The Road To Normal?

Pen Pals:  Yesterday, after it was reported that US negotiators were no longer demanding that North Korea provide a full accounting of its nuclear and ballistic missile arsenals, it looked like Trump was on the verge of making major concessions to get a signed deal with his good friend and loving pen pal Kim Jong un but, at least for now, Trump’s much hoped for deal has fizzled.  Early this morning while most of us were sleeping, the two leaders cancelled their scheduled “signing” ceremony and celebratory lunch plans after it became clear that Kim Jong un would at best agree to disassemble only one of his nuclear sites, a site of his choice, and that he would only do that after all of the sanctions against North Korea were lifted.  Before departing Viet Nam for his trip home, a visibly disappointed Trump who had hoped to return to celebratory crowds with his Nobel Peace Prize in the bag held a news conference where he said that “Sometimes you have to walk, and this was just one of those times.” Though no future summit is scheduled, Trump continues to speak highly of Kim Jong un.  He excused him for the death of American student Otto Warmbier, saying that the North Korean dictator says that he never directed and didn’t know his people had tortured Warmbier, and like Putin, Kim Jong wouldn’t lie about something like that.

Cohen Chronicles:  At the same news conference, when queried about Michael Cohen’s House Oversight Committee testimony Trump called  Cohen a liar going on to say that it was unfair of House Democrats, “having a fake hearing like that, and having it in the middle of this very important summit, is really a terrible thing, they could have made it two days later or next week.”  Of course he failed to acknowledge that the hearings had been delayed and ended up coinciding with his trip because of Cohen’s concerns about the safety of his family, concerns that were the result of one of Trump’s threatening tweets.  Though he was mostly unhappy about Cohen’s testimony, Trump praised him for declining to claim that there was hard evidence of collusion between his campaign and Russia and though he didn’t say it, Trump was probably also pleased that Cohen pushed back against rumors about an “elevator” tape of him slapping Melania saying that no such tape existed and that Trump would never, ever physically accost Melania.  As to Cohen’s testimony, over the course of a very long day he was sporadically emotional and convincingly remorseful.  His delivered his prepared remarks with few stutters and did his best to throw Trump, a number of his associates and the inner corps of the family under the bus whenever and wherever he could. He brought along evidence most, if not all, of which had already been reviewed by the Southern District of New York federal attorneys.  That evidence that included copies of signed checks, reimbursement for the payment that he made to Stormy Daniels/Stephanie Cliffords, the adult film star (not the playmate) on behalf of Trump, in the run up to the election.  Those checks were signed by various members of the Trump family, with at least one signed by Trump after he was already in office. Though Cohen didn’t provide hard evidence of collusion, he did describe a call between Trump and Roger Stone, one in which he says Stone reported that he’d learned from his buddy at WikiLeaks that some Hillary damaging information was about to be dropped.  That call, which Cohen heard first hand because Trump placed it on the speaker, took place shortly before the DNC emails were released.  Cohen also suggested that Trump’s long-time assistant Rhona Graff should be able to corroborate the call even though both Julian Assange and Roger Stone, hardly reliable witnesses, have already said that the call never happened.  Though Cohen confirmed that Trump never directly told him to lie about the ongoing negotiations about the Moscow Trump Tower project, negotiations that extended far longer than anyone in the Trump family initially acknowledged, he said that Trump made it clear that saying that the negotiations had ended earlier than they had was the official Trump party line and that as a long term Trumpkin he understood Trump’s mob style messaging. He added that several Trump lawyers, possibly Jay Sekulow and most definitely Ivanka and Jared’s lawyer Abby Lowell, had reviewed the text of his Congressional testimony and that they knew and presumably had signed off on what he was planning to say about the Moscow project. If true, they have some explaining to do, either their clients lied to them or they signed on to perjury. Jay Sekulow now denies that he ever edited the testimony, so far only crickets from Lowell. When asked questions about Trump’s financial finagling, Cohen said that Trump routinely overstated the value of his assets to banks and insurance companies while lowballing them to tax authorities, going on to say that Trump financial officer Allen Weisselberg and several other Trump finance team members could provide more details about how that was done.  Ouch.  As to the infamous Trump tower meeting with the team from Russia, Cohen said that there was no way that Don Trump Jr would ever have had the meeting without his dad’s approval because he was basically viewed as the family nincompoop, ouch again, and wasn’t allowed to make decisions like that on his own, he also said that he overheard a conversation between the two Dons where he “believed” the meeting was discussed.  Notably, Cohen said that he couldn’t respond to several other questions citing other active Southern District of NY investigations into additional Trump Family crimes. Biggest ouch of all.  Republicans on the committee tried hard to paint Cohen as a duplicitous liar who was only testifying against Trump to lighten his sentence, increase his marketability for any future book or movie deals and out of retribution because he hadn’t been offered a cool White House job.  As to that last point, Cohen insists that he was happy being Trump’s outside lawyer but several of the Republicans cited “proof” that he had lobbied for a better inside job, and he probably had, but appears to have since convinced himself that being Trump’s outside man was equally impressive, whether that counts as a lie might be one for a shrink to assess.  In a wince inducing moment Republican Mark Meadows came off as a completely tone deaf idiot when he used Housing and Urban Development political appointee and one time Trump family party planner Lynne Patton as a prop to prove that Trump isn’t the racist that Cohen says he is.  Yes, he actually had Patton stand behind him to prove that Trump has hired a Black person. Patton who appears to have participated willingly in the stunt hardly came off any better.  Congressional newbie Rashida Tlaib pretty much called Meadows out as a racist for his maneuver.  He then erupted saying that it was absurd to call him a racist because a few members of his extended family are of color. Oy!  It was left to Committee chair Elijah Cummings to defuse that one.  The other Congressional newbie Alexandra Ocasio Cortez also delivered some effective, albeit less inflammatory, hits.  She very ably questioned Cohen about Trump’s financial shenanigans, paving the way for House Democrats to justify the subpoenaing of his tax returns.  Before the day was over Cummings delivered some impressive closing remarks saying “I've sat here and listened to all of this and it's very painful. You made a lot of mistakes, Mr. Cohen, and you've admitted that. You know that one of the saddest part of this whole thing is that some innocent people are hurting, too, and that's your family...I don't know where you go from here...We are better than this. As a country, we are so much better than this...It sounds like you're crying out for a new normal, to get back to normal. It sounds to me like you want to make sure that our democracy stays intact. I'm hoping that the things you said today will help us to get back there.”  Later, when asked by the press, he confirmed that It appears that Trump committed a crime while in office.  It certainly does!

