Let Them Eat Cake

Trump Shutdown:  Yesterday despite the fact that Speaker Pelosi had cancelled her invitation for Trump to deliver his State of the Union Address in her House, he tried calling her bluff, insisting that he would.  She held firm, saying that he could try but that she would lock the doors, turn off the lights and hide the video equipment.  After a day of back and forth during which someone in the White House might have actually read the constitution and informed him that it really was her House and thus her right to hide the keys, Trump finally conceded, but not before calling her and the Democratic party out as nothing but a group of radicals, like she cares.  Last night he tweeted that “This is her prerogative - I will do the Address when the Shutdown is over.”  The tweet was too well written to have actually come from Trump and he probably has something else up his sleeve but for now the speech is officially postponed.  With that thorny issued placed on the back burner, its back to figuring a way out of the shutdown morass. To that end, Majority Leader McConnell plans to hold two votes today.  The first will be for Trump’s funding plan, the one that provides $5.7 billion for the wall, three years of protection for DACA recipients and TPS beneficiaries and a host of onerous changes to refugee and immigration policies, and the second for the Democrats’ funding plan, the one that reopens the government through early February providing more time to work out a border security funding compromise.  The Democratic plan is the one that the Senate previously voted for before the unpredictable and jittery Trump decided to pull his support under pressure from Ann Coulter and her crowd.  As of now, neither bill is expected to garner the sixty votes needed for passage though a few Republicans including at risk Senators Cory Gardner and Susan Collins have said that they will vote for the Democratic plan.  Notably Senator Collins who likes to hedge her bets has also said that she will vote for the Trump plan.  Assuming no other Republicans follow their lead, a fair assumption, little will be accomplished today.  However, its thought that the mere fact that McConnell is allowing the votes to take place is an indication that he’s becoming open to finding a way out of the shutdown hole. For her part, Speaker Pelosi has indicated that the Democrats are willing to provide more funding for what she is calling “smart” border security, possibly even the amount that Trump is seeking as long as it is not used for building Trump’s vanity wall.  It’s not clear where the White House is going with all of this, or if they even know where they are going.  Having never planned for a shutdown Trump and his crowd, by crowd think Jared, VP Pence and Mick Mulvaney, the so called acting chief of staff, never anticipated that starving parts of the government might actually be problematic, nor did they anticipate that Trump’s polls, typically fixed in the 40% plus or minus range would actually take a hit and they have taken a hit.  Yesterday a CBS poll showed Trump’s approval rating has dropped to 36% and also indicated just how unpopular the wall is and that most Americans, even many who like the wall don’t think that shutting the government down to get it is worth the trouble.  It doesn’t help that in a joint statement the unions that represent pilots, air traffic controllers  and flight attendants warned of the potentially dire consequence of the shutdown saying “We have a growing concern for the safety and security of our members, our airlines and the traveling public due to the government shutdown. In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break.”  At the same time five former Department of Homeland Secretaries, including Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano, Jeh Johnson and John Kelly, who was Chief of Staff when the shutdown began, sent Trump and Congress a letter calling “on our elected leaders to restore the funding necessary to ensure our homeland remains safe and that the Department’s critical national security functions continue without compromise." They went on to call the failure to pay workers “unconscionable.”  It’s not clear that Trump really cares or that he is ready to compromise. Late yesterday the Washington Post reported that Mulvaney has asked department leaders to identify the highest-impact programs that would be jeopardized if the shutdown continues into March and April, a sign the administration is either “preparing for a lengthy funding lapse,” or that someone in the White House is trying to explain to Trump that his actions have real consequences as if the failure to pay people living paycheck to paycheck isn’t enough of a consequence.  As to that paycheck thing, Trump daughter in law Lara, Eric’s wife, wants federal workers to know that their sacrifice is worth it for “the future of the country,” her “let them eat cake” moment.  Do you think she knows how things turned out for Marie Antoinette?

Investigatory Things:   Trump’s one time lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen has postponed his February 7 plans to voluntarily testify before the House citing "ongoing threats against his family" from Trump and current attorney/fixer Rudy Giuliani.  Cohen isn’t wrong about those threats, we’ve all heard them loud and clear especially the one issued by Trump during his on air interview with FOX’s Jeanine Pirro.  For his part when asked about the threats, Trump said "Well I would say he's been threatened by the truth. He's only been threatened by the truth," like Trump has any familiarity with the truth.  Others including a number of former federal attorneys and possibly even Special Counsel Mueller would say that those threats from Trump and Giuliani count as witness intimidation.  Certainly House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff and House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings believe that, they issued a joint statement slamming Trump and Giuliani for "efforts to intimidate witnesses, scare their family members, or prevent them from testifying before Congress."  It’s highly likely that they will subpoena Cohen to appear in front of their committees shortly. House Democrats also have plans to hear from Acting Attorney General Scott Whitaker, Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and a number of other Trump administration official who probably aren’t looking forward to spending time with them. They are also looking into things like how Jared Kushner ever managed to get his security clearance. On the Mueller front Paul Manafort is expected back in court on Friday to confront charges that he’s a bigly liar.  His lawyers filed papers yesterday insisting that Manafort doesn’t deserve to have his cooperation agreement revoked because he isn’t a liar, just very forgetful and an inventive story teller.  As to all that investigatory stuff, though Mueller’s team appears to be adequately funded for now, the FBI and the Justice Department are reportedly short on cash and cutting back on indictments and other crime fighting activities, another consequence of the Trump shutdown, possibly an intended one.         

Venezuela:  While most of us have been focused on the government shutdown and the Russia investigation things have continued to deteriorate going from bad to worse in Venezuela.  Yesterday, in a bid to force out Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Trump recognized popular opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim leader.  By doing so he joined Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay and Peru whose leaders also say that they recognize and give their full support to Guaido.  Maduro responded by cutting off relations with the US and ordering that all US diplomats leave the country within 72 hours.  The Trump administration then responded by saying that since it no longer recognizes Maduro as the country’s leader the order for the US diplomats to leave is invalid.  Right or wrong, Trump who earlier in his administration considered invading Venezuela, may have just found his “wag the dog” moment. Military intervention could be next.