Irish Eyes Not Smiling

Crooning All Day Long:  On St Patrick’s Day, while some were running the NYC Half, others like me were slogging the race, and still others were engaging in holiday revelry, Trump was tweeting furiously. Before he and Melania headed to church, in and of itself an infrequent occurrence for someone so embraced by the religious right, Trump slammed his frequent nemesis the departed former Senator John McCain, Saturday Night Live, Fox, a United Auto Workers union official for some reason calling him out by name over a GM auto plant closing, and, of course his favorite target immigrants.  Notably he had little to say about the avowed white supremacist who slaughtered 50 worshipers at a New Zealand mosque or the horror of that attack.  As to those tweets, Trump falsely alleged that McCain had leaked the infamous Steele Dossier before the 2016 election in an effort to hurt his campaign; the facts are that after the campaign a member of McCain’s staff was given a copy of the dossier, he shared in with McCain who turned it over to the FBI who already had a copy. That Trump slammed SNL wasn’t unusual, but it was particularly odd that he targeted an SNL repeat, the Christmas episode that featured a Trumpified version of A Christmas Carol with Trump visited by the ghosts of his past, present and future, an episode he’s seen and commented on before, although given his ever diminishing mental capacity maybe he doesn’t remember that?  Given his unique relationship with Fox, Trump’s Fox tweets were particularly unusual.  He attacked a few of the station’s more mainstream news anchors, the ones that attempt to tell things as they are instead of as Trump wants them purveyed, including Shephard Smith and the Fox weekend anchors, saying that they belonged at the failing CNN rather than Fox and then launched into a defense of Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro, two of his staunchest supporters, who have recently been bleeding or temporarily bleeding advertisers due to their increasingly hateful rhetoric.  In particular he lambasted Fox’s decision to cancel the airing of Janine Pirro’s Saturday night episode, a recognition by Fox management that in light of the New Zealand shooting, giving more time to Pirro right after she made some particularly anti-Muslim remarks about Representative Ilhan Omar was a step too far even for them.   As to New Zealand, during his Friday press conference, the one where he ceremoniously “signed” his first veto opposing the legislation against his declaration of emergency, Trump denied that there has been an uptick in racists acts by white supremacists or that his rhetoric had contributed to creating an atmosphere that fostered their heinous acts, instead he attributed the New Zealand shooter’s murderous rage to the random rage of madman.  For the record, though it’s probably a reach to directly track any one attack to Trump, it’s even more of a reach to ignore that white supremacism is a bigly problem especially given that a less than comprehensive list of recent attacks by self-described white supremacists includes the killing of 12 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue, the murder of 9 Black Christian parishioners in Charleston and the murder of 6 Muslims in a Quebec City mosque to name a few.  The number of hate groups operating across America rose to a record high, 1020, in 2018, an indication that fanning the flames of white resentment over immigration and changing demographics can be scarily effective in inspiring hateful acts.  Moreover, 2018 was the fourth straight year of hate group growth, a 30 percent increase that roughly coincides with Trump’s campaign and presidency, following three consecutive years of decline near the end of the Obama administration. Trump, who is quick to condemn any terrorist event that involves a Muslim assailant, just can’t find it within himself to acknowledge that white supremacism is a problem and his staff seems okay with that.  Kellyanne Conway called the New Zealand murderer an eco-terrorist, conflating his reference to himself as an eco-fascist with the fight to protect the environment and this weekend, while defending Trump against accusations that he was a racist, Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney took things one step further, suggesting that calling Trump a racist was like blaming Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the New Zealand killings because of the Democrat’s position on climate change.  Kellyanne’s husband George, whose tweeting against Trump continues unabated, weighed in too, after Trump’s McCain and SNL diatribes, he tweeted five words: “His condition is getting worse.”  Meghan McCain’s response was more personal, she tweeted out to Trump that “no one will ever love you like they loved my father.”  Sadly, a lot of people actually do love Trump, some of them because of his tax cuts and court appointments but a lot because of his hateful tweets and bigotry.  And proving that people from both parties can say things that they really shouldn’t, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib continued to litigate the almost, but apparently never to be forgotten remarks, that dominated last week’s news cycle, again defending Congresswoman Omar by saying that there is Islamophobia on “both sides” of the aisle.

2020:  The Democratic presidential wannabees were out in full force this weekend.  Now that he’s finally announced his candidacy Beto O’Rourke is getting a disproportionate amount of attention, some good some bad.  His policies are still unformed, something that he says is a good thing, he’ll work them out after he talks to as many voters as possible, an approach that may or may not work for Beto but would certainly not work out all that well for any of the women out on the campaign trail. That said, Trump and the RNC seem particularly concerned about Beto.  The RNC re-released a mug shot photo of Beto doctored to include a Leprechaun hat on his head, reminding everyone that Beto, who despite his nickname is of Irish heritage, had once been busted for a DWI, something that is not new news, it was disclosed during his Senate run.  They RNC ad managed to slam all Irish people at once, tying the huge group of voters to excessive drinking leading spokespeople for a number of other Republican politicians including Rand Paul and John Kasich to speak out. The tweet was called “vile” and “indicative of the bottom feeding” Republican Party led by Trump and RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. For his part Beto shrugged it off saying he wasn’t getting involved in any negativity.  When asked about Beto’s statement to Vanity Fair that he was born to run, a statement that Beto also tried to shrug off, Senator Amy Klobuchar said that she wasn’t born to run, probably because when she was growing up in the 1970’s women weren’t raised to even think that they could be president.  Klobuchar then went on to discuss some fairly well thought out positions, ones that might be too moderate given the current leftward tilt of the policy, but that sound fairly rational nevertheless.  That other moderate guy, former VP Biden made one of his “charming” gaffes, accidentally saying that he was running before pulling his statement back,  during a campaign stop that wasn’t a campaign stop.  Senator Bernie Sanders who hasn’t released his taxes yet is shutting down his “think tank,” the one that pays his wife and son and cut his head and received seven stiches this weekend but he’s Bernie so few if any of his supporters care.  Can you imagine what we’d be hearing about Hillary if she banged into a glass door and needed stiches?  Senator Kirsten Gillibrand formally announced that she is running which wasn’t much of a surprise because though she’s failed to gain much traction, its been clear to all that she is running. And then there’s Mayor Pete Buttigieg, it might be a stretch to think that he stands any chance of actually winning the Democratic nomination, however he continues to be quite impressive and has raised enough money to appear on the debate stage.  He sent out the most presidential missive of the weekend, a calming assurance to the Muslim residents of South Bend that they should feel safe to pray in his city as well as a fulsome condemnation of the attack in New Zealand.     

Singing Angels?  Well despite expectations that Mueller time is fast approaching,  the special counsel isn’t ready to serenade us yet.  However, we did learn on Friday that Rick Gates, the onetime Manafort sidekick who’s far from an angel is still singing.  Mueller informed the court that he’s not ready to provide a sentencing recommendation for Gates since Gates is still providing useful information and/or testimony in a few other cases.  It’s not clear what those cases involve, at least one of them may involve other lobbyists and might have little or nothing to do with the Trump/Russia probe but another is likely to involve misdeeds related to the Trump inaugural committee.