Hold the Chapstick

Virginia is for Lovers?  All is not well in Virginia.  Governor Northam hasn’t resigned in part because he’s concerned that if he does, he will forever be associated with blackface and KKK robes.  Sadly for him, that ship has already sailed which is unfortunate because until last week he was a well-liked moderate who actually accomplished good things for the Commonwealth, notably he worked with Republicans to expand Medicaid and achieved bipartisan agreement for criminal justice reform.  Complicating matters, over the weekend Big League Politics, the right wing website that shared Northam’s yearbook page, the one with the blackface/KKK picture, posted a MeToo story about Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, who should be next in line for the Governor spot.  That story involves a 2004 “tryst” between Fairfax and a woman.  Fairfax acknowledges the encounter but says it was fully consensual and that prior to his election the Washington Post had looked into the allegation but decided not to run a story because their investigative reporters couldn’t corroborate the accusation.  Fairfax held a quick press moment yesterday where he firmly denied the accusation and questioned why the story was back in the limelight, asking “Does anybody think it’s any coincidence that on the eve of my potentially being elevated, this uncorroborated smear comes up? You don’t have to be cynical, you don’t have to understand politics, to understand when someone’s trying to manipulate a process to harm someone’s character without any basis whatsoever.”  To the extent that Northam steps down and Fairfax is forced to follow, an unlikely outcome but still possible, Virginia’s Attorney General Mark Herring, another Democrat, would be next in line.  So far the Big League website hasn’t published any problematic stories about him but the day is young.

Revolving Door:  Well it looks like Ivanka Trump will not be the next head of the World Bank.  Instead Trump is expected to nominate David Malpass, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for international affairs, who is also known to be a critic of the World Bank, but then again a lot of people are critical of the Bank so that’s not necessarily disqualifying. Malpass, a veteran of the Reagan and George H W Bush administrations, promises to be “constructive” if his appointment is approved by the World Bank directors, and it probably will be as the US generally gets to pick the bank’s leader.  Malpass had been heavily involved in US-China trade negotiations so his move will leave the US team short an expert on that front, again not much of a problem since Trump doesn’t rely all that much on experts anyway.  Over the weekend Trump told CBS’s Face the Nation that he likes that his cabinet has so many acting members because it gives him a chance to see them in action before he locks them in.  Well it looks like he’s been pleased with David Bernhardt who’s been running things at the Interior Department ever since Ryan Zinke skipped town amid all those allegations of ethical missteps.  Yesterday he announced that he would nominate Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist of course, to serve as Secretary of the Interior.  According to Trump Bernhardt has “done a fantastic job from the day he arrived, and we look forward to having  his nomination officially confirmed!   By fantastic job, Trump means that he’s doing his best to shrink the national parks and allow for more drilling without getting all the bad press that Zinke got.  Trump has also found a new position for one of his favorites, he has re-nominated Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson for his second star and appointed him as his chief medical adviser and assistant.  Trump is scheduled to have his annual physical on February 8 and though Jackson will not be performing this year’s exam, his promotion sends a message that good things await any physician willing to shave some pounds and add some inches while announcing that Trump is the healthiest world leader ever.  Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen still has her job and presumably will have lots to talk about early next month.  To avoid a subpoena she has finally agreed to testify in front of the House Homeland Security Panel.  One thing that she should expect to be grilled about is last Friday’s shocking statement from the Trump administration that it would require too much effort to reunite the thousands of families it separated before implementing its “zero-tolerance” policy in April.

State of the Union:  Tonight Trump finally gets to deliver his State of the Union Address.  No doubt we will see “teleprompter” Trump, the one who stiffly calls for national unity while promising lots of new infrastructure projects.  Though he probably won’t declare a national emergency tonight, expect Trump to talk about the “dire” situation on the border, again referring to the horror of human trafficking though he will probably avoid mentioning his fantasy about the duct taped women on this go round.  He may also talk up the sanctity of life, not so coded words for an anti-abortion message, one that will go over well with his base, many of whom will be sorry to hear that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who like last year will not be attending the speech did make her first public appearance yesterday at a showing of “Notorious RBG in Song.” Not sure what that is but I want tickets.  He’s also expected to brag about his accomplishments once again asserting that no other president has done as much as he has during his first two years in office.  Expect to hear that the tax cuts are working even though they aren’t doing anything for most of us unless of course you count the higher tax bills that many are now learning about as a good thing, he’ll also probably brag about declining unemployment, a real good thing, but also a continuation of a trend that began before he took office. And of course, keep an eye on Nancy who will be sitting right behind Trump in the Speaker spot, her facial expressions could be epic.  If you make it through Trump’s speech, or even if you don’t, tune in for Stacey Abrams’ Democratic response, even if she has a “Kennedy” Chapstick or “Rubio” water moment or something else along those lines, her speech should be worth listening to.           

Investigatory Front:  Over the weekend, former Governor Christie said that Trump should be more worried about what’s going on in New York than what’s going on with Special Counsel Mueller, though he might not be entirely accurate his point was well timed. Yesterday federal attorneys from the Southern District of New York sent subpoenas to Trump’s inaugural committee seeking documents into how the committee raised and spent more than $100 million on the inauguration.  Among other things the subpoena requests information related to a  Los Angeles financier who gave $900,000 to the committee through his private-equity firm and once registered as a foreign agent working on behalf of the Sri Lankan government.  Only US citizens and legal residents can legally donate to a committee established to finance presidential inaugural festivities.  The inauguration was headed up by Trump’s close friend financier Tom Barrack and Paul Manafort associate Rick Gates, who has been spilling his guts to Mueller’s team, also had a lead role in its operations.  No doubt Gates has provided the Southern District Attorneys will lots of interesting details.  And there is also that tape from Michael Cohen’s office, the one where Melania’s friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff who made quite a bit of money working on the inauguration, questioned how some of the money not going to her was being spent.   In other news, Buzzfeed reported that Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian military officer turned Washington lobbyist who attended the controversial Trump Tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya received a series of “suspicious payments” totaling “a half a million dollars before and after the encounter.”  As we learned last month, after Mueller’s office threw cold water on  Buzzfeed’s earlier story tying Trump directly to the meeting, Buzzfeed has been known to get ahead of themselves, so while this story is interesting and could indicate that someone paid money for Hillary dirt, its too early to know if its accurate.