The Seventies

Septuagenarian Playbook:  Like him or not, Joe Biden seems to know how to get under Trump’s skin.  Yesterday Biden got the endorsement of the International Association of Firefighters.  Trump who prides himself on the support of the white male working class couldn’t take that one lying down so he slammed the union’s “Dues Sucking” leadership, tweeting “I’ll never get the support of the dues crazy union leadership those people who rip-off their membership with ridiculously high dues, medical and other expenses while being paid a fortune. But the members love Trump. They look at our record economy, tax & reg cuts, military etc. WIN!”  Biden, or as Trump likes to call him, Sleepy Joe, off holding his first official political rally in Pennsylvania, one of Trump’s key swing states, tweet responded  “I'm sick of this President badmouthing unions. Labor built the middle class in this country. Minimum wage, overtime pay, the 40-hour week: they exist for all of us because unions fought for those rights. We need a President who honors them and their work.” For the record Trump wants us all to know that he is the most “vibrant, young” septuagenarian running, a shocker to both Biden and Bernie Sanders, who are virtual energy bunnies in comparison to Trump, the only world leader who rides in a golf cart to cross the street at international summits while all other world leaders walk.  Though the primary season is still in its early stages and, if we learned anything in 2016, polls don’t really mean much, it’s still worth noting that Biden’s off to a good start, he’s bumped up 6% to a 35% favorability among likely Democratic voters since his announcement, giving him a 14% lead over the current second place holder, Bernie Sanders.  As to Trump, whose favorability numbers remain stuck in the high thirties, he continues to push back hard against anymore investigations into anything related to his finances.  Last night he, Don  Jr, Eric and Ivanka and his business filed suit against Deutsche Bank and Capital One in an attempt to block them from turning over financial records to the congressional committees that have issued subpoenas for the information.  The suit which Representatives Adam Schiff and Maxime Waters, chairs of the House Intelligence and Financial Services committees, call “meritless” “efforts to delay accountability,” alleges presidential harassment and congressional overreach.  At least with regard to Deutsche Bank, the information may already be out of the bag, last week bank officials reported that they had begun turning over some of those disputed records to NY State’s Attorney General.  The Trumps aren’t the only ones who aren’t feeling all that cooperative right now.  Attorney General Barr is still fighting with the House Judiciary Committee about the terms of engagement for his upcoming appearance on their “hot” seat.  He insists that he won’t show if they continue to insist that he sit for questioning by committee lawyers.  Chairman Nadler’s response is that Barr doesn’t get to dictate the terms of his appearance and that he’s willing to go the subpoena route if necessary. It’s worth remembering that last fall Senate Republicans employed a specially hired sex crimes prosecutor to conduct their interrogation of Justice Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford, somehow or other no one in the Trump administration had any problem with that.

Human Resources, etc:  Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is finally leaving the Justice Department.  Yesterday he submitted his official letter of resignation notifying Trump that May 11 will be his last day.  Not surprisingly, the Rosenstein letter was curiously written and just a little too obsequious.  He wrote ““I am grateful to you for the opportunity to serve; for the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations; and for the goals you set in your inaugural address: patriotism, unity, safety, education and prosperity.”  Justice Department attorneys aren’t supposed to engage in “personal conversations” with the president, or at least that was the Republican position when Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch had that June 2016 tete-a-tete on the Phoenix airport tarmac with former president Bill Clinton, the little meeting that led to Lynch stepping away from the Hillary email investigation, an action that led to former FBI Director Comey taking it upon himself to go public with too many details about the whole email server investigation, one of the pivotal events that contributed to Trump’s victory.  On the campaign front Beto O’Rourke who has pretty much avoided making policy statements has finally announced one, his version of a Green New Deal, a $5 trillion plan to combat climate change that while ambitious is  less so than the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plan in that it doesn’t rule out any forms of low-carbon energy, like nuclear power, and because it sets 2050 rather than 2030 as the date for achieving net-zero carbon emissions.  As to slime, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, the same two right wing characters who tried smearing Special Counsel Mueller’s reputation with trumped up accusations that he’d engaged in some sexual harassment have been out seeking some young male volunteers to launch similarly phony accusations against Mayor Pete Buttigieg.  They were caught this time but not before some of their slime oozed on Facebook.  Lastly, though he’s still in the running, a few Republican Senators have started to publicly express their concerns about Federal Reserve wannabee Stephen Moore and his history of women and minority dissing commentary with Iowa’s Republican Senator Joni Ernst saying that “His past writings are ridiculous,” adding that she’s “not enthused about supporting him, let’s put it that way.”  

