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.