Hanoi Hilton

Split Screen:  Trump has finally made it to Viet Nam and is currently having a preliminary one on one with North Korean Leader Kim Jong un.  Trump must have been tired of reading stories about his “bone spur” deferments because upon landing he tweeted out “I have now spent more time in Vietnam than Da Nang Dick Blumenthal, the third rate Senator from Connecticut (how is Connecticut doing?). His war stories of his heroism in Vietnam were a total fraud - he was never even there. We talked about it today with Vietnamese leaders!”  It’s doubtful that he really did discuss Blumenthal, who did serve during the Viet Nam era but has apologized countless times for saying that his service included time in Viet Nam when it didn’t, with anyone but Trump loves to slam Blumenthal whenever its opportune or whenever he needs some diversion and right about now he probably needs some diversion.  Though Blumenthal isn’t in Hanoi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is, he arrived early possibly to be available to Trump who according to Russian media has sought out Russia’s “advice” on how to negotiate with the North Korean dictator.  Russia’s suggestion is that the US should offer Pyongyang “security guarantees” in exchange for disarmament.  By security guarantees, Russia probably means that Trump should promise to pull US troops out of South Korea and other Asian countries ceding dominance of the region to Russia and China.  Though he slammed Blumenthal, Trump is probably more concerned about what his former fixer/lawyer plans to tell the House Oversight Committee during today’s testimony.  He is right to be concerned about that. In his opening remarks Cohen is planning to tell the Committee that Trump is “a racist, a conman and a cheat.”  Among other things Cohen is expected to say that he continued to receive reimbursement payments for the funds he fronted for the hush money paid to playmate Karen McDougal well into Trump’s presidency and that those payments came in the form of checks hand signed by Donald J Trump himself. If true, that would indicate that Trump continued his criminal ways while in the White House.  Not all that shocking but very incriminating.  Cohen is expected to provide one of those checks as proof.  He also will say that Trump knew that Roger Stone had communicated with WikiLeak’s Julian Assange about the hacked DNC emails, that Donald Jr kept his father in the loop about the Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, that though Trump didn’t specifically order him to lie to Congress about the Moscow Tower project Trump repeated his version enough times for Cohen to understand how he was supposed to testify. Cohen will also say that Trump’s lawyers reviewed his testimony several times in advance.  Apparently Trump is also very sensitive about his SAT scores and grades.  Cohen reports that at Trump’s request, he sent letters to his schools and colleges telling them that they would be in bigly trouble if they shared any of his records with the press, am guessing that he never made Dean’s List unless of course the list of students who’s father’s bought them into college counts.  As to the White House response to Cohen’s testimony, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the following “Disgraced felon Michael Cohen is going to prison for lying to Congress and making other false statements. Sadly, he will go before Congress this week and we can expect more of the same. It's laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies."  She has a point, Cohen is now a convicted felon, however at this point he is unlikely to lie as any more false statements could subject him to further prosecution and would most certainly make it that much more difficult to obtain that already elusive recommendation for leniency that he hopes to get from the Southern District of NY prosecutors. Sanders isn’t the only one slamming Cohen, yesterday Florida Congressman and Trump acolyte Matt Gaetz threatened Cohen, tweeting "Hey @MichaelCohen212, Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she'll remain faithful when you're in prison. She's about to learn a lot..."  The Congressman’s tweet went over about as well as expected.  His fellow Republicans winced but said nothing, Democrats called it out as an attempt at witness tampering.  Gaetz, one of Trump’s most ardent supporters remained unfazed by the criticism, in fact it’s fair to say that he’s loving the attention. If the US press corps appears more prickly than usual it may be because they were thrown out of their hotel, the Melia Hanoi, it turns out that Kim Jong un is also a guest there and isn’t accustomed to running into unwelcome photographers and probing reporters. His “flipped out” staff had the press removed possibly out of fear that if they didn’t do so they would find themselves relocated to the notorious Hanoi Hilton, permanently.

2020:  Former VP Joe Biden hasn’t announced his 2020 plans yet but appears to be closing in on an affirmative decision.  He says that that his family is supportive of him running, notable because they are likely to be subjected to additional scrutiny if he does and his surviving son Hunter who has recently gone through a messy divorce, is now involved with the widow of his departed son, Beau.  It’s reported that Biden’s been quietly seeking to hire staff in New Hampshire, an early primary state.  Bernie Sanders who has raised scads of cash from his pool of dedicated Berniacs as well as a large number of new individual donors,  is now finding himself subject to the scrutiny that he managed to escape in 2016 when everyone was far too busy chasing down Hillary’s emails to focus on his wrinkles. He didn’t release any of his tax returns in 2016 and appears to be trying to do the same this time around.  He promises to release them eventually when they are “ready” but wants us to know that they are boring. Where have we heard this before? Notably, Senator Elizabeth Warren who promises not to accept any donations from anyone with any money to donate has already released hers. North Carolina is still short one congressperson.  A special election for the seat left empty due to some absentee ballot election fraud won’t be held until sometime in the fall. Although the Democratic candidate Dan McCready has already announced that he’ll be running again, his disgraced opponent, Republican pastor Mark Harris, has pulled himself out of the race over “health concerns,” he says that he’s suffered a few mini strokes possibly over the fear that he could now end up in jail.  As to that fraud, Senate Majority Leader McConnell blames it on Democrats for failing to support more stringent voter ID requirements.  Gotta love that McConnell, he has an explanation for everything.   

Emergency Conditions:  As expected the House passed the Democratic resolution rejecting Trump’s emergency declaration.  All the House Democrats voted for the resolution as did thirteen Republicans, not enough to override a Trump veto but still a notable amount.  One of those Republicans was Texas Congressman Will Hurd whose district includes the largest stretch of the Mexican border.  So far only three Republican Senators are on record saying that they will support the resolution when it comes up for a vote in the Senate but reports are that ten others have expressed reservations and that each of those not so brave souls are waiting for another to become the critical fourth vote before coming forward.  Curiously, though it would be a stretch to assume that he would even considering voting for the resolution, Republican leader McConnell admits that he’s not sure that the emergency declaration is legitimate, which might be a signal to his Republican colleagues that they are free to vote their consciences.  Well maybe.  In what may be a real emergency, overnight Pakistan shot down two Indian fighter planes. More to come?         

Born on the Fourth of July

Good Morning Viet Nam: Trump is due to arrive in Hanoi shortly for “denuclearization” discussions with North Korea’s strongman Kim Jong un.  Before heading east, he touted his administration’s accomplishments, talked again about his grand but as yet unfunded plans to build “tremendous” infrastructure and touted his push for peace with his good friend Kim during a speech to the nation’s governors. Of course he also defended his WALL plans.  Resorting to an out-right lie as a justification for his emergency declaration and strategy of  diverting money from more pressing projects, he said “Ninety percent of the drugs don’t come through the port of entry.  Ninety percent of the drugs and the big stuff goes out to the desert, makes a left, and goes where you don’t have any wall.”  Putting aside his peculiar need to throw left and right turns into every reference he makes to border crossings, his assertion that ninety percent of the drugs entering the country pass over unwalled rough terrain rather than through ports of entry is a boldfaced lie, anyone who paid any attention to the El Chapo trial knows that even drug smugglers admit that most of the drugs they bring into the country come hidden in cars and boats or travel through tunnels with little making that so called left turn towards the unguarded terrain that Trump so desperately wants to wall in so that he can tell his base that he has built a WALL.  Trump then doubled down on his mendacity, by bragging that he has already built a significant portion of the WALL, even though he hasn’t. Lies aside, the House will start voting today on its resolution to undo Trump’s emergency declaration. Given the Democratic House majority, the resolution will easily pass the chamber.  On the Senate side, despite Trump’s call for Republican Senators to stand with him, a call accompanied by a threat to primary those who don’t vote against the resolution, three Republicans, Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Thom Tillis, have already indicated that they will vote with the Democrats.  North Carolina’s Tillis announced his support for the resolution yesterday with a Washington Post op-ed where he said that though he supports Trump’s vision of border security, he will vote for the resolution when it comes up for a vote in the Senate because of his greater concern that Trump’s emergency declaration diminishes the power of Congress.  Notably Tillis is up for reelection is 2020 but he, like Collins,  is apparently more concerned about losing in the general election than being primaried from the right.  If, as expected, one more Republican crosses the aisle the resolution will pass.  As to Trump, border security isn’t the only concept that he hasn’t mastered.  Yesterday responding to a question about Trump’s grasp of economics, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellin said that Trump misunderstands some fairly elementary concepts saying that she doesn’t believe that he has a “grasp of economic policy.”  She went on to say that when “I continually hear focus by the president and some of his advisers on remedying bilateral trade deficits with other trade partners, I think almost any economist would tell you that there's no real meaning to bilateral trade deficits, and it's not an appropriate objective of policy."  As to Trump’s tariff driven policy, before leaving for Hanoi, he backed off increasing tariffs on Chinese goods saying that he anticipates that he will soon be finalizing a really good trade deal with Chinese President Xi, one that they will sign at an as yet unscheduled ceremony at Mar a Lago, of course.  One more thing, Trump apparently doesn’t know has to do with US holiday celebrations.  He’s now planning a really big celebration for July 4^th.  Over the weekend he tweeted “HOLD THE DATE! We will be having one of the biggest gatherings in the history of Washington, D.C., on July 4th. It will be called “A Salute To America” and will be held at the Lincoln Memorial. Major fireworks display, entertainment and an address by your favorite President, me!  What a novel idea.