Infrastructure Week:  Okay maybe it’s not really infrastructure week again, but it is infrastructure morning.  Trump is once again hosting Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in his office to discuss infrastructure projects because when all else fails, it’s time to discuss infrastructure.  This time around the Democrats appear to be really serious, they are including  House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip James Clyburn, Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Lujan, Richard Neal, the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Peter DeFazio, the chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee as part of their traveling squad.  Pelosi and company plan to propose $2 trillion in projects but it’s not clear that the Trump piggy bank, already diminished by last year’s tax cuts has anywhere enough money to fund much more than another Trump helipad.    

Flight Plans

Guns and Hate:  The NRA is in disarray, involved in a leadership crisis pitting long time chief executive officer Wayne LaPierre and current darling of the right, one time Iran-Contra convict Oliver North in a battle over financial improprieties and excessive spending on, among other things, the contract with their long term public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen, a firm that also pays North large sums of money.  Over the weekend LaPierre accused North of extorting him by trying to force him out with threats to release compromising information, an accusation that instead ended up with North announcing his own departure.  On the legal front, Maria Butina, the red headed Russian spylette was sentenced to 18 months for her illegal activities which included infiltrating Republican and conservative circles through the NRA and the NY State Attorney General announced that she was opening an investigation into the NRA’s financials, one that could lead to the loss of its tax-exempt status.  None of this prevented Trump and a long list of other Republicans including VP Pence and Senator Ted Cruz from attending and delivering speeches at the NRA convention in Indiana.  Before leaving for  Indiana, Trump doubled down on his Charlottesville comments, the one where he equated protesters with neo-Nazis by saying that there were “good people on both sides,” and also expressed his undying admiration for the “best” general ever, the slave owning, secessionist Robert E Lee.  During his NRA speech Trump championed gun rights and announced the end of US participation in an arms treaty designed to discourage the sale of conventional weapons to countries that do not protect human rights, aligning the US with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.  While the celebration of guns, guns and more guns continued in Indiana, across the country in San Diego a hate filled lone gun man who may have been responsible for the earlier burning of a Mosque loaded up his AR-type assault weapon and headed to a San Diego area synagogue where he shot and killed one Jewish Shabbat/Passover worshiper who was still mourning the recent passing of her mother, while injuring three others, including the congregation’s Rabbi who lost one finger and may lose another and a young girl whose family recently moved from Israel to San Diego to seek safety from missiles launched from Gaza into her previous town, Sderot.  After the synagogue shooting Trump who of course would never acknowledge that pandering to White Supremacists and the purveyors of automatic weaponry contributes one iota to an accelerating wave of anti-Semitic, anti-Moslem and anti-immigrant murder sprees called the injured Rabbi to deliver some “thoughts and prayers.”   Notably despite the increase in hate crimes, the Trump administration has defunded Homeland Security’s anti-domestic terror program out of concerns that going after domestic terror which despite Trump’s preferred narrative is largely a white supremacist, rather than a Islamic terrorist problem, doesn’t sit well with his base.  Sadly, the NY Times proved this weekend that anti-Semitism isn’t just a problem of the extreme right by publishing and then, under pressure, quickly retracting an extremely offensive political cartoon in the paper’s International edition, one that their own Op-Ed writer Bret Stephens called out as a despicable trope reminiscent of the worst Nazi propaganda.  Initially, the NY Times said that since so few people actually read their International edition, the “slip” could be explained away by lax oversight.  Under continued pressure the editors finally came forward with an apology, albeit, one that still ignores the bigger question as to why anyone working for the NY Times, US or International, would ever think that the publication of such a cartoon should ever be permitted and wouldn’t have been had any other ethnic group been its target.

