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!