Platoon:  Lawyer fixer Michael Cohen time on the Congressional hot seat begins today, though we won’t hear him from until tomorrow because today’s meeting will take place in the Senate Intelligence Committee  “cone” of silence.  Tomorrow he is due in front of the House Oversight Committee for a public hearing where its reported that he plans to dish all about Trump and his family’s bad acts and politically incorrect speech.  Sadly, its not clear that anyone who supports Trump cares all that much about that stuff.  They probably aren’t all that concerned that another woman has come forward claiming that Trump inappropriately kissed her during the 2016 campaign.  The woman, former campaign staffer Alva Johnson, said Trump grabbed her hand and leaned in to kiss her on the lips as he exited an RV outside a Tampa rally in August of 2016.  She alleges in a new lawsuit that the experience “still causes her anguish.” Many of the rest of us feel that anguish, but wonder why it took her so long to speak up.  Johnson asserts that there were two witnesses, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and another campaign official.  Bondi, who in the past received some fairly generous campaign contributions from Trump and who has herself been accused of dismissing accusations against the much maligned and quite fraudulent Trump University, denies that she ever witnessed the alleged kiss.  It’s not clear that Johnson’s lawsuit will go anywhere for a variety of reasons but mostly because Teflon Don has been accused of this kind of stuff in the past and so many really don’t care.  For the record, though Johnson has said nice things about Trump in the past, she did tell some people about the “alleged” kiss when it happened.  While Trump is likely to survive his newest “MeToo” accusation, his former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker may be in bigly trouble.  Last night the Wall Street Journal reported that the House Judiciary Committee believes it has proof showing that Trump asked Whitaker about having Geoffrey Berman, the recused US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, take back command of the investigation into Michael Cohen’s deeds from his staff attorneys.  Former campaign manager/convicted felon Paul Manafort’s lawyers are asking the judges overseeing his cases for leniency.  They claim that he is not the “brazen criminal” that that Special Counsel Mueller claims he is citing as proof all the work that he’s done for four other presidents, his ailing health, his family’s needs and, my personal favorite, the old “it’s not like he murdered anyone” excuse.

In the Shallows

Traveling Squads:  Bone spurs and all Trump is finally off to Viet Nam to meet up with his pen pal bestie Kim Jong un who is traveling to Hanoi by train because, though he has the money for nukes, his antiquated inadequately maintained airplane fleet has a tendency to fall apart during flight.  Trump’s advisors, much of Congress and the leaders of the rest of the free world are a wee bit concerned that even though he’s been trying to lower expectations by tweeting that denuclearization takes a while, he will concede something significant to Kim Jong un in exchange for nothing more than a smile, a wink and a really good photo op so that he can emerge from his meeting with a good talking point, one that will distract attention from all of those problematic investigations and Michael Cohen’s upcoming testimony while advancing his Nobel Peace Prize aspirations and goosing his poll numbers.  Despite Trump’s post Singapore announcement that North Korea is no longer a nuclear threat, it is, even Secretary of State Pompeo admitted to that when queried by CNN’s Jake Tapper at the same time that he tried to brush off the suggestion that Trump had ever suggested that it wasn’t.  Too bad for Pompeo, Tapper had copies of Trump’s twitter feed on hand. Trump isn’t the only one on the road this week.  VP Pence is traveling to Colombia today for a one day summit on Venezuela where he’ll be meeting with the Lima Group, a group of 14 Latin American countries dedicated to “a peaceful Venezuela solution” whatever that is and Juan Guaido, the Venezuelan opposition leader who is supposed to lead that not so bloodless takeover.  For a day or more, Nancy Pelosi will be the most senior leader stateside.  Though it might be comforting to think that she could engineer her own bloodless coup while the other two are elsewhere, there is little she can do to prevent their return.  That said she will be busy.  Tomorrow she plans to call for a vote on a resolution to block Trump’s emergency declaration, the one he’s using or trying to use to build his WALL by directing funds from other places mostly within the Defense budget, ironically from pools of money that may have already been spent or committed. With or without much Republican support, Pelosi’s resolution is expected to pass the House.  Pursuant to the legislation that permitted Trump to declare the emergency in the first place, Senate Majority Leader McConnell won’t be able to sit this one out, he will be required to bring the House resolution up for a vote in the Senate.  So far, Senator Susan Collins has actually gone on record saying that she’ll vote with Democrats and her sometimes soul mate Lisa Murkowski has said that she is likely to cross aisles too.  Passage in the Senate will require that a number of the others who’ve publicly called out Trump’s executive over reach and emergency resolution as bunk follow suit.  Time will tell if they are willing to put their money, or in this case, their votes, where their mouths have already gone.  Keep an eye on Senators Lamar Alexander,  Corey Gardner, Thom Tillis, Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney.  Assuming the resolution passes the Senate, it will probably face an insurmountable Trump veto leaving WALL funding in limbo until the courts weigh in.

Mueller Time?  Despite assertions from various news outlets and other people who claimed to be in the know, at the end of the week a spokesperson from the Justice Department said that the Mueller report, to the extent there ever will be a real report, is not due out imminently, or at the very least it won’t be released while Trump is in Viet Nam, so it’s back to the waiting and kvetching game.  To that end Democrats spent a good portion of the weekend making it clear that when and if the report comes out, they want it to go public or else they’ll sue, subpoena, march and throw temper tantrums.  It took a little longer than expected, but Mueller’s much anticipated Manafort sentencing recommendation, the one for his Washington DC crimes, finally emerged on Saturday in the form of a much redacted 800 page tome. Mueller didn’t say much that we didn’t already know, leaving those in the no collusion camp to tweet NO COLLUSION, and others to say or hope that Mueller is leaving the best for last.  Although Mueller didn’t recommend a sentence, he more or less told Judge Amy Berman Jackson, that she should throw the book at Manafort.  His prosecutors told her that Manafort “brazenly violated the law,” that he ”chose repeatedly and knowingly to violate the law— whether the laws proscribed garden-variety crimes such as tax fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and bank fraud, or more esoteric laws that he nevertheless was intimately familiar with, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)."  Adding that Manafort shows a "hardened adherence to committing crimes, his criminal actions were bold, some of which were committed while under a spotlight due to his work as the campaign chairman and, later, while he was on bail from this Court."  The memo also points out that he lied to everyone including “tax preparers, bookkeepers, banks, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice National Security Division, the FBI, the Special Counsel’s Office, the grand jury, his own legal counsel, Members of Congress, and members of the executive branch of the United States government.” According to Bloomberg, the news service not the possible presidential candidate, prosecutors in New York want to make sure that Manafort stays in jail for a long time even if he is a recipient of that much coveted Trump pardon.  To that end they report that both the State and the Manhattan District Attorney have initiated efforts to prosecute him locally.  For his part, Michael Cohen appears to be still cooperating with the Southern District of New York, providing them with additional information about the Trump inauguration committee and one of its donors Imaad Zuberi, who may or may not have attempted to engage in some pay for play funding with Cohen.  Cohen who will be testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee about everything not related to Mueller’s Russia investigation tomorrow appears to be trying to get his three year jail sentence reduced, of course for that to happen, his newly provided information would have to bear lots of fruit, and by fruit think lots of lemons for Trump.  Though we won’t hear him, assuming he survives his public grilling,  Cohen is also scheduled to testify in front of the House and Senate Intel Committees in their private SCIF’s.

Pence Effect:  Trump who never really cared about abortion until he decided to run for president is now doing his best to out Pence the VP.  On Friday, in what is intended to be a direct slam at Planned Parenthood, the administration announced that it will bar organizations that provide abortion referrals from receiving federal family planning money.  The point of the rule is to strip millions from Planned Parenthood in order to direct money to religiously-based, anti-abortion groups.  Another court challenge beckons.  We also learned on Friday more than we ever wanted to know about how some of Trump’s friends spend their free time, notably no forms of birth control were ever used in any of their activities, some of which may well have led to some very unwanted pregnancies.  Enough said about all that.   

Other News:  Trump finally weighed in on the Coast Guard officer and avowed white supremacist who was preparing to launch a deadly hate attack against Democrats leaders among others.  In response to a reporter’s question he said “I think it’s a shame…. A very sad thing” but when further queried if he thought that any of his own rhetoric was a factor in the decision by people like the Coast Guard officer to act on their hate,  he said  “I think my language is very nice.”  Since taking office, Trump has cut the already inadequate funding levels for Counter Violent Extremism programs that target white supremacists and neo-Nazis.  Kind of guessing that the White House has no plans to host any viewings of Green Book, BlacKkKlansman, Black Panther or Roma anytime soon.  