Testimony Battles:  Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, who somehow or other has managed to escape any further investigation into his own dark “gym” past, has brokered a deal between the Trump administration and the  House Oversight committee, one that smooths the way for Carl Kline, the former White House security official who approved Jared Kushner’s security clearance, to go forward with his testimony in front of the Oversight Committee.  It’s not really clear that the deal that Jordan worked out meets the demands of Elijah Cummings and the other Democrats on the Committee but it is being lauded as a first attempt of accommodation from the White House.  Kline is now due to testify on Wednesday, May 1.  Separately, Attorney General Barr is also due to testify on Wednesday in front of both the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, but he is threatening to refuse to participate in the House hearings  because he is unhappy about House Chairman Nadler’s plans to supplement the usual five minutes of questioning time given to each member of the committee with another thirty minutes of questioning from both a Democratic and Republican staff lawyer.  Apparently, Barr is afraid that the Democrats’ legal representative might actually ask him some really tough questions that he’d rather not answer.  Though he isn’t scheduled to testify yet, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is likely to find himself in the hot seat soon enough.  On Friday it was reported that in an effort to either keep his job, keep Mueller safe or both, he made some concessions to Trump and may or may not have promised to “land the plane” of the Russian investigation in a way that Trump would find satisfying.  Questions are now being asked as to whether or not Rosenstein, who first was a villain for writing the memo that justified former FBI Director Comey’s firing, but then became a hero for appointing Mueller, is back to being a villain or more likely just another highly compromised character in the long simmering Trump/Russia epic.  In any case, it’s not clear that Rosenstein actually made the “land the plane” comment, some suspect that it was Attorney General Barr who leaked the story about Rosenstein using that expression to the Washington Post, in order to spread the blame for the way he, Barr, handled the Mueller report rollout.  As to the Russians, despite Trump’s refusal to admit that they have been engaging in election interference, his handpicked FBI Director, Wray, says that they did in 2016, did in 2018 and are expected to continue to in 2020.  During a weekend campaign speech in  Wisconsin, Trump called all of those Obama era FBI people out as scum, if Wray keeps up with all that honesty he could get swept into that scummy pile.  One more point on election interference, during the 2018 mid-terms, now former Florida Senator Nelson claimed that there had been an incursion into at least one Florida county’s system, at that time his opponent the then Florida Governor, now Senator, Scott pushed back saying that Nelson’s assertion was false news.  Well it turns out it was true, just another one of those things absent from the Barr summary but included in the Mueller Report.                  

Healthy Holly?

Obsessing: Despite claiming that he’s been fulling exonerated Trump just can’t let it go.  Yesterday he continued tweeting against interest, asserting among other things that “As has been incorrectly reported by the Fake News Media, I never told then White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller, even though I had the legal right to do so. If I wanted to fire Mueller, I didn’t need McGahn to do it, I could have done it myself."  Mimi Rocah, a former Southern District of NY federal prosecutor responded to Trump’s tweet with one of her own, pointing out “To the extent [Trump] had any argument about executive privilege (which was clearly already waived) it’s 100% gone now, Can’t hide behind legal privilege & then go out & give your (lying) version of the facts. That’s the law & it’s just common sense.”  In an interview with his favorite Fox guy, Sean Hannity, Trump once again called the investigation into Russian election interference out as a “coup” and “an attempted overthrow of the US government,” going on to say that it was a one sided witch hunt by angry Democrats.  He also suggested that the long awaited Justice Department  Inspector General report due out soon will prove him right. Then he asserted once again that he hadn’t engaged in any obstruction a conclusion that Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, who Trump previously suggested would make a great Supreme Court Justice, roundly disputed in a scathing Fox op-ed where he said “When the president asks his former adviser and my former colleague K.T. McFarland to write an untruthful letter to the file knowing the government would subpoena it, that’s obstruction of justice, when the president asks Cory Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, to get Mueller fired, that’s obstruction of justice. When the president asks his then-White House counsel to get Mueller fired and then lie about it, that’s obstruction of justice. When he asked Don McGahn to go back to the special counsel and then change his testimony, that’s obstruction of justice. When he dangled the pardon in front of Michael Cohen in order to keep Cohen from testifying against him, that’s obstruction of justice.”  Napolitano’s conclusion is that Attorney General Barr was wrong to absolve Trump of obstruction. It looks like he can kiss any hopes, as remote as they were, of a Supreme Court nomination good bye.

