get his buddies in the Senate to open investigations into them and their leaking to counteract any investigations of his administration’s misdeeds.  He then carried the war theme into the Q and A period, attacking the press and getting into a battle with his favorite target CNN’s Jim Acosta after the outspoken Acosta asked him several questions about the “migrant caravans.”  Trump called Acosta a horrible person, slammed CNN, attacked NBC’s Peter Alexander for trying to defend Acosta and then went after PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor, calling out the African American correspondent as racist for having the nerve to ask a question about white supremacy.  Later in the day, the White House took the unusually hostile step of indefinitely suspending Acosta’s press credentials.  Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that the suspension was because, in addition to being intolerably rude, Acosta had pushed an White House intern.  The video tape and witnesses indicate that Acosta accosted no one, and that the assault accusation is just another Sanders fabrication.    

Justice:  During his press conference Trump was asked whether he had plans to fire anyone soon.  While glaring at problem child Interior Secretary Zinke, he sloughed off the question saying that he had the best staff and Cabinet.  Shortly afterwards, the White House announced that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had resigned, although the use of the word resigned was not all that accurate.  In the letter which was undated, Sessions detailed his “remarkable” accomplishments and made it clear that he was resigning only because Trump had asked him to, in other words, he was most definitely fired, a technicality that should matter because were this a normal presidency regulations would limit who Trump could appoint to serve as an interim replacement.  Sessions knew that his dismissal was imminent but had hoped to serve out the week.  Of course, the final notification that he was no longer welcome came from Chief of Staff Kelly because Trump doesn’t fire people on his own, except of course on Apprentice episodes.  Since the primary reason for firing Sessions is to begin the process of getting rid of Special Counsel Mueller and the investigation into what Trump again declared was “no collusion” except for Hillary who did collude, Trump passed Sessions’ baton over Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s head to Sessions’ Chief of Staff Matthew Whitaker, elevating him to serve as the Acting Attorney General.  Whitaker is a Republican partisan who once ran for Iowa Senator, he is on record questioning Mueller’s investigation, suggesting that one way to get rid of the troublesome Mueller would be to begin defunding his operation. Echoing Trump, Whitaker is also on record saying that  any investigation of Trump’s businesses and finances would most definitely involve crossing a red line and that Trump Jr’s Trump tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya and her band of Russian cutouts was fine, something that anyone would do. He also believes that Hillary should have been indicted.  After Whitaker’s  appointment, people in the Twitterverse immediately posted a picture of him with his good friend Sam Clovis, the former Trump campaign aide, one time Agriculture official, who was responsible for bringing convicted liar George Papadopoulos, the guy who drunkenly confessed his knowledge of the impending dump of Hillary dirt from the Russians, onto the Trump campaign team.  Just to make sure that no one missed the significance of Whitaker’s appointment as Acting AG, later in the day the White House said that Whitaker has now taken over all oversight of the Mueller investigation. Even Fox legal commentator Judge Napolitano thinks the Whitaker appointment is fishy.  He pointed out that “under the law, the person running the Department of Justice must have been approved by the United States Senate for some previous position. Even on an interim post,”  Whitaker not been confirmed and its quite possible that the Justice Department’s ethics gurus might conclude that he can’t assume Mueller oversight.  Of course that assumes, that they will be asked and that Whitaker and/or Trump would follow their guidance.  It’s not clear how much longer Rosenstein will be around.  Some have suggested that he might be sticking around to see if the ethics procedures are followed and that if they aren’t he should resign immediately assuming he isn’t booted first.  A number of progressive organizations have announced coordinated protests to take place in cities and communities nationwide today at 5 PM in the wake of Sessions firing.  To be clear, they aren’t protesting the loss of Sessions and his despicable immigration policies, they are protesting the beginning of the end of the Mueller investigation.  NYC’s demonstration will take place in Times Square.  By the way, marijuana stocks jumped around 30% yesterday in celebration of Sessions departure.   

                       

Another Deadly Shooting:  At least twelve more people died late last night/early this morning during college night at a Thousand Oaks, California bar.  No word yet from the White House or Republican leadership but it’s fair to assume that we will hear more of the usual, an offer of “thoughts and prayers” and a statement that if some of the “good” people had been armed, the deaths could have been avoided. One of those good people with a gun, a California sheriff’s deputy is among the dead.