Red, Blue and Green

Red and Blue:  Last April then Chief of Staff Kelly killed off an effort by former EPA Head Scott Pruitt to engage in a series of public “red team/blue team” debates over the validity of climate change.  Trump who continues to believe that since it still snows in winter climate change isn’t happening was all in on the debate but other administration officials agreed with Kelly’s decision, not because they acknowledged the dangers of ignoring climate change but because they believed that a public debate on science could become a “damaging spectacle, creating an unnecessary distraction from the steps the administration” was and continues to take to unravel previously established environmental regulations. The scandal ridden Pruitt is long gone but the idea of subjecting climate science to scrutiny in order to avoid actually doing something to blunt its impact remains.  Early this week the White House announced plans to establish a Presidential Committee on Climate Security to be led by a climate science skeptic named William Happer, a former Princeton professor who is on record stating that the carbon emissions that virtually every respected scientist believe are linked to climate change should be viewed “as an asset rather than a pollutant.”  Happer has compared the demonization of carbon dioxide to the demonization of the “poor Jews under Hitler.” Really, he said that during a 2014 interview with CNBC.  One expert said that Happer’s appointment is “the equivalent of setting up a committee on nuclear-weapons proliferation and having someone lead it who doesn’t think nuclear weapons exist,” adding it’s “honestly a blunt-force political tool designed to shut the national security community up on climate change.”  The administration’s decision to move forward with the Happer led committee is part of an effort to counter various warnings from intelligence leaders and reports coming out of the Pentagon about the very concerning impact of climate change on national security, reports that, among other things, warn that changing sea levels provide a near term danger to US bases around the world. On the political front, Trump together with his chief enabler Senate Majority Leader McConnell continue to do their best to mock the Green New Deal being espoused by many Democrats, most notably the outspoken new Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a favorite Republican target. Yesterday, the NY Times published a summary of just what the Green New Deal would entail, and while they observe that the radical changes that the plan calls for would be hugely expensive and probably impossible to achieve within its recommended ten year time horizon, they observe that it would be folly to think that ignoring the really dire impact that climate change is already having is a viable option. Having environmental policy dictated by politicians in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry isn’t much of a good idea either.

Mueller Time:  Rudy Giuliani who has been suspiciously quiet for the past few weeks, possibly because he’s been overseas representing a few of his nastier clients, has emerged once again to report that the administration is as much in the dark about the timing of the release of the much anticipated Mueller report as the rest of us.  He goes on to say that if the report indicates that Trump is guilty of anything, he’ll contest it, if it concludes that Trump is as innocent as the driven snow, then he and everyone in the White House will embrace it, of course. As to the Trump orbit, good buddy Roger Stone was lucky to escape, or at least escape for now, an immediate trip to the slammer.  Yesterday, rejecting his feeble excuse that he hadn’t meant to cause her any danger and an attempt on his part to blame his interns for “their” bad Instagram judgment, Judge Amy Berman Jackson expanded the terms of his gag order, dramatically restricting what he can say in public about his case, a problem for Stone because he appears to lack the ability to shut up and because restrictions on his ability to say provocative things to his fans limits his earnings potential and given his increasing legal bills he really does need to maximize that potential.  She warned him that her court isn’t like baseball, you only get two strikes not three, anymore stupid statements or Instagram posts of her face together with a target will result in the revocation of his bail and his immediate incarceration.  As to jail Special Counsel Mueller’s Paul Manafort sentencing report is due in by midnight tonight.  Mueller’s reports have generally included new details about his investigation so to the extent that it’s not overly redacted tonight’s report might make for some compelling reading.

Other News:  Trump was happy to weigh in on the sad case of Jussie Smollet, the Empire actor who appears to have staged his own assault.  Yesterday he tweeted “What about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments?” It might be nice if he’d consider showing similar outrage about Chris Hasson, the Coast Guard officer and avowed white supremacist, his arsenal and his threats against Democratic leadership and various main stream media hosts. Trump also hasn’t weighed in on the North Carolina Election Board’s decision to hold a new election for the North Carolina 9^th House District seat.  Apparently voter fraud is only worthy of his attention if it involves bad acts by Democrats.  The Election Board reached it’s unanimous decision after Mark Harris, the Republican candidate who hired the consultant who interfered with the absentee ballots surprised everyone by saying that even he though that a new election was warranted.  Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta’s days in the administration could be numbered.  Yesterday a  federal judge ruled that federal prosecutors, led by Acosta who was then the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, broke the law when they signed a plea agreement with financier Jeffrey Epstein without notifying his  30 underage sex abuse victims.  Epstein faced long term imprisonment for his actions but got off with spending only 13 months in jail.  Frequent Trump defender Alan Dershowitz was one of Epstein’s lawyers.  On the 2020 front, several Republicans including former Massachusetts Governor William Weld and current Maryland Governor Larry Hogan are considering challenging Trump for the Republican nomination.  And Bernie Sanders’ chief campaign adviser says that Bernie, who isn’t a Democrat except when he’s running for president, will sign a pledge affirming that he will run for president as a Democrat and serve as one in the event that he is elected.

Is That All There Is?

Mueller Time:  Literally it may be Mueller time.  Various news outlets report that Mueller plans to deliver his report to the Justice Department as early as next week.  What that report will consist of continues to be anyone’s guess. Some of the indicators that Mueller is winding up his investigation include reports that his staff have been seen carrying boxes away from his offices, boxes that could be heading to prosecutors, permanent filing, or into hiding to protect them from Trump’s newest appointees; that some of the attorneys working on his team have notified their prior bosses that they are ready to return to their old jobs; and an apparent lack of activity at his grand jury.  Then there is also the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “watch.”  Rosenstein once said that he planned to stick with the Mueller investigation until it’s end, and he’s expected to leave by mid-March.  Additionally, his successor has already been selected, Trump has announced plans to appoint Jeffrey Rosen who currently serves as the Transportation Department’s Deputy Secretary.  Rosen who has been in an out of senior government positions was formerly at Kirkland & Ellis, Barr’s former firm.  Though he has a significant amount of litigation experience he’s never been a prosecutor which makes him a less than ideal choice for Deputy Attorney General but he’s the guy that Barr wants, and getting his choice into the Deputy Attorney General slot was one of the conditions of his accepting the Attorney General position.  As to Mueller, he’s already farmed out a number of cases to other federal attorneys in different locations throughout the country and it’s expected, or at least hoped, that the Department of Justice will continue to process any of the other cases that he might still send its way.  That said there are still lots of unknowns, first and foremost will there really be a report and is Mueller really on the verge of submitting it, or has the press gotten ahead of itself;  will Congress and the public ever see the report, a summary of the report or will most of it get squashed by Barr and/or Trump with its final reveal mired in a fight between Congress and the White House?  Additionally, what about all of those other indictments that were supposed to be, or that we all hoped were, imminent, indictments of people like Don Jr, Jared Kushner and the other Trumpkins who lied during their Congressional testimony, do they go public at the same time as the so-called report; and what’s happening with the mystery case involving a foreign government owned company, and the case being fought by Jason Miller, an associate of Roger Stone? Then there’s Trump, has Mueller given up on pushing for him to testify in person, are the answers that he “wrote” in response to Mueller’s questionnaire, the answers that we know he didn’t really write, all that’s forthcoming?  Regardless of whether or not Mueller is finished, investigations continue.  It does appear that things are continuing to heat up in the Southern District of New York and the House Democrats are just beginning their work. To that end, the evasive former Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen is once again scheduled to appear in front of the House Oversight Committee for a public hearing now scheduled to take place next Wednesday.  He’s also scheduled for a closed door session with the House Intel Committee.  Cohen’s first day in jail has now been deferred by two months to May 6, his spokesperson says that the postponement  was provided to accommodate Cohen’s recuperation from shoulder surgery but others surmise that Cohen may have been granted more time because he has been working with prosecutors.  Roger Stone’s days in court aren’t over yet either.  He’s due in front of Judge Amy Berman Jackson today for a hearing on his threatening Instagram post, and it’s fair to assume that we haven’t heard the last of him or about his alleged communication with WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 yet.  Lots of questions, and far too few answers remain.