Twenty in 20:  Joe Biden’s campaign launch was short on policy substance but long on anti-Trump rhetoric, part of his strategy to distance himself from the rest of the Democratic pack by messaging that he’s the one who can best take Trump down. All that policy stuff, he’ll get to that when he’s ready.  Biden’s message may or may not be going over well with primary voters but it seems to have hit home with Trump who has already gifted him with his very own nickname, albeit one that borrows heavily from the “Sleep Eyes” moniker that he earlier assigned to NBC’s Chuck Todd. Trump revealed his concern about the Biden threat by first welcoming “Sleepy Joe” to the race and then saying "I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign, it will be nasty - you will be dealing with people who truly have some very sick & demented ideas. But if you make it, I will see you at the Starting Gate!  Biden didn’t seem at all cowered by Trump but Trump is right about one thing, Biden needs to make it through the primaries first and his long history of service, a plus to some, also provides fodder to his many critics.  Yesterday, it was reported that one of them, Anita Hill, isn’t all that forgiving.  Apparently, in the run up to his announcement he reached out to her to apologize for the treatment she received back in the day when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time when she testified against Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearings.  Suffice it to say, Hill is still holding a bigly grudge.  Trump also told Sean Hannity that Mayor Pete Buttigieg is his favorite Democratic candidate, and its fair to imagine that’s not because of Mayor Pete’s mastery of six languages or sharp wit, but because he’s saving up some hateful bigoted homophobic remarks to use as “needed.”

Other News:  Add Steven Miller to the list of people that the White House wants to keep away from Congress.  The House Oversight Committee would like to question Miller to get to the bottom of the mess at the Department of Homeland Security since it’s been reported that as Trump’s immigration guru he’s the one behind all of the recent Department firings but Trump who usually enjoys it when the very untelegenic Miller appears on Sunday talk shows, doesn’t want the public to see his little tyrant duke it out with Elijah Cummings or any of the other combative Democrats on his committee.  As much as he liked the whole child separation thing, listening to Miller defend the caging of kids and the still separated children are among the things that Trump could live without in the run up to the 2020 election. On the North Korean front by all accounts Kim Jong un’s visit with Vladimir Putin went according to plan, nothing concrete came out of it, but it did make for a great photo-op and probably irked Trump to no end, probably the whole point of the meeting.  Separately we learned yesterday that in order to finalize the release of the comatose Otto Warmbier from his captors, Trump signed off on North Korean’s $2 million medical bill to compensate the North Korean’s for all that wonderful hospital care that Warmbier received after they tortured him.  When asked if the bill had been paid, the generally mendacious Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded “We do not comment on hostage negotiations, which is why they have been so successful during this administration.”  On the political front, a panel of three federal judges ruled 34 congressional and state legislative districts in Michigan are “extreme partisan gerrymanders and unconstitutional” because they were drawn to advantage Republicans at the expense of Democratic voters.  The judges ordered that the state redraw maps in time for the 2020 elections.  To be fair, it’s worth noting that Democratic politicians are equally adept at committing illegal acts. Yesterday the FBI executed search warrants at the home of Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh.  The Mayor is currently being investigated for a scheme which involved the channeling of money to her from the proceeds of ridiculously inflated sales of her Healthy Holly children’s book.  She gets points for creativity but loses far more for corruption.  Her lawyer released a statement saying that she’s not feeling all that well right now and isn’t lucid enough to make any decisions but that she is likely to feel well enough to resign next week.  Politics as usual?                   

Good Morning Joe

Number Twenty:  Joe Biden is running, the twentieth Democratic candidate to announce but the one that everyone has been waiting for, the race is now officially on.  He announced this morning with a powerful video in which he slammed Trump for his “fine people on both sides” reaction to the Nazis and white supremacists who marched through Charlottesville while saying that “Trump’s first term will be regarded by history as an aberrant moment in time” warning that four more years (aargh) would “forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are.”  Though he didn’t endorse him,  Obama sent out a message of support, the first time that the former president has spoken out for any of this cycle’s Democratic aspirants.  Biden may have already lined up some union endorsements, expect to hear about that soon, and also expect to hear a number of his critics, a good portion of whom will be his competitor’s surrogates criticize his past not “progressive enough for these times” policies and question his fund raising abilities.  In other words, now that Biden’s in, the real fight for the hearts and minds of the Democratic base is on and Bernie most of all is not going to take his presence lying down.  As to Bernie, he and a number of other Democratic candidates including Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Corey Booker, Julian Castro and Beto O’Rourke spoke to a largely minority women audience at the She the People Forum in Texas yesterday.  Reactions indicate that the crowd was most impressed by Warren, with Harris also winning a lot of accolades but that Bernie’s shtick didn’t go over all that well, notable because energizing Black women voters, who consistently have higher voter participation rates than any other group, will be essential for winning both the nomination and the general election.   

