Trump Tantrums 

Staged Theatrics:  On Tuesday night Trump said that the whole government shutdown/wall imbroglio could be solved in 45 minutes.  Yesterday, to prove his point he hosted a White House negotiating session billed as that 45 minute “sit down.”  The meeting began with Trump offering the attending group of Republican and Democratic leaders an assortment of son Barron’s leftover Halloween candy.  As the crowd unwrapped their Butterfingers, Senator Schumer asked Trump to reopen the government while border security funding negotiations continued, Trump turned to Speaker Pelosi, asking if she would then give him money for his vanity wall.  After she said no, he stood up, grabbed the remaining M&Ms and Baby Ruth bars and stomped out of the room.  Nancy and Chuck emerged from the White House and reported  Trump’s childish behavior calling it “unbecoming of a president” as if anything Trump does is ever presidential.  Following their brief remarks, VP Pence emerged with the usual crowd of indistinguishable white guys also known as Republican leadership, a crowd that didn’t include Senate Majority Leader McConnell who once again managed to vaporize during the brief walk from the White House to the microphones.  VP Pence and one or more of his guys disputed Nancy and Chuck’s description, claiming that Trump had been totally charming, citing as proof the Democrats failure to mention the candy.  While the Republican team, which became diverse by Republican standards once the increasingly haggard  Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen joined them, continued to describe Trump’s charm and civility and deny that he had stormed out over wall funding, Trump contradicted them by simultaneously tweeting “Just left a meeting with Nancy and Chuck, a total waste of time.  I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up. Are you going to  approve border security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier?  Nancy said NO. I said, bye-bye nothing else works!” Note that Trump also forgot to mention the candy. It’s highly likely that Trump’s toddler two routine was staged, part of his effort to prove to his base, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh that he is trying really hard to get them that wall so that when he fails they won’t be able to blame him for the absence of hundreds of miles of steel slats and/or concrete.  To that end, today he is flying off to the Southern border possibly with Pat Cipollone, his new White House counsel, whose name was added to the travel manifest late last night.  Sometime during the day, probably while he is checking out a torn fence or two, Trump may declare a national emergency to allow him to redirect military funds and resources towards wall construction. If he does, Democrats will immediately sue to halt his plans, using current migrant data to show that there is no emergency. If all goes according to Trump’s plan, the 9^th Circuit Court will halt the construction and diversion of military resources.  Trump will declare victory, telling his base that he tried, really, really hard but couldn’t fulfill their wall wishes because of the obstructive Dems and those radical judges.  Republican defense hawks who don’t want to see any money diverted from war and other such things will be relieved, and the government will get back to business.  At least that’s the current expectation, few know what the mercurial toddler plans to do and even those who think they know are fully aware that he is capable of altering his plans on a dime, like his surprise threat to cut off funding for California firefighting and forest management after the  new elected Governor Newsom dissed him.  As to that new White House counsel, reports are that he’s recently staffed up, adding 17 lawyers to the White House roster, in preparation for the onslaught of subpoenas that are expected to start flying out of the Democratic led House. The House Judiciary Committee has already requested the appearance of Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker who asserts that he is too busy to attend his roast. Committee Chair Nadler is likely to send one of those subpoenas his way shortly.

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Trump’s wall and shutdown tactics have been quite effective at diverting attention away from the investigations into his Russian collusion and other nefarious things.  However, yesterday’s news that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is planning step down soon helped to bring the Special Counsel Mueller investigation back to the front burner.  Initial reports were that Rosenstein plans to depart as soon as William Barr, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General is confirmed.  However, it appears that Rosenstein’s hopes to stick around until Mueller’s report is finalized, providing as much cover to Mueller as he can. Expectations are that the report will be delivered to the White House and hopefully to Congress by early March.  As to Barr, his pre-confirmation hearing meetings with Senate Judiciary Committee members have begun, or at least his meetings with Republican members of the committee have begun.  Yesterday, Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Richard Blumenthal were told that due to the government shutdown Barr could only meet with Republicans right now.  One of those Republicans, Senator Lindsay Graham who is now the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee “claims” that Barr promised him that he won’t interfere in the Mueller investigation. Graham has also promised to vote Mueller protecting legislation out of the Judiciary Committee, a nice gesture but one that is expected to hit a wall since Senate Leader McConnell, who does show up when he wants to, still plans to block a floor vote. Getting back to all things Russia, more details have emerged about Paul Manafort’s “sharing” of Trump’s 2016 presidential polling data with his Ukrainian business associate/Russian spy buddy Konstantin Kilimnik, it turns out that two other Ukrainian Russia friendly oligarchs Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, were the intended recipients. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the two didn’t need US polling data to engage in their usual business so it’s more than fair to assume that the data made its way up the Russian oligarch chain eventually landing with some combination of GRU agents and Russian bots who then used it to finetune their effort influence the 2016 election.  In other Russian related news, the House Intelligence Committee is expected to call Don Jr as their first witness, they are particularly interested in finding out if Trump Sr was on the other end of the blocked call he made right after the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. As to Natalia, the Russian lawyer’s recent indictment was related to her efforts to obstruct legal proceedings related to money obtained illegally from financier Bill Browder’s companies.  The original investigation of the theft of that money by Browder’s lawyer Sergei Magnitsky led to his brutal death and the passage of the Magnitsky Act sanctions, the very sanctions that Veselnitskaya discussed with Don Jr, Manafort and Kushner during the meeting that they and Don Sr asserted was just about “Russian adoptions.”  The knots in that tangled deceptive web are coming undone, which probably explains a lot about Trump’s newest round of tantrums.