Press Wars:  Both the NY Times and former Acting Director Andrew McCabe have really gotten under Trump’s skin.  Yesterday in response to the NY Times’ detailed article about his campaign against the Mueller and SDNY investigations Trump tweet ranted the “The Press has never been more dishonest than it is today, Stories are written that have absolutely no basis in fact. The writers don’t even call asking for verification. They are totally out of control. Sadly, I kept many of them in business. In six years, they all go BUST!” before adding “The New York Times reporting is false. They are a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”  NY Times publisher AG Sulzberger responded with a statement condemning Trump’s words writing that although all presidents dislike criticism, Trump has gone way too far because by “demonizing the free press as the enemy, simply for performing its role of asking difficult questions and bringing uncomfortable information to light”  Trump “is retreating from a distinctly American principle.”  He then added “The phrase ‘enemy of the people’ is not just false, it’s dangerous. It has an ugly history of being wielded by dictators and tyrants who sought to control public information. And it is particularly reckless coming from someone whose office gives him broad powers to fight or imprison the nation’s enemies….there are mounting signs that this incendiary rhetoric is encouraging threats and violence against journalists at home and abroad.” That last part is particularly prescient, yesterday afternoon a Coast Guard officer was arrested for stockpiling weapons and drugs, he was described as a "domestic terrorist" who was planning "to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country." Along with the guns and drugs, confiscated materials included a hitlist with the names of prominent Democrats such as Senators Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Richard Blumenthal along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Maxine Waters and former House member Beto O’Rourke.  The list also included the names of several MSNBC and CNN hosts including Chris Hayes, Joe Scarborough, Don Lemon and Van Jones.  As of now, there has been no outrage or condemnation from Trump. As to Andrew McCabe, Trump denies every insulting his wife even though his tweet history and speech records indicate otherwise and called him a disaster, terrible, a disgraced man, a poor man’s J. Edgar Hoover who was terminated not by me but solely at the direction of FBI leadership. Putting aside all the insults that last part is highly debatable.  During an interview with MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace, McCabe said that he had seen an early rambling four page draft of Trump’s Comey dismissal letter that was handwritten by Trump before Rod Rosenstein “cleaned” it up and wrote the version that was used to justify Comey’s firing.  McCabe asserts that Trump’s draft cited Comey’s failure to fire McCabe, presumably because his wife had committed the “crime” of accepting funding from a PAC run by Clinton friend and then Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe for her run for local office as one of the reasons for the Comey dismissal.  Notably Trump’s comment that Comey should have fired McCabe predates the release of the FBI Inspector General report that criticized McCabe and was used as the basis for his ultimate dismissal, the dismissal that took place just hours before he would have qualified for his pension.      

Other Odd Stuff:  Richard Grenell the Trump appointed US Ambassador to Germany announced a “push” to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide. In particular he has denounced Iran, one of the 71 countries where homosexuality is outlawed, for its persecution of gay people.  Grenell, who is openly gay, insists that his efforts have bi-partisan support and though it’s clear that Trump is all in on denouncing all things about Iran, he appears to be trying to distance himself from Grenell’s efforts which is odd because there is no way that the fairly ambitious Grenell, who has at times been considered for the UN Ambassador spot, would launch such a campaign without Trump’s support.  When asked about the campaign yesterday, Trump said he wasn’t aware of it, his way of saying that he doesn’t want the evangelists in his base to know that he’s signed off on tolerance.  Things aren’t looking good for Mark Harris, the North Carolina Republican Congressional candidate who hired a consultant to abscond with and/or alter absentee ballots.  Yesterday his son John Harris, a federal attorney, testified that he had warned his father ahead of time that the consultant he was then about to hire had a reputation engaging in illegal election tactics.  Lastly, yesterday in his annual speech to his countrymen Putin engaged in some saber rattling, threatening the US with new and improved missiles, a response to what he says is increased hostility to his country.  Notably, he didn’t have anything bad to say about Trump, instead he said Trump can’t be blamed for US attitudes, that he’s crippled by the pressure put on him by the “deep state.”  Another one of those talking points that he and Trump worked on together?     

Agent Trumpsky

Maggie and Friends:  Well, now we know why Trump has been even crankier than usual lately.  Yesterday the New York Times published a lengthy article detailing the ways that Trump has waged war against the various investigations into him, his campaign and his administration.  The article wasn’t a surprise to Trump, the NY Times had run its contents past the White House communications department days before it was published so he knew it was coming, thus the even higher than normal number of twitter rampages.  Though Trump would prefer that everyone, or at least his base, believe otherwise, the article was fact based and not “fake news.”  Among other things, the authors, including Trump’s on again, off again favorite Maggie Haberman, detail the lying that took place in January 2017 when then Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed the administration that then national security adviser Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russians about sanctions relief.  It describes how Trump and then Press Secretary Sean Spicer came up with their fictionalized account of Flynn’s dismissal, a version that was so deceptive that the White House Counsel’s office felt compelled to write a memo expressing their concern about the White House staff “peddling misleading information in public.” Obviously that memo never gained much traction. Much of the contents of the article aren’t new, we’ve lived the events in real time, but seeing the elements of Trump’s disinformation campaign detailed in one place from the spin around the firing of former FBI Director Comey to the demonization of Mueller, his investigation and his team, the ongoing intimidation of former Attorney General Sessions, the evolution of Devon Nunes into a White House tool/spy,  and the hiring of “America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani as a duplicitous mouthpiece, among other things, makes it clear that it’s not our imagination, we really are living through a long nightmare, one that is far from over.  The NY Times makes that clear by detailing one of Trump’s most recent strategies, the hiring of Matt Whitaker to serve as Acting Attorney General, an appointment that made no sense given Whitaker’s lack of qualifications and work experience; generally the fraudulently marketing of toilets for the well-endowed would have been a disqualifying resume item.  As suspected, Trump expected Whitaker to  “jump on a few grenades” for him, most notably he asked him to interfere with the Southern District of New York’s investigation into former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen actions and all of those other things related to the Trump Crime family empire.  Specifically, Trump wanted Whitaker to get Geoffrey Berman, the head of the SDNY, who was recused from all of those problematic investigations to “unrecuse” himself, and was quite angry with Whitaker when he explained that was something that couldn’t be done.  Trump found that particularly galling since he had selected Berman, a former partner from the same Greenberg Traurig law firm that used to be Giuliani’s home with the expectation that he, unlike the SDNY’s prior head Preet Bharara, would be a “team” player.  Notably, during his recent appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee Whitaker denied that Trump had ever pressured him to interfere with the Mueller investigation but tried somewhat unsuccessfully to avoid answering any questions about being pressured to interfere with the SDNY.  Whitaker who is no longer the Acting AG but is still bouncing around the Justice Department, has lots of explaining to do.  As to Trump, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst and frequent Trump fan Judge Andrew Napolitano said that Trump’s direction to Whitaker to get Berman to “unrecuse” himself was “an attempt to obstruct justice.”

McCabe’s Revenge:  Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe continues to give book tour interviews and the things that he’s been saying are boosting sales, his book “The Threat” is selling like hot cakes, it has already bumped Michele Obama’s “Becoming” from its number one perch on Amazon’s best seller list.   McCabe’s tell all is relatively brief, which may be one of the reasons that he failed to include any mention of the time that he told the “Gang of Eight” Congressional leaders about opening a counter investigation into Trump.  That group included Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, then Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Chair of the House Intel Committee Devon Nunes and Chair of the Senate Intel Committee Richard Burr in addition to their Democratic counterparts Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Mark Warner and Adam Schiff.   McCabe disclosed this prized nugget yesterday morning in response to a question from NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.  He also told her that “no one objected, not on legal grounds, not on constitutional grounds and not based on the facts." Asked about this later in the day, McConnell who has been doing his best to pretend that he doesn’t know anything about any of Trump’s bad acts because he’s been loving the judges and the tax cut, had his spokesperson respond that he can’t comment because as a matter of principle, as if he has any principles, he never discusses the things that he learns during those Gang of Eight intel briefings. There’s no point in even bothering to ask Devon Nunes about any of this because everyone already knows what he did after he learned about the counter intelligence investigation into Trump, he ran to the White House to keep his exalted leader in the loop. For his part McCabe is still talking, last night he dropped another bombshell.  After CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked him "Do you still believe the President could be a Russian asset," McCabe responded "I think it's possible. I think that's why we started our investigation, and I'm really anxious to see where (special counsel Robert) Mueller concludes that." White House spokesperson Kellyanne Conway, whose husband routinely tweets Trump out, said that she wouldn’t dignify McCabe’s assertion with any response.  However, she did call him a “liar and a leaker.”  That leaker part is particularly funny given that Conway is known to be the leakiest person in the White House.

