Crocodiles and Stone!

Shutdown Saga: Following a tumultuous Republicans only Senate luncheon during which a number of  Republican Senators yelled at VP Pence over Trump’s stupid shutdown and the damage it was doing to the party’s popularity and future electoral prospects and Senate Leader McConnell, who is equally responsible for the “Trump” shutdown, made it clear that he too thinks that shutdowns are stupid and pointless, the Senate preceded to vote on both the Trump approved and Pelosi approved government spending plans.  As predicted neither plan received close to the 60 votes needed for passage. Only one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin voted for the Trump plan while two of the most anti-immigrant Republicans, Utah’s Mike Lee and Arkansas’ Tom Cotton, and all of the remaining Democrats opposed it. In total the Republican/Trump plan received 50 votes.  The Pelosi approved/Democratic plan actually received three more votes with six Republicans, including Colorado’s Gardner, Tennessee’s  Lamar Alexander, Utah’s Mitt Romney, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Maine’s Susan Collins and Georgia’s Johnny Isakson joining all the Democrats including Manchin in voting for it. After the votes, things got so hot on the Senate floor that Colorado’s usually moderate and soft spoken Democratic Senator Michael Benet exploded at Texas blowhard Ted Cruz.  Benet ripped into Cruz for his “fake crocodile tears” over unpaid first responders, not because he wasn’t sympathetic about the failure to pay government employees but because Cruz had forced a sixteen day closure of the government back in 2013 in an attempt to repeal Obamacare at a time when Colorado, suffering from severe flooding, desperately needed funds for disaster relief. With that speech, Benet, another possible Democratic presidential contender, may have catapulted himself over number of the other contenders. After the votes and the Senate speeches, Trump held one of his rambling impromptu press conferences. As usual his musings were all over the place, he went from sounding like he was ready to negotiate with Schumer and Pelosi to starting up his “there’s another huge migrant caravan coming and what about those kidnapped women with tape over the mouths and all those illegal drug coming in on huge tractors” routine. He trashed immigrants but then talked about how the country needed more of them, something that flies in the face of his little whisperer Stephen Miller’s plans.  He also tried to “interpret” the truly callous remarks made earlier in the day by his Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.  In those comments Ross suggested that unpaid, financially distressed government employees should get off the food lines and seek loans from their friendly local relationship bankers to cover their routines expenses, kind of his version of the Lara Trump, let them eat cake routine.  Trump explained away Ross’ comment saying that he just meant that the unpaid government workers should tell their grocers and their mortgage holders to hold their horses, they’ll get paid someday.  That’s a strategy that has worked countless times for Trump so he doesn’t understand why it wouldn’t work for everyone else.  Trump’s economic advisor Larry Kudlow proved that he too is in the “let them eat cake” camp.  He referred to the government workers as people suffering from a mere “glitch” who should be happy that they’ve been given the opportunity to volunteer their services to serve the greater good of the country. As to the shutdown, it’s not clear that a solution is imminent although at least Schumer and McConnell are now negotiating. For his part Trump insists he still needs a “pro-rated down payment on his wall” but since nobody knows what that means there is a chance that if he’s told that he’s getting some money that counts as a pro rata of something, an agreement to open the government for a few weeks while homeland security funding gets worked out is possible, subject of course to final signoff from “Nancy” who Trump pretty much admitted is in charge these days.            

Mueller Time!  This morning after months of anticipation, Trump’s friend/advisor Roger Stone finally got the full Mueller treatment.  He was arrested and charged with seven counts including obstruction, false statements and witness-tampering.  Tune in at 11 AM for more details and his court appearance.  Recent reports indicate that Mueller has also been ramping up his investigation into the NRA’s collaboration with Putin directed Russian intermediaries, including Red Sparrow Maria Butina and the organization’s acceptance of Russian contributions, funds that then made their way to a variety of Republican candidates most notably Trump.  To that end the Elijah Cummings led House Oversight Committee which is focusing in on how a number of Trump’s staff, relatives and appointees received their security clearances, appears to be very interested in national security advisor John Bolton’s involvement with the NRA and the speech that he once made in Russia, purportedly to endorse Russian gun rights, even though in Putin led Russia, Russian citizens do not have gun rights. How Bolton got his security clearance is just the tip of a very murky iceberg.  Last night NBC revealed that thirty or more Trump staff members and advisors received their security clearances even though they failed reviews by career White House security specialists.  Notably one of those advisors was none other than Jared Kushner, his review process was so hinky that it falls into a class of its own.   NBC reports that in May 2017, a former Pentagon employee named Carl Kline was installed as the director of the White House’s personnel security office.  Over the objection of two senior career specialists, Kline approved Kushner’s top security clearance despite all of his financial entanglements and the questionable meetings he had with foreign officials before and during the Trump campaign, those include all of the interactions that Kushner initially left off of his security application forms, the forms that he ultimately revised dozens of times.  It is highly unusual for the recommendations of the career specialists to be overridden.  As to Kushner, upon obtaining his top security clearance he then requested the even higher “sensitive compartmental information or “SCI” designation so that he could be read in on the most sensitive government secrets.  That designation is granted by the CIA not the White House.  Upon reviewing Kushner’s files and conducting their own background check, CIA specialists questioned how Kushner had ever gotten his top security clearance in the first place and refused to grant him the SCI designation.  Neither Trump nor Kushner can be all that happy that Cummings is now trying to get to the bottom of all that.  After Trump former fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen announced that he was postponing his plans to voluntarily testify before the House Intelligence and Oversight Committees over concerns for his family arising out of threats from Trump and his current fixer/lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the Senate Intelligence Committee jumped in and subpoenaed him to appear before their committee.  In all likelihood the House committees will follow suit. Cohen is now scheduled to meet with the Senate Committee on February 12.  Some have suggested that Giuliani, who unlike Trump, can be indicted, should be investigated for witness tampering.