Northam's Choice

Defensive Moves: Going into Super Bowl weekend most thought the big choice would be pizza vs wings or Rams vs Patriots.  Instead it turned into KKK robes vs blackface after a picture from the 1984 medical school year book  page of Virginia’s Democratic Governor Ralph Northam went viral.  The picture in question included two graduating students standing side by side, one in KKK garb the other in blackface.  Northam, who previously served as Lieutenant Governor and who had won his Governorship by beating first a more progressive Democrat in the primary and then a Republican candidate who distanced himself from Trump while adopting his anti-immigrant message in the general election, at first seemed more surprised that the picture had emerged and was causing such outrage than anything else.  He finally responded by acknowledging that he was one of the two guys in the picture but oddly enough failed to identify which one, leaving some trying to decide which was worse, KKK attire or blackface, and most concluding that it didn’t really matter, both were damning.  While Democratic politicians raced to condemn him and called for him to step down, Northam issued another statement but instead of offering to leave he said he would stay put because after giving it considerable thought he was pretty sure that he wasn’t either of the people in the picture.  He admitted that he had been confused because he had done the blackface thing at least once when he dressed up as Michael Jackson and in that case he distinctly remembered how difficult it was to remove the shoe polish from his face so he probably didn’t do it again. In response to that feeble excuse more Democrats, including both Virginia Senators Kaine and Warner, called for him to step aside immediately if not sooner, making the way for his African American Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax to take over.  Trump, who was on his way to Mar a Lago for his first golf outing since the beginning of his government shutdown was initially uncharacteristically quiet but finally weighed in.  The blackface stuff didn’t bother him all that much, he mostly slammed Northam’s Republican opponent Ed Gillespie for failing to uncover the damning Northam pictures before the election, tweeting he “must now be thinking Malpractice and Dereliction of Duty with regard to his Opposition Research Staff. If they find that terrible picture before the election, he wins by 20 points!”  As to how the pictures got published,  last night the Wall Street Journal revealed that they were released by Big League Politics, a right wing website that takes its name from Trump’s favorite “bigly” expression.  The Washington Post added that Big League obtained the pictures from one of Northam’s medical school classmates who was upset about his recent support for a state measure that would loosen restrictions on late-term abortions. No indication whether that person was the person in the white robes or the other guy in blackface but he might have been, it turns out that there are quite a few other racist pictures in that Eastern Virginia Medical School year book and their inclusion in the yearbook was an open secret, kind of like Justice Kavanaugh’s beer affinity, only on steroids.  Despite the pressure for him to step down and the likelihood that he will no longer be able to get anything done as Virginia’s Governor, Northam insists that he isn’t going anywhere.  For now, at least. And aside from Trump, most Republicans aren’t saying much because what can they say with Trump in the White House, Steve King still in Congress and the recent election of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith despite her affinity for lynching. Last night Senator Sherrod Brown who is probably running for president called Trump a racist and no one blinked.

Offensive Charm:  Last year Trump opted out of the traditional Super Bowl weekend presidential interview, but this year with his ratings still suffering for the shutdown debacle and his WALL battle still raging and either another shutdown or a declaration of a national emergency on the horizon, he decided to sit down with Margaret Brennan from CBS’s Face the Nation in an effort to appear thoughtful and reasonable.  The reasonable thing didn’t work out all that well.  The interview did reinforce some existing concerns while creating a few new ones.  Trump who spent much of the week slamming bipartisan funding negotiations, saying that if they don’t result in adequate WALL funding he’ll be forced to take action, refused to take another government shutdown off the table.  He slammed “rigid” Nancy Pelosi, who says that though she’ll fund border security, she isn’t funding WALL,  for “playing her games ”going on to say that on a  “political basis, what she's doing is- I actually think it's bad politics, but much more importantly it's very bad for our country.” Notably, recent polls indicate that more Americans trust Pelosi than Trump, remarkable when you consider how much money  Republicans have spent trashing her.  Not only did he defend his somewhat rash decisions to pull troops from Syria and reduce deployment in Afghanistan, but he defended his decision-making process, saying that his judgement is better than that of his generals and his intelligence people and anyway he gets to do what he wants.  He went on to claim that he’d fired Defense Secretary  Mattis because he couldn’t fix Afghanistan even though we all know that Mattis resigned because he couldn’t fix Trump.  He said that he’s leaving troops in Iraq because, you know it’s close to Iran and we might need to use that expensive base that we built with billions of our dollars to launch an attack against Iran, a not all that comforting thought but probably a moment of truth from Trump who to the extent that he listens to anyone, gets his advice on Iran from John Bolton, a known Iran hawk who seems to really want to see regime change there sooner rather than later.  As to North Korea, Trump continues to insist that the intel experts are wrong, that his good buddy Kim Jong Un will give up those nukes because those love letter’s that he’s sent Trump are so adoring and anyway, there’s lots of potential beach properties in North Korea and someone has to develop them, why not a Trump.  Trump also weighed in on Mueller and his report, first he referred to the Russian military types who interfered in the election as mere bloggers, a term that comes right out of the Putin playbook and then he refused to say if he’d release Mueller’s report when it’s finished, instead saying he’ll leave that up to his handpicked Justice Department, kind of an admission that he’ll try to impede its release. When asked if he’d pardon long term friend/crazy as a fox guy Roger Stone, he also left that vague, saying that Stone is doing a good job right now defending himself.  Lastly, he once again attacked the “take a knee” NFL players, adding that no other president has done as much to cure racial injustice as he has citing declining unemployment rates and the recent criminal reform legislation that he did support but only after he received lots of pressure to do so.  The White House promises that the theme of Tuesday night’s State of the Union address will be unity even though Trump keeps hinting that he’s on the verge of declaring a national emergency or worse.  Stay tuned.    

Scary Stuff:  In a really troubling article Time pretty much reveals what we’ve all suspected about Trump’s ignorance about most things outside of golf and branding and his lack of willingness to listen to any views that differ from those of his “gut.”  Based on information from senior intelligence officials who are finally “breaking their silence” they report that “Trump displays what one called ‘willful ignorance’ when presented with analyses generated by the intelligence services. The officials, who include analysts who prepare Trump’s briefs and the briefers themselves, describe futile attempts to keep his attention by using visual aids, confining some briefing points to two or three sentences, and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible.”  The article goes on to say that Trump reacts with anger “when he is given information that contradicts positions he has taken or beliefs he holds. Two intelligence officers even reported that they have been warned to avoid giving the President intelligence assessments that contradict stances he has taken in public.”  Separately, someone in the White House leaked Trump’s daily schedules to Axios, he spends around 60% of the day engaging in Executive Time, a term that former White House Chief of Staff Kelly coined to account for the time he spends watching TV and chatting with friends. Why read intelligence reports when you can learn all you want by watching Fox and Friends and talking with Vlad?