Flynn Flamming and Other Things:  Yesterday was so chock full of duplicitousness that it would have been easy to miss that the Elijah Cummings Chaired House Oversight Committee released a report detailing how former national security advisor Michael Flynn and a few others within the White House, together with a group of retired US generals and admirals had pushed a plan to build dozens of nuclear-power reactors in Saudi Arabia, for the money because it’s always for the money.  The plan included appointing Trump’s good friend Tom Barrack who also headed up all of those questionable inauguration fund raising and expenditure activities to oversee the project.  The Committee is now launching a formal investigation into the possible transfer of sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, noting that despite the fact that Flynn is long gone from government the discussions “appear to be ongoing.”  In other news, it turns out that Judge Amy Berman Jackson was just about as upset with Roger Stone’s Instagram posting of a picture of her with a target next to her head as you would have expected her to be.  She’s commanded him to appear in her court tomorrow.  If he’s lucky she will just expand his gag order to cover all of his utterances and social media activities, alternatively she might decide to just rescind his bail.  Who knows, maybe he’ll soon share a cell with one time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.  Separately the Washington Post reports that Director of National Security Dan Coats’ days in the Trump administration may be numbered.  Apparently Trump is very unhappy with Coats due to his propensity to tell the truth about things like North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and ISIS.  In particular Trump is disturbed that Coats places honesty over loyalty.  

Target Practice

Throwing Stones:  Roger Stone is despicable.  That’s not much of a surprise, after all he has Richard Nixon’s face emblazoned on his back in indelible ink and has threatened to kill at least one therapy dog, a small white fluff named Bianca who keeps the nerves of his one-time friend and current foil Jerome Corsi in check. It’s not just dogs, for some inexplicable reason Roger Stone also thinks that it’s okay to threaten judges.  Yesterday he posted a picture of the Federal Judge overseeing his case on Instagram, a picture that included a target next to her head together with a fundraising plea with the following accompanying text: “Through legal trickery Deep State hitman Robert Mueller has guaranteed that my upcoming show trial is before Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointed Judge who dismissed the Benghazi charges again [sic] Hillary Clinton and incarcerated Paul Manafort prior to his conviction for any crime. #fixisin Help me fight for my life at @StoneDefenseFund.com.”  After his post went viral, his freaked out lawyers forced him to delete the picture over their very legitimate concern that nothing good ever comes from threatening a judge, especially the one who could turn your limited gag order into a muzzle or completely revoke your bail on a moment’s notice.  Stone also apologized, or at least pretended to by posting a message saying that “a photo of Judge Jackson that appeared on my Instagram account has been misinterpreted This was a random photo taken from the Internet. Any inference that this was meant to somehow threaten  the judge or disrespect court is categorically false.” As to the those target “crosshairs” appearing near Judge Jackson’s head, Stone asserted that they were just a logo that he borrowed from the same right wing website where he found the Judge’s picture.  Concerned that his apology wasn’t sufficient, Stone’s lawyers followed-up with a formal filing saying that the “Undersigned counsel, with the attached authority of Roger J. Stone, hereby apologizes to the Court for the improper photograph and comment posted on Instragram (sic) today. Mr. Stone recognizes the impropriety and had it removed.” If she didn’t already, Judge Jackson probably now has her very own contingent of protective Federal marshals following her everywhere. Don’t be surprised if she takes some kind of punitive action against Stone by the end of the week.  Stone wasn’t the only one taking to social media yesterday, his good buddy Trump did as well.  Citing Sean Hannity and Fox news he attacked Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe over McCabe’s claims that the two had seriously discussed the possibility of invoking the 25^th Amendment to remove him from office, tweeting “The biggest abuse of power and corruption scandal in our history, and it’s much worse than we thought. Andrew McCabe (FBI) admitted to plotting a coup (government overthrow) when he was serving in the FBI, before he was fired for lying & leaking. Treason!”   Trump’s other good friend Senator Lindsey Graham who appears to have forgotten everything that he learned about patriotism from his former mentor the departed Senator McCain promises to investigate Rosenstein and McCabe’s “treasonous” actions by calling the two in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Graham may want to reconsider, it’s not clear that he’ll be happy about the other things that McCabe and Rosenstein are likely to say because they won’t be pretty, especially the part about Trump believing that Putin is a more reliable “intelligence” source than any of the US agencies.  As to Rosenstein, last night it was reported that he will be gone from the Justice Department by mid-March.  At that point, with or without the push of Lindsay Graham he could start talking.  Maybe a lecture tour or a book beckons?  

2020: Another day, another Democratic presidential candidate.  This morning Bernie Sanders, whose “secret” announcement tape had already leaked out surprised no one by announcing that he’s running for president again because his “2016 policy ideas now have the support of more Americans” and he can’t bear the thought that those ideas could actually get implemented by someone other than him, someone younger, more amiable, more electable and who doesn’t look like he or she is about to keel over.  As to those ideas, at least one Democratic candidate isn’t so sure that they are affordable or that all of America is ready for them.  Last night during a CNN town hall the very moderate, maybe even too moderate for the primary, Senator Amy Klobuchar came off as far more pragmatic.  When asked about Medicare for all, she said that it was a nice idea but that she’d start with fixing Obamacare, when asked about free four year college, she said  "If I was a magic genie and could afford to give that to everyone I would" but since she’s not she’ll focus on a combination of grants and improved student loan financing.  As to the green new deal, she said it was an aspirational idea but that she’d focus for now on passable compromise legislation.  Although 2020 is just around the corner, or at least it feels like it’s just around the corner, 2018 isn’t over yet.  Yesterday the North Carolina Election board held the first of what is expected to be three days of public hearings on the absentee ballot scandal that has left the results of the North Carolina 9^th District race in limbo.  So far we’ve learned that somewhere around 1000 ballots went missing, a critical number because the “winning” margin of the  Republican candidate who hired the absentee ballot manipulator in the first place was only around 900 votes.

Not an Emergency:  Late yesterday sixteen states including Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Virginia joined California filing a lawsuit challenging Trump’s national emergency declaration.  California’s Attorney General who is leading the suit said that the plan is to halt Trump from “violating the Constitution, the separation of powers, from stealing money from Americans and states that has been allocated by Congress, lawfully," Some of the “stolen” money that Trump wants to redirect to the building of his vanity WALL could come from a $62 million project to construct the Fort Campbell Middle School near the Tennessee/Kentucky border.  Lindsey Graham who is of course standing firm with Trump on the emergency declaration isn’t all that concerned about that because as far as he’s concerned "It's better for the middle school kids in Kentucky to have a secure border. We'll get them the school they need, but right now we've got a national emergency on our hands.” Emergency or not, Trump spent the weekend playing golf near Mar a Lago, because that’s what presidents do when there’s an emergency, they head south and hit the links.   

