Vipers 

An Ordinary Day:  By Trump standards, yesterday was a relatively quiet day.  With the Trump shutdown over, at least for now, Speaker Pelosi sent Trump an invitation to make his State of the Union address on February 5, an invitation that he immediately accepted.  As to the shutdown, yesterday in her daily news conference, the one that now takes place once a month, Press Secretary Huckabee Sanders insisted that Trump might still shutdown the government if the group working on resolving border security funding doesn’t provide Trump with funds for his WALL.  That said, a number of Republican Senators are adamantly opposed to the idea of another shutdown, they are concerned about their 2020 political fortunes and aren’t all that pleased that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that, in addition to causing a lot of suffering and the loss of a considerable amount of goodwill,  the shutdown that just ended cost the economy about $11 billion, reflecting lost output from federal workers, delayed government spending and reduced demand.  The CBO estimates that though most of that damage will be reversed as workers return to their jobs, about $3 billion in economic activity will be permanently lost.  Additionally, the CBO projects that economic growth will slow this year to 2.3%, compared with last year’s 3.1%, with much of that decline due to the fact that last year’s tax cuts are having the long term impact that just about everyone except for the administration expected.  In other words, the  $1.5 trillion in tax cuts appears not to have had a major impact on capital investment or hiring plans.  To be sure corporations and the wealthy are better off, but that whole trickle down thing doesn’t appear to be working out all that well for the rest of the country.

Mueller Front:  Trump buddy and self-professed dirty trickster Roger Stone who is telling anyone who’ll listen that the FBI SWAT team that greeted him Friday morning gave him the full Osama bin Laden treatment, will be arraigned today in a Washington DC court.  He is expected to plead not guilty to the seven count indictment bought by Special Counsel Mueller. Yesterday,  Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker who asserts that he has been fully briefed by Mueller on the status of the investigation claimed that it was winding down and nearing completion.  Although Whitaker’s remarks initially received a lot of attention, virtually every media outlet tweeted out the news, once the assorted pundits took a step back they realized that Whitaker was probably just saying what he thinks Trump wants to hear.  It’s hard to believe that Mueller’s team doesn’t need more time to analyze the electronic trail that they just obtained from Stone’s laptops and phones. In addition, the lawyers for Andrew Miller, a sometime aide to Stone, who has been fighting his subpoena for a year, report that Mueller is still seeking his testimony for the grand jury.  In any case, most expect that Mueller has a few more indictments to hand down before he’s done, and that he is saving the best for last, by best think those closest to Trump which may explain why Whitaker made his remarks.  He has an audience of one, and his audience must have given him an earful last weekend over the Stone indictment. Since soon to be Attorney General Barr continues to offer squishy answers to questions concerning whether or not he plans to share Mueller’s final report with the public, Senators Grassley and Blumenthal announced yesterday that they are introducing legislation mandating that the report gets shared with Congress as soon as it is prepared.  In other news,  after the Washington DC judge overseeing Paul Manafort’s case pushed off the hearing on whether or not his lies broke his cooperation deal with Mueller until February 4, his Virginia judge pushed off his previously  planned sentencing hearing saying that he couldn’t move forward until the Washington judge makes her decision.  Michael Cohen, who cancelled his plans to testify in front of an open Joint Oversight and Intelligence hearing citing fears rising from threats made by Trump and Rudy Giuliani has now hired new lawyers and agreed to testify at a closed House Intelligence Committee session on February 8.  He will also meet with the Oversight Committee but his new lawyers have not yet finalized those details.       

2020:  The possibility that former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz will move forward with an independent run for the presidency is freaking out lots of Democrats and never Trumpers but has helped at least one notable person out of his Nancy Pelosi induced depression.  That person, Donald J Trump, is already doing his best to goad Schultz into making a firm commitment to  run with a little reverse psychology, yesterday he tweeted that Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to do it.  Others remain less enthusiastic to say the least.  During a Barnes & Noble interview by CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin a heckler shouted Schultz down, saying “Don’t Help elect Trump, you egotistical, billionaire asshole.”  Though he didn’t use the same language, former NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg, appears to share the sentiment, he released a statement saying that he’s done the research and concluded that “in 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote,” adding the “data was very clear and consistent, given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, thee is no way an independent can win.”  Bloomberg went on to say that this is the same conclusion he made in 2016 and it’s the reason that if he decides to run he’ll run as a Democrat, summing up his view by saying “we must remain united, and we must not allow any candidate to divide or fracture us.”  Despite the criticism Schultz seems to be moving towards running.  He’s hired Steve Schmidt, the Republican political consultant who dropped his party affiliation last year over his disgust with Trump.  Schmidt’s proven before that his judgement isn’t always spot on, he worked on John McCain’s 2008 campaign and was okay with Sarah Palin until he wasn’t.  At this point the best thing that can be said about Schultz’s ambitions and Schmidt’s willingness to serve as his “gun for hire” is that the two are just trying to push the Democrats back towards the middle or at least towards a position that’s just left of center.  They probably are less than pleased with Medicare for All, and Senator Warren’s wealth tax proposal, the one that would mandate that people like Schultz with assets in excess of $50 million hand over 2% or more of their fortune every year. In other election news, Joe Biden says he’ll make his decision on whether to run soon,  former Attorney General Eric Holder is considering a run and despite reports that she is also thinking about jumping back into the fray, Hillary Clinton’s associates say she is not, thank goodness.    

Other News:  During yesterday’s press conference national security advisor Bolton and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced sanctions against PDVSA, Venezuela’s state owned oil company, part of an effort to prevent Venezuela’s President Maduro and his cronies from continuing to use the firm as their personal piggy bank.  When asked if any other measures were planned against Venezuela, Bolton said that all options were on the table, a comment that implied that military options are possible.  That concern was heightened when virtually every camera in the room panned to the yellow pad held sloppily in Bolton’s arms where the words “5000 troops to Colombia” were written in an all too decipherable scrawl. The White House response to questions about Bolton’s revealing pad was that since they had already announced that all military options are on the table what’s the bigly deal, it’s not like Bolton has a personal email server or anything, he’s just sharing state secrets.  Trump, who is already steaming about having to cave to Speaker Pelosi and the Stone indictments, is also fairly pissed off with the sensational disclosures in the books being hawked by former Governor Chris Christie and one time aide Cliff Sims.  Christie is fairly soft on Trump but hammers Jared Kushner, blaming him for upending his methodical approach to transition planning, a fair criticism given the benefit of hindsight and the number of truly unqualified people that the Trump team hired once Christie was summarily kicked off the team at Kushner’s “suggestion.”  Sims’ book is entitled “Nest of Vipers” which pretty much says it all.