Stonewalling:  Trump is officially in stonewall mode.  Yesterday, he told reporters that “We’re fighting all the subpoenas,” because “These aren’t, like, impartial people. The Democrats are trying to win 2020.”  Following those remarks the Justice Department announced that John Gore, a civil rights division official would “defy” a subpoena to testify about the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census ostensibly, something currently being considered by the Supreme Court, because the House Oversight Committee told him that though he could bring a private attorney to the hearing he wouldn’t be allowed to bring along a Justice Department lawyer but really because the White House has decided that they don’t want him or anyone else testifying. Under the direction of the White House, Carl Kline, the former head of White House personnel security, has already ignored a subpoena ordering him to appear for a deposition about overriding recommendations to deny security clearances for people like Jared and Ivanka. It’s growing increasingly clear that the official White House strategy is to force House Democrats to fight tooth and nail in the courts, over each and every one of these subpoenas, in the hopes of pushing as much testimony as possible off to some far away future date.  In most cases the Democrats would eventually win in court but by the time they do, no one would care and/or Trump would have won reelection.  This White House strategy could push Democratic leadership to move forward with impeachment proceedings sooner rather than later even though they would prefer for the TV viewing public to see more Trump administration officials talk about all those “bat sh-t crazy” things that Trump pushed them to do before going the impeachment route.  For their part Trump and his advisors believe that pushing the Democrats to pull the impeachment trigger now will play into their hands by allowing them to argue that those Democrats are just a bunch of sore losers who don’t want to advance legislation they just want to tarnish and unseat Trump. To that end yesterday Trump tweeted  “I DID NOTHING WRONG. If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only are there no “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” there are no Crimes by me at all. All of the Crimes were committed by Crooked Hillary, the Dems, the DNC and Dirty Cops - and we caught them in the act! We waited for Mueller and WON, so now the Dems look to Congress as last hope!”  Not surprisingly, Trump’s tweet shows a misunderstanding of the Constitution, impeachment proceedings are the responsibility of Congress, not the courts. However, his base and core twitter followers knows or care little about that crucial detail. Anyway, in an effort to look like he has any legislative plans, Trump plans to meet with Nancy and Chuck to discuss, infrastructure funding because when all else fails it’s time for another Infrastructure Week.  Trump may also want another infrastructure discussion to distract from what’s going on elsewhere, particularly in NY State, where its reported that despite Trump Inc. pushback  Deutsche Bank has started releasing some of the Trump financial records to state regulators.   

Cybersecurity:  Homeland Security is responsible for much more than protecting the southern border from those waves of marauding migrants.  The department is also responsible for cybersecurity and maintaining the integrity of the election infrastructure but those are functions that Trump doesn’t like to hear about largely because he views any references to election interference as an attack on the legitimacy of his 2016 victory.  The New York Times reports that concerned about what she saw going into the 2018 midterms, former Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen tried to get the White House to focus on preparing for Russia's efforts to influence the 2020 election but was told by Acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney not to bring her concerns up with Trump.  He told her it "wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”  Mulvaney doesn’t deny the truth of the Times report, instead he says that he doesn’t “remember” saying that.  Notably though Trump was quick to trumpet that Special Counsel Mueller found “NO COLLUSION,” he still hasn’t had a word to say about all of the things that Mueller revealed about the Russian’s 2016 election interference activities. Yesterday, taking a page from Trump’s book, VP Pence refused to directly respond to a  question about whether he regretted the campaign’s use of hacked emails in 2016 and whether he would pledge not to do so again, instead he repeated that the Mueller report found NO COLLUSION between the campaign and Russia.  All the Democratic candidates have gone on record with a cybersecurity pledge, promising  not to use any hacked or stolen date in their campaigns but then again they aren’t being advised by Rudy Giuliani who is on record saying that taking information from a hostile foreign government is a totally okay thing to do.  No doubt the Russians are watching and know Trump and Rudy’s position.  Another uneven playing field?    