Back in the CCCP

Pulling the Cord:  As expected Trump declared a national emergency on Friday, however he kind of screwed it up by acknowledging that there was no emergency, that he was just declaring one because he is really pissed at Congress for failing to deliver the money he wants for his WALL, because doing so provides great source material for his 2020 campaign and because he’d rather get his money now rather than later.  Trump’s rambling incoherent diatribe was so crazy and off topic even for him that CBS tuned him out, switching back to airing the Price is Right.  In their defense knowing the correct price for a box of Rice a Roni is important.  As usual Trump veered off topic, beginning with his opening where instead of going straight to the emergency thing he diverted to trade with China, almost forgetting that the issue at hand was the “crisis” at the border.  As to that crisis, he cited made-up statistics to justify the emergency declaration and then beat back reporters, particularly his favorite punching bag CNN’s assertive Jim Acosta, for pointing out that his facts, particularly those about the number of “illegals” and crime conflicted with actual government statistics.  Going off topic, Trump once again claimed that Obama had been on the verge of engaging in a nuclear war with North Korea, one that was only averted because of his awesome peacemaking skills, skills so impressive that he’s now been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.  Several of Obama’s former national security advisors disputed his claim regarding that imminent war but it turns out that Trump wasn’t lying about the Peace Prize.  Japanese government officials admitted Prime Minister Abe actually has nominated Trump but only because Trump ordered him to do so. With regard to North Korea, apparently Trump doesn’t believe that they actually have the intercontinental missile capability that they really do have.  According to former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Trump’s assessment is based on conversations that he’s had with Putin who has reassured him that North Korea’s capabilities aren’t what US intelligence officials say they are and Trump, of course, believes Putin.  Returning to the emergency declaration, when asked if his shadow cabinet had influenced his decision to go the national emergency route, Trump acknowledged their influence pointing to Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh’s astute policy making prowess but dissing Ann Coulter, claiming that he really doesn’t know her, pointing out that she is “off the plantation.”  She responded by saying that “the only national emergency is that our president is an idiot.”  Predictably this weekend’s Saturday Night Live cold open was based on the press conference but, frankly, it fell a little flat, it’s hard to compete with real crazy.  Nevertheless Trump was so outraged by it that he called for retribution against NBC, tweeting there’s “Nothing funny about tired 'Saturday Night Live' on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!" then he quickly added "THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.” Kudos to host Don Cheadle who expressed his views on that collusion thing by wearing a Soviet Union hockey jersey during the closing credits, one with the Soviet letters CCCP emblazoned on the front and Trump 45 on the back.  

Revolving Door:  Heather Nauert will not be the next US Ambassador to the UN.  Nauert, the extremely unqualified former Fox correspondent who most recently served as the State Department’s Press Secretary, once cited D-Day as evidence of the tightness of US-German relations.  She pulled or was forced to pull her own nomination late on Saturday when few were paying attention purportedly because her family nanny, though in the US legally, lacked appropriate work papers and to Nauert’s shock and dismay didn’t pay income taxes on her the salary that she was paid in cash.  It’s hard to believe that the nanny problem is the real reason for Nauert’s withdrawal, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Mills had similar issues and his confirmation went through, additionally as the New York Times and Washington Post have reported, Trump’s businesses have employed almost all of the residents of at least one Guatemalan town.  Trump is now reconsidering Kelly Knight Craft, the US Ambassador to Canada,  and Richard Grenell, the US Ambassador to Germany, largely because both have already made it through the Senate confirmation process.  Whoever takes over the role will have their work cut out for them.  As shown by the reception that VP Pence received in Germany during his speech at the Munich Security Conference, our European allies have just about had it with Trump.  After Pence began his speech by saying that he brings “greetings from the 45th president of the United States of America, President Donald Trump," no one in the audience provided any of the usual applause or at least the applause that Pence expected, all Pence got from the crowd was deafening silence.  Before Pence spoke, German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech where she rebuked US calls for European withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, she received a standing ovation from everyone in the audience, that is everyone except for Ivanka Trump and the representatives of Russia and China.  It’s not really clear why Ivanka was at the meeting given that her international expertise extends mostly to manufacturing polyester dresses in China and sourcing high rise building locations in places like Russia. Fortunately, the US was also represented by Speaker Pelosi and a rather large Congressional delegation who were there to honor former Senator John McCain’s memory and to try to undo the ongoing damage of two plus years of Trump rule.  Yesterday, 60 Minutes aired their interview with another victim of the revolving door, former FBI guy Andrew McCabe, suffice it to say that the picture that he paints of Trump’s intellect and vindictiveness is not pretty.  McCabe is convinced that he was booted from his role in the FBI because Trump distrusted him from the start because he was a “Comey man,” his pediatrician wife had once run for local Virginia government as a Democrat, because he refused to go along with Trump’s antics and because he opened an investigation into Trump’s bad acts while also pushing Acting Attorney General Rosenstein to appoint the Special Counsel.  He’s probably right about all of that.  The revolving door has yet to hit Trump advisor Stephen Miller which might explain why Trump let him out to discuss all things about illegal immigration and the faux emergency order with Fox Correspondent Chris Wallace.  This time around, Miller didn’t go for the spray on hair look so the focus was on his words rather than his odd pate.  That’s too bad for him.  Wallace grilled him about his assertions about the need for the emergency declaration, specifically citing the decline in illegal crossings.  Miller just yelled back at him, coming off a lot worse for wear, as did a number of Republican Senators including Lindsay Graham who previously decried executive over reach under Obama but who are now defending Trump’s right to declare a national emergency.  Graham further doubled down by saying that he’s ready to call both Andrew McCabe and Rod Rosenstein in for a Senate Judiciary Committee grilling to learn more about that week when a very frazzled Rosenstein allegedly called for the invoking of the 25^th Amendment.        

Mueller Investigation:  The judge overseeing the Roger Stone case has imposed a limited gag order on him.  He still gets to make ridiculous claims about the various and sundry conspiracies against him and his good buddy Trump but he has to refrain from making them in the environs surrounding the court house.  His lawyers are even more constrained, they aren’t allowed to talk to the press about his case at all. As to the case against Stone, apparently Special Counsel Mueller’s investigators may have hit pay dirt during their search of his homes and office.  Late last week it was reported that they have obtained email and/or WhatsApp communications that he had with Guccifer 2.0 also known as the Russian military officer who hacked the Democratic National Committee and WikiLeaks.  No report yet on whether what was discussed incriminates the Trump team but the fact that the information exists disputes Stone’s claims that he didn’t really communicate with either entity.  One time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had a lot to stew about this weekend, on Friday Mueller released his sentencing recommendations.  Saying that “Manafort acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law, and deprived the federal government and various financial institutions of millions of dollars, the sentence here should reflect the seriousness of these crimes, and serve to both deter Manafort and others from engaging in such conduct,” Mueller called for a sentence of at least nineteen years; given Manafort’s age that would essentially be a life sentence.  Only a pardon from Trump can save Manafort at this point and it’s possible that his history of criminality and the evidence of his involvement with Russian “spy” Kilimnik could make granting that pardon a step too far, even for Trump.

Help Me, I Need Wall!

Dialing 911:  The shutdown has been averted.  Both the House and Senate have passed the funding bill, the bill that provides only $1.375 billion for border slats or some other such structure, but specifically prohibits Trump from building  WALL.  Trump will sign the bill today but, before heading to Mar a Lago, he plans to transfer $600 million from the Treasury’s drug forfeiture fund and $2.5 billion from the Defense Department’s drug interdiction fund to his WALL funding pot by executive action and then to declare a national emergency so that he can justify transferring an additional $3.5 billion from the Defense Department’s construction fund giving him a total of $8 billion for his WALL folly. To be clear there is no emergency, the actual number of border crossings is down from previous year’s levels, and anyway an emergency is defined as a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action, not an orchestrated happening that a petulant man child rants about for months before actually taking action.  Nevertheless since Trump believes that declaring an emergency will stop shadow cabinet members Hannity, Dobbs, Coulter and Ingraham from squawking about his cowardly ineptitude and convince his base that he’s won the battle for WALL funding, he’s going the emergency declaration route.  The White House Counsel’s office has told him that it’s a high litigation risk strategy and they are right.  A number of states are expected to sue and Speaker Pelosi is expected to introduce and the House is expected to pass a resolution challenging the emergency declaration forcing the Senate to also vote on the issue.  A number of Republican senators, including the usual naysayers Senators Paul, Collins and Murkowski but also including a number of conservatives who are generally unhappy with executive overreach as well as those facing hotly contested elections in 2020 will probably join Democrats in voting in support of the resolution. In any case, if the resolution fails to obtain enough votes to withstand a Trump veto, Pelosi will sue in the courts. The bottom line is that there will be no WALL construction anytime soon, if ever. 

