Tropes

Alive and Well:  It’s been almost two weeks since we learned that there are still many, far too many, people who think that donning  blackface is acceptable and that there also appear to be quite a few people who treat old KKK robes as valuable family heirlooms.  A few designers including Prada, Gucci and Katy Perry (who knew she was a designer?) have been embarassed into recalling some really inappropriate ”fashion” items and, far more significantly, the Commonwealth of Virginia’s leadership is in upheaval.  Yesterday with the “assistance” of one of the country’s newest Congresswoman we were all reminded that anti-Semitism is alive and well too.  Late Sunday Somali American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar managed to step into it big time with a tweet that revealed far more than her negative feelings about Israel by hitting the trip wire of overt anti-Semitism.  She pulled out a version of the Elders of Zion, Jewish financial dominance trope by asserting that support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins baby,” a reference to hundred-dollar bills.  Republican leadership was quick to criticize her, some because they really did find her tweet offensive, but others like House Minority Leader McCarthy, who during the 2018 midterms had no problem retweeting an accusation that George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer (who isn’t Jewish but few realize that) were buying the election, jumped on the anti-Omar bandwagon for less principled reasons. Given his past comfort spreading ethnically charged tropes, its fair to assume that McCarthy’s objective was to make the point that some in the Democratic party are anti-Israel, a rallying cry for Republicans more than any true disgust for anti-Semitism. Individual Democratic politicians also expressed their disgust and by the afternoon Speaker Pelosi and the entire Democratic leadership condemned Omar for suggesting that Israel’s allies in American politics were motivated by money rather than principle.  Omar then apologized.  It’s doubtful that her views have changed, the “Benjamins” tweet wasn’t her first anti-Israel tweet, but going forward she might choose her words more carefully.  Following on a weekend where Trump mocked the Trail of Tears and his eldest son followed suit with a tweet that went on to use the word “savages,” one thing is certain, that “great again” thing isn’t working out all that well.

El Paso or Bust:  It’s not clear why Trump chose El Paso for his give me Wall or else rally.  Though Texas is a red state, El Paso, is overwhelmingly blue so much so that Hillary Clinton received more than 65% of the city’s votes during the 2016 election.  Despite evidence to the contrary, Trump insists that El Paso was a crime ridden city until it’s border barrier was built, something that is verifiably untrue.  His response to the statistical evidence is that it is just more fake news.  Anyway, while he was rallying his base in a campaign style rally, a rally that included calls to FINISH THE WALL as well as a few lock her up chants, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke who used to represent El Paso held his own anti-hate, anti-wall rally nearby.  Both rallies were well attended, though if you ask Trump he’ll tell you that his had more people than any other rally ever held anywhere in the universe.  Shortly before he went on to speak, Trump was informed that the House and Senate appropriators working on a resolution of the funding crisis had reached agreement on a plan to fund the government.  That plan includes no WALL funding but will allow up to $1.375 billion to be spent for no more than 55 miles of physical barriers, metal slats but no concrete structures.  In exchange for the rather small amount for the barriers, Democrats dropped their demands for limitation of the number of people who could be detained by ICE at any given time.  The group agreed to fund a total of 40,520 detention beds, a 17% drop from current levels.  The agreement remains tentative until it’s put in writing, passed by both Houses and signed by Trump and there is still no assurance that he’ll sign on. During his El Paso speech he insisted that he will build WALL no matter what the bill says and to that end Acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney is working on a plan to divert funds from other Army Corps of Engineer projects and hurricane relief.  Before he left El Paso, Trump gave an interview to Fox’s Laura Ingraham and his other advisor Sean Hannity has already gone on record opposing the funding agreement calling it a garbage compromise. 

The Mueller Investigation:  Mueller may have tipped his hand a little during one of the closed door hearings related to former campaign manager Paul Manafort.  Reading between the redactions of a court transcript, the NY Times reports that Mueller is focused in on Manafort’s interaction with his long-time associate/one time and likely forever Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik.  The Times reports that Mueller’s team is pursuing the theory that “starting while Russia was taking steps to bolster Mr. Trump’s candidacy, people in his orbit were discussing deals to end a dispute over Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and possibly give Moscow relief from economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.” In other words the Russians were helping Trump all through the election in the hope of  getting him to sign off on a very Russian friendly resolution of their Ukraine “problem,” one that included the lifting of the sanctions that had been imposed as punishment for their annexation of Crimea.  Though we don’t know how far along Mueller is in proving this theory, the puzzle pieces fit together nicely, too nicely, and provide a reasonable explanation for why everything seems to track back to sanctions relief starting with former national security advisor Michael Flynn’s lies about discussing sanctions with the Russians through to the “adoption” (code word for sanctions) discussion during the Natalia Veselnitskaya meeting at Trump Tower.  The theory also dovetails nicely with Trump’s inclinations.  He’s transactional, cares little about what’s happening in Ukraine, but win or lose would have benefited from sanctions relief because building hotels and making other investments in Russia becomes much easier absent sanction impediments.  Follow the money.  On the Pecker front, Pecker as in David Pecker of the National Enquirer, its looking increasingly likely that he’s in bigly trouble.  While the facts behind his efforts to blackmail Jeff Bezos still remain somewhat murky, it’s looking more and more likely that he violated his promise to Southern District federal attorneys that he would refrain from “bad” acts for three years.  And his ties to Saudi Arabia are now also getting extra attention, it doesn’t help that he asked the Justice Department if he should have registered as a foreign agent when he published a fawning Saudi Arabia glossy.  As to Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration has declined Congress’s request that it abide by the term of the US Magnitsky Act legislation by providing a report on the Jamal Khashoggi murder. Members of both parties aren’t all that happy about that and are threatening to cut arms sales to Saudi Arabia but absent support from Mitch McConnell that threat will probably go nowhere and in any case the Saudi’s don’t appear all that concerned.  Late last week they tweeted out "Our leadership is a red line. We will not accept any state to dictate to us what to do. We warn against any attempt to link Khashoggi's crime [murder] to our leadership." Kind of their way of saying, we get to murder our own if we want to.