Castles Behind Bars

No Testimony for You:  Trump did not stand in the way of then White House Don McGahn testifying before Special Counsel Mueller largely because his lawyers at that time advised him that cooperating with the Russia investigation was the best way to make it go away.  To a certain extent that strategy paid off, thought the investigation went on longer than Trump had hoped it would he escaped indictment when Mueller concluded that despite all of Trump and his team’s questionable behavior there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Trump had conspired with the Russians and passed on making any judgement on obstruction, well at least passed that one off to Congress.  However now, having either read the Mueller report, or more likely having learned about its damning contents from watching Fox, Trump is really, really regretting the decision to let McGahn testify, he never expected that McGahn would engage in so much truth telling and gut spilling about all his “bat sh-t crazy” demands.  So, though the damage has already been done, Trump is now doing all he can to prevent McGahn from appearing before the House Judiciary Committee.  Last night Trump told the Washington Post that he is opposed to current and former White House aides providing testimony to congressional panels and that as far as he is concerned complying with congressional requests was unnecessary since the White House had already cooperated with the Mueller probe.  “There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress where it’s very partisan — obviously very partisan.”  If Trump sticks with his statement to the Washington Post and exerts executive privilege, McGahn, who has already been subpoenaed, will be forced to choose between  honoring Trump’s “privilege” or being held in contempt of Congress.  It’s worth noting that having already allowed McGahn and all those other Trumpkins to speak with Mueller’s team, its not clear that Trump’s privilege claim will hold in the courts but that’s probably not the point, the strategy is to delay any testimony beyond the 2020 election.  Trump isn’t just standing in the way of McGahn, he’s also doing his best to prevent the sharing of any of his financial information.  On Monday, the newest set of lawyers hired by Trump and the Trump Organization filed suit against Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to block the subpoena for all those years of financial records from several Trump entities that Cummings is trying to get his hands on.  They claim that the subpoena for records from Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA, “lacks any legitimate legislative purpose, is an abuse of power, and is just another example of overreach by the president's political opponents."  Additionally, last night Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, who has got to know that he only gets to stay in the Trump cabinet by  keeping Trump’s tax returns hidden from public view, again delayed a decision on whether to turn over those returns to Congress, saying that the Treasury and Justice Departments needed until May 6 to assess the legality of what he called the “unprecedented” request.  Keeping tax returns under lock and key must be contagious, VP Pence who shared his before the election has caught the avoidance flu, since assuming office, he’s kept his secret too, something that really is unprecedented.  The bottom line is that Trump who is reported to be fuming about the contents of the Mueller report, all the things that his staff and former staff revealed about his irrational ways and the way that the press, including some parts of Fox, have been covering the story is no longer interested in cooperating with Congress about anything.  He’s also not all that interested in spending any more time with the press than he has to so he’s not going to this year’s White House Correspondent dinner, which isn’t surprising, he didn’t go last year either.  However, now he’s not letting anyone from the White House attend, yesterday he directed everyone, including the usual attendees from the White House press office, to cancel their tuxedos and Rent the Runway orders, they’re staying home too.    

Human Resources:  Jared Kushner, who hasn’t achieved Middle East peace yet, kind of put his foot in his mouth yesterday.  Speaking at a Time 100 event the usually camera shy Kushner, dismissed Russia’s 2016 election interference as a “couple of Facebook ads” and said the investigation of it was far more damaging to the country than anything the Russians did.  It’s well worth mentioning that Facebook estimates that those “couple” of Russian ads and social media posts reached 126 million Americans, about 10 million fewer than actually voted in the 2016 election, and that the Russians hacked accounts of the Democratic National Committee and leaked damaging information about Hillary Clinton at times that really, really mattered.  In response to those comments Shepard Smith of Fox News scorched Kushner for diminishing the Russian attack and for being “disingenuous and deceptive.”  More of Stephen Moore’s comments about women and their roles have come to light.  In 2014 he expressed his views on equal pay writing in the National Review that “the crisis is in America today isn’t about women’s wages; it’s about men’s wages.” He questioned “What are the implications of a society in which women earn more than men?” answering rhetorically “We don’t really know, but it could be disruptive to family stability. If men aren’t the breadwinners, will women regard them as economically expendable?”  No comment about that yet from the hand wringing Senator Susan Collins or for that matter from any of the other Republican female Senators, or male ones with wives and daughters who work.  For now Moore is still Trump’s Federal Reserve Board pick.  Things are going about as well as expected at the Department of Interior, moments after coal industry lobbyist David Bernhardt was confirmed by the Senate as the new Secretary the Interior Department’s Inspector General opened an investigation into his canoodling with people in his industry.  The Inspector General is now also looking into whether six other of the Department’s political appointees were involved in Interior actions dealing with their former employers, including a conservative Texas think-tank and the National Rifle Association. Though we haven’t heard about her for a while, Trump is expected to formally nominate Kelly Craft, the wife of a billionaire coal industry executive to serve as UN Ambassador, the slot that’s been empty since Nikki Haley jumped ship, part of her effort to distance herself from the Trump train.   The really underqualified Craft, who currently serves as Ambassador to Canada, is likely to make it through her confirmation hearings largely because Senator Mitch McConnell of coal friendly state Kentucky is all in on her nomination but the hearings aren’t expected to be pretty.  As to Mitch McConnell, no one thinks that it is much of a coincidence that after he lobbied for the lifting of sanctions against Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, Rusal, Deripaska’s company announced a $200 million investment in Kentucky.  Michael Cohen is due to start his prison sentence on May 6.  Though going away isn’t a good thing, the Daily Beast reports that the former Trump fixer/lawyer is going to one of the nicer “joints.”   He’ll be joining the Jersey Shore’s Michael Sorrentino A/K/A The Situation and Fyre Festival “flim-flammer” Billy McFarland at the Federal Correctional Institution Otisville which is located just an hour outside of NYC.  The facility is also known as the castle behind bars for its relatively cushy, by incarceration standards, accommodations.   For the record, Paul Manafort has already been transferred to his new home away from home, a minimum security prison near Scranton, Pennsylvania. On the Republican political front, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is still considering primarying Trump and Andy McKeon, Iowa’s longest-serving Republican legislator announced that he will be joining the Democratic Party because Trump is "a poor example for the nation and particularly for our children." That matters because Iowa is a swing state that Trump won in 2016.