Another Tell All Book:  Embattled former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s book “The Threat. How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump” is due out momentarily and he has begun his obligatory book promotion tour. To no one’s surprise McCabe doesn’t have anything nice to say about Trump but what he has to say about former Attorney General Sessions is even worse.  McCabe says that Sessions did not read intelligence reports and mixed up classified material with what he had seen in the newspaper.  “He seemed confused about the structure and purpose of organizations and became overwhelmed when meetings covered multiple subjects.  He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness.” No wonder Trump picked Sessions and liked him so much before he hated him for recusing from the Russia investigation.  McCabe paints a picture of the Trump administration that makes prior claims of dysfunction look understated.  He also provides confirmation of earlier assertions that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein considered wearing a “wire” and that discussions of invoking the 25^th Amendment to get rid of Trump really did take place although no one actually canvassed any members of the cabinet or took any further action on that front.  Rosenstein’s office continues to deny that any of those conversations were serious although their denials ring hollow.   McCabe also confirms that he did open up an investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice as a way to preserve ongoing inquiries into Russia election interference in case there was an effort to terminate them, something he was concerned would happen if efforts were made to fire him and the other FBI officials who were all ultimately fired.  Immediately after teaser tapes of the McCabe interview that is scheduled to air Sunday night on 60 Minutes hit the airwaves yesterday, Trump emerged from his newly “refurbished” virtual White House golf range where he was working off some of the excess poundage that has thrown him into the obese category to tweet out a few of his usual anti-McCabe favorites, attacking the former FBI leader as a disgraced Clinton hack and a confirmed liar.  It looks like McCabe, who with Trump’s help already has a best seller on his hands, is hitting a little too close to home. Just one comment on Trump’s extra poundage, it is most certainly real but once again Trump has found a doctor willing to shave pounds, this year he is reported to weigh in at 243, clearly another Trumpian fabrication.  As to Attorneys General, Trump’s new one, Thomas Barr, was confirmed yesterday by a vote of 55 to 45.  Three Democrats, Senators Manchin of West Virginia, Jones of Alabama and Sinema of Arizona joined with all of the Republicans except Kentucky’s Senator Paul by voting yes for his confirmation.  Later in the day Barr was sworn in.  Although Barr implied that he might hide any final Special Prosecutor report, he promised to leave the Mueller investigation alone during his fairly contentious confirmation hearing.  However Matt Schlapp, the conservative activist and commentator whose wife Mercedes works in the White House Press Office, may have reason to believe otherwise.  Yesterday he tweeted “Tomorrow will be the first day that…Trump will have a fully operational confirmed Attorney General. Let that sink in. Mueller will be gone soon.”  Yikes.

Hearts and Guns

Smoke, Mirrors and Walls:  Late last night lawmakers put the final touches on the funding package, the one that provides only $1.375 billion for  a “border barrier,” less than Trump would have gotten had he signed last December’s funding bill and far less than the $20 billion that he would have gotten had he stood by last year’s very short promise to “Nancy and Chuck” that in exchange for lots of WALL he would protect the DACA recipients.  After a day of wrangling, two key provisions were left out of the funding bill, it doesn’t reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act nor does it include back pay for thousands of federal contractors who went unpaid during the shutdown.  Apparently, some Republican lawmakers had problems with the Violence Against Women Act because of changes that would have protected transgender people; of course they did.  And Trump has an issue with paying federal contractors; and why is that so surprising?  Absent a last minute change of mind or a really nasty phone call from one of his media “cabinet” members, Trump is expected to sign the bill before money runs out tonight, avoiding another government shutdown.  To get there, yesterday Trump spent part of his day calling around to some of those “cabinet” members including Fox’s Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs in an effort to get their sign off and to get them to stop trashing his deal making skills, or lack thereof.  He’s also doing his best to change the narrative, saying that the funding agreement is really a success because Nancy is giving him more than the $1 she said she’d never give him and because he’s getting so much for border security even if he can’t use those “additional” funds, funds that were never really in doubt, on WALL.  To help with his rebranding exercise, Acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney is calling the barrier money just a down payment on the bigger WALL and is helping Trump identify other pools of money to be diverted from military related projects and hurricane relief towards additional WALL funding.  That strategy will end up in court, but in the meantime Trump, who probably cares less about actually building  WALL than convincing his base that he has built WALL, will tell his base it’s being built, and sadly they will probably believe him.  Problem solved, for now.   

Manafort’s Mess:  Earlier in the week Republican Senator Burr, the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee said that so far he’s seen no direct evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.  Notice his emphasis on direct evidence, he pretty much avoided saying much about circumstantial evidence, and there appears to plenty of that out in the open especially when you consider that almost everyone in the Trump orbit has lied about their interactions with Russians and their discussions about sanctions relief.  Additionally it appears that neither Burr nor his committee have spent much time focusing on one time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s efforts to coordinate his and the campaign’s plans with his Russian associate/spy Konstantin Kilimnik.  Yesterday, Judy Amy Berman Jackson, the judge overseeing Manafort’s Washington DC case, agreed with Special Counsel Mueller’s assessment that Manafort had violated his cooperation agreement by lying about a few things including additional contacts that he had with Kilimnik, about a payment that was “routed through a pro-Trump political action committee to cover his legal bills, and about information relevant to another undisclosed investigation underway at the Justice Department.“  Last week it was reported that one of Manafort’s frequent Kilimnik interactions  involved an August 2, 2016 meeting that took place at Havana Room, a cigar bar located at 666 Fifth Avenue, coincidentally or not that the Kushner family’s highly leveraged building.   During that meeting, which also involved Manafort partner Rick Gates, who has been cooperating with Mueller, the three discussed a Russian friendly Ukraine peace plan, one that they hoped would lead to the lifting of sanctions against Russia.  Additionally, prosecutors believe that while they were puffing away Manafort gave Kilminik internal polling data from the Trump campaign.  When the meeting was over, the three men all slinked out separately, whether or not they were wearing trench coats has not been mentioned.   That meeting fits a little too nicely into the timeline of all those Trump friendly Russian actions and Russian friendly Trump statements that took place during the campaign, the actions that may well have led to Trump’s election victory which is probably why Mueller’s top prosecutor Andrew Weissman told the court that “the encounter goes very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating.”  Whether or not direct evidence of Trump collusion exists, Manafort’s future is bleak, absent a pardon, he’ll be spending his remaining years in jail.  In other news, it’s likely that William Barr will be confirmed as Attorney General before the week is out despite concerns that he will limit the distribution of Mueller’s final report to the extent he ever delivers one.  Even though he’s on his way out, it appears that acting Attorney General, Matt Whitaker, is not off the hook yet.  Yesterday, Jerry Nadler the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee called him back to “clarify” the “unsatisfactory and incomplete” testimony that he provided last week.  Based on other information, Nadler believes that Whitaker was lying about conversations that he had with the White House about the Mueller investigation before he joined the Justice Department as well as whether or not Trump “expressed displeasure” with him about the Michael Cohen guilty plea.  Why does everyone associated with Trump lie so much about such stupid things?

One Year:  It’s been one year since the Valentine’s Day gun massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  The surviving students and mourning parents have done a remarkable job rallying for gun control, a few gun restrictions have passed on the state level but nothing significant has been done on the federal level.  As evidenced by the tragedy at the Tree of Life Synagogue, the shooting sprees continue. Though their finances are somewhat diminished the NRA’s grip, mostly on Republican legislators, remains powerful.  Yesterday, after a considerable amount of “rancorous” partisan debate the House Judiciary Committee passed a measure that would require background checks for all gun sales and most gun transfers within the US, the most significant gun-control legislation to advance this far in years.  In a video that was quickly posted on the NRA’s twitter account, Republican Congressman Douglas Collins of George called the bill a “fraud” that “simply wants to get at your constitutional rights.” Assuming the bill gets enough votes to pass through the Democrat controlled House, it will probably die before making it through the Senate where Democratic Senators are currently pushing another bill focused on limiting high capacity magazines, a bill that has failed to pick up any Republican sponsors. Late last week the Supreme Court agreed to take up case involving a New York City gun law that bans carrying a licensed and unloaded handgun outside the city limits.  Given its increasingly conservative tilt, it’s quite possible that the Court will overturn the NY law because what we need is more people running around with guns.  Happy Valentine’s Day.