Carnivores and Egg Sandwiches

Trump Shutdown:  Thirty two days in, Speaker Pelosi still hasn’t spoken directly with Trump since he stormed out of their last meeting.  For his part Trump continues to insist that he won’t back down from his demand for a $5.7 billion down payment on his vanity wall/metal slats project even though he knows that his popularity ratings have taken a hit and that he and his party are being blamed for the shutdown despite his efforts to tweet the blame over to “Nancy and the Dems.”  Government employees are about to go without their second paycheck with some on the verge of losing some health care benefits.  Senate Leader McConnell plans to introduce Trump approved legislation today but with no Democratic senators signing on he doesn’t expect to get anywhere near the sixty votes he needs for passage. Republican senators know that their party is taking a hit for the shutdown but most are unwilling to go on the record opposing Trump and don’t see the point in voting on any legislation he won’t sign even though they probably could muster the votes to override his veto if they had to.  On the prospect of a funding bill that doesn’t include wall funding, North Carolina’s Senator Burr said if Trump won’t sign it, why would we work on it?  Putting it for many of his fellow lemmings, Wyoming’s Senator Barrasso said he’s “ready to vote for anything” that Trump agrees to sign, “and once we get that, I am a ‘yes’ vote. Louisiana’s Senator Kennedy whose nonsensical homilies have taken on a life of their own said we all know Trump “feels strongly about issues.  And he’s a carnivore.  And on this one I can tell you, he believes he’s right.” Whatever that means. Alaska’s Murkowski appears to be one of  few Republican senators willing to openly express her frustration, with so much of her state and so many of her constituents relying on Federal moneys she just wants to see the government open and is would be fine voting for whatever makes that happen the fastest, however her Alaskan colleague Senator Sullivan, who is up for reelection in 2020, is less concerned about his constituents, he is still firmly on team Trump.  Kevin Hassett, the Chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors, who tends to make the rosiest, most Trump friendly forecasts estimates that the shutdown is depressing quarterly growth by around .5% per month.  Other economists suggest that the negative impact on US growth could already be as high as 1% and that’s just the impact on the US, the worldwide impact is also growing.   But not to worry, because Trump promises that his economy will attain a 4% annual growth and he’s the expert, right?

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy:  Rudy Giuliani is now walking back all of the stupid things he said this weekend while trying to defend Trump.  He started by denying that he told the New York Times or anyone else like NBC’s Chuck Todd on the air with the cameras rolling that Trump was involved in the Trump Tower Moscow project up until the day of the 2016 presidential election, saying instead that his remarks were “hypothetical” and “they didn’t represent the actual timing or circumstances of any such discussions.”   Additionally, he’s going after the assertion that was made in the now discredited Buzzfeed article, the one that said that Mueller had some type of hard evidence that Trump had directed former fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen’s deceptive Congressional testimony.  In a truly strange interview with The New Yorker  Giuliani said that he knows that such evidence doesn’t insist because he’s read all of the relevant texts and listened to all of the tapes that Mueller has managed to obtain, but then when the author of the New Yorker piece asked about the tapes that Giuliani said he had listened too, he backtracked there as well insisting that he misspoke, there are no tapes and if anyone says there are, they are just misspeaking too.  In a moment of rare candor Giuliani went on to say that he does worry some days that his tombstone will say that he lied for Trump but then he quickly added that St Peter will either know that’s not true or forgive him.  Kellyanne Conway’s tweeting husband George isn’t so sure.  After truncating Giuliani’s backpedaling word linguini into a terse four word “I make sh-t up,” Conway suggested that Giuliani get himself a lawyer of his own, a good one.  As to the Buzzfeed article, it turns out that Mueller’s office didn’t make the decision to come forward on their own, their rare comment came about after they received a call from someone in the administration’s legal department.  When asked about that, a suddenly tight lipped Giuliani said he couldn’t confirm or deny whether that call came from him.

2020:  California’s Senator Kamala Harris is off and running.  After announcing her candidacy on Good Morning America she stopped off at Grand Central Station for an egg sandwich figuring that it’s better to be seen eating on camera than be seen with your mouth open at the dentist’s office a la Beto O’Rourke, one of the many maybe candidates.  Her next stop is South Carolina, an early primary state where Black voters make up a large part of the Democratic voting pool.  She may or may not pass two of her possible rivals, Senators Booker and Sanders who both spent Martin Luther King Day campaigning in the state even though neither one is an official candidate, yet.  The fifty-four year old Harris who has a lot of ethnic groups covered, her father is Jamaican, her mother Indian (the country, not Native American), her husband is Jewish, is expected to be one of the leaders of the ever expanding Democratic field and, despite the fact that her California colleague Senator Feinstein says that she prefers candidates with more experience, her way of saying that she’s holding out for septuagenarian Joe Biden, she is likely to do very well, or should I say better do very well, in delegate rich California, which is now another one of those early primary states.  Though he doesn’t appear to be running for president in 2020, Secretary of State Pompeo is seriously considering running for the Senate.  He is being recruited by Mitch McConnell to run for the seat being vacated by Kansas Senator Pat Roberts who has announced that he will not be running for reelection when his term ends in 2020.  Pompeo doesn’t have to commit yet, a former Kansas Congressman, he’s popular in the state and other candidates would probably move aside if he decided to run.  However, if and when he opts in it will be a direct slap in Trump’s face and an indication that Pompeo, the usually obsequious Trump fan boy, thinks it’s time to leave a sinking ship. Getting back to MLK Day, in response to all the criticism thrown his way on the morning talk shows Trump who had nothing else on his schedule except for watching news shows scooped up VP Pence for a ride over to the MLK memorial to show two minutes of respect.    

What Sanctions?  Last week Democratic leader Chuck Schumer failed to persuade enough Republican Senators to join him in voting for a resolution that would have prevented Treasury Secretary Mnuchin from moving forward with sanctions relief for Russian oligarch/Putin buddy, one time Paul Manafort patron Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum companies. The New York Times reports that Mnuchin was less than forthcoming about the “concessions” that Deripaska made in order to get that sanctions relief.  Contrary to Mnuchin’s assertion that Deripaska had agreed to give up majority control over his companies, the reality is that he will maintain control, that his agreed to “transfer” of controlling shares to other interests is just more Russian smoke and mirrors with some of those “mirrors” being made up of family members and other sanctioned Russian entities. Additionally, Deripaska will be financially benefiting from the transfer, he will be freed from the obligation to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.  Score another one for Putin.