Teflon Don

Read and Weep:  Well you’d have to have been hiding under a rock to not know what happened yesterday afternoon so, like Attorney General Barr, I’ll keep this brief, not sweet, just brief.  After just forty eight hours of review of the Mueller report, a report based on an investigation that took two years to produce, resulted in nearly 200 charges against three Russian companies and 34 people, 6 of whom were former Trump advisors, 26 of whom are Russian nationals, and 7 of whom have either been found guilty or pleaded guilty with 5 already sentenced,  Barr sent Congress a four page letter saying that Mueller’s investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”  The Attorney General  also noted that Mueller, who never actually interviewed Trump, could not exonerate him of obstruction of justice, but that he, Barr, who had auditioned for the Attorney General position by writing and distribution a memo that said he didn’t believe that presidents could obstruct justice, had decided that the evidence provided by Mueller was “insufficient to establish” that Trump had obstructed justice.  A triumphant and emboldened Trump, who had spent the weekend at a fund raiser, hanging with his lawyers and playing golf but uncharacteristically not tweeting immediately announced that he had been fully and totally exonerated even though he hasn’t been.  Nevertheless, Trump does have a point, as a result of Mueller’s conclusion that there was “no collusion” and  Barr’s decision not to pursue obstruction charges, he has been handed a huge political victory.  Just two weeks ago the House voted unanimously for Mueller’s entire report to be released, that vote never took place in the Senate after Trump ally and Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham blocked it saying that wouldn’t support it since it didn’t include a provision to investigate Hillary Clinton.  At that time Trump also called for the entire report to be released; however, now that he’s been “fully” exonerated, Trump and his allies are mostly saying never mind, we don’t really need to see any of those details and we most certainly do not want to know why Mueller couldn’t rule out obstruction.  As expected Democrats, to put it mildly, aren’t all that happy with what transpired yesterday.  Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Schumer issued a statement saying that “the fact that Special Counsel Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report and underlying documentation be made public without any further delay.”  Jerry Nadler, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee followed by saying “in light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the president, we will be calling Attorney General Barr in to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in the near future.” This morning the editors of the NY Times added that part of the reason that Mueller couldn’t establish a direct connection between the Trump campaign and the Russians was because the Trump team didn’t have to engage directly, the Russians were already helping them adding that “we know that the Russian government interfered repeatedly in the 2016 presidential election, by hacking into computer servers of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. We know that it did this with the goals of dividing Americans and helping Donald Trump win the presidency. We know that when top members of the Trump campaign learned about this interference, they didn’t just fail to report it to the F.B.I. They welcomed it. They encouraged it.”  In any case, so many questions remain unanswered.  Among other things, Roger Stone’s trial won’t even take place until the Fall, there’s still that strange case against the unknown sovereign related company,  we still don’t have an understanding of Trump’s financial ties to Russia, nor do we understand why he is so in love with all things Putin, why so many people in the Trump orbit lied about their contacts and discussions with Russian officials about sanctions and why, if he was innocent, Trump tried so hard to obstruct the investigation.  There’s still all those other cases in New York and other places against and Trump and Trump Inc but first daughter Ivanka doesn’t appear to be concerned about any of that, yesterday she tweeted "Truth is generally the best vindication against slander. - Abraham Lincoln."  Then she probably went back to sending official emails off of her personal account, because when you’re a Trump you can get away with anything, or so it appears.    

Business as Usual:  The aftermath of the Mueller findings will likely reverberate for a while but the bottom line is that neither Trump nor his policies and ham handed approach to governance are going anywhere any time soon. The courts are still being packed with very conservative, frequently unqualified judges, migrant kids are still being held in cages, the effort to erode Obamacare continues, Republicans are back to calling for cuts in Medicare and want to slash Medicaid and at $234 billion, the February budget deficit was the largest monthly deficit on record.  Environment protecting policies are being dismantled and despite alarming evidence of its dire effects, the Trump administration and a large portion of the Republican party continue to deny that climate change is a threat.  Moreover, Russian “collusion” or not Trump is still an irrational player.  Senator Lindsey Graham who remains desperate to insure his own 2020 reelection, continues to call for an investigation into Hillary and all of those FBI guys who triggered the Mueller investigation.  Moreover, Trump’s international policy remains impetuous and tweet driven, on Friday he cancelled sanctions against North Korea that the Treasury Department announced on Thursday, by tweeting "It was announced today by the US Treasury that additional large-scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea. I have ordered the withdrawal of those additional sanctions.”  His advisors were so taken back by that totally irrational reversal that a scrambling Sarah Huckabee Sanders said he made the change because he kind of likes strongman Kim Jung un.  Following that absurd explanation, Trump’s spokespeople tried another one, saying that he really meant to say that he was cancelling some as yet to be issued future sanctions.  Also on Friday, Trump announced that he was nominating Stephen Moore a Heritage foundation economist who is not a real economist but who frequently appears on cable espousing Trump’s views on interest rates and monetary policy and criticizing current Fed Policy and who Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin said could be “charitably described as a moron” for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board.  She went on to say that the appointment was unique in that it was near-universally panned as a horrible idea.  She cites University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers who said “Call your favorite economist. Whether they’re left, right, libertarian or socialist, none of them will endorse Stephen Moore for the Fed. He’s manifestly unqualified.” Wolfers added that he thought that “Ivanka would be a better pick for the Fed than Stephen Moore.”  He was serious about that.

2020:  The Trump campaign team, who raises money on anything, is now out raising money on the Mueller report and in addition to shouting “NO COLLUSION” Trump continues repeating his newest talking point, that the Democrats hate Israel and by extension Jews, a disturbingly awful and hypocritical statement by someone who refuses to condemn white supremacism and thinks that there are “good people on both sides.”  The Democrats really need to get it together, stop racing to the left and start focusing on a unifying message that addresses the kind of core issues that unite voters or else, and by else think another Trump term.  Yikes!!