Pizza and Beer

Easter Egg Lies:  Trump returned from Mar a Lago yesterday to oversee the annual Easter Egg Roll.  He used the opportunity to tell the crowd of children that the military, economy and unemployment rate were all great again because of him and then reassured one kid that, yes, he really was building that wall.  In response to press questions he said that he wasn’t worried about impeachment, because he’d been fully exonerated and you can’t be impeached when you “haven’t committed any high crimes and misdemeanors” and besides he’s doing a great job, just ask the wall obsessed egg rolling kid.  During the day he slammed the Mueller investigation, the one that he insists exonerated him, by insisting that no one ever disobeys his orders and falsely tweeting “Isn’t it amazing that the people who were closest to me, by far, and knew the Campaign better than anyone, were never even called to testify before Mueller. The reason is that the 18 Angry Democrats  knew they would all say ‘NO COLLUSION’ and only very good things!   Of course, many people close to him including Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski, Rob Porter, John Kelly, Reince Priebus, Jared Kushner, Richard Gates, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Don McGahn, to name a few were interviewed.  One of the names not on that list was Don Jr, who apparently wasn’t because he “declined” an invitation to be interviewed by Mueller, that said Mueller’s report did include many quotes from Junior, sourced from his texts, twitter feed, Senate testimony and Sean Hannity (!?!) interviews.  Despite Trump’s insistence that he can’t be impeached, he could be, that decision and the definition of what constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors rests with House leadership.  Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to House Democrats telling them that there are other ways to hold Trump accountable for his "highly unethical and unscrupulous behavior" besides initiating impeachment proceedings, that "We can investigate Trump without drafting articles (of impeachment).  We aren't going to go faster, we are going to go as fast as the facts take us..”   To that end, they’ve “invited” Attorney General Barr and Special Counsel Mueller to testify and late yesterday went one step further by subpoenaing former White House Counsel Don McGahn.  Democrats are particularly eager to get McGahn, whose 30 hours with Mueller’s team provided the framework for the obstruction section of the Mueller report, in front of the House camera for the public to hear and see, part of their strategy of further damaging Trump and his already diminished credibility in slow motion with the goal of convincing more and more of the public, that Trump is unfit for office.  Whether that strategy will work is anyone’s guess, but for what’s it’s worth, polls indicate that the fallout from the Mueller report has already impacted Trump’s ratings, his approval number has sunk by five points to 39%, the lowest since he took office.  As to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, he just wants to put the Mueller report behind him so that he can move on to better things, like dismantling the social safety net, defunding Planned Parenthood, stacking the courts and making sure none of the Democrat’s “socialist” plans, especially that Green New Deal thing, ever get passed.  He told a crowd in his home state of Kentucky that if he’s still the majority leader of the Senate after next year, none of those socialist things are going to pass the Senate. “They won't even be voted on. So think of me as the grim reaper. None of that stuff is going to pass. None of it." 

The Democrats:  Joe Biden hasn’t announced yet, but the Democrats did get another addition to their thundering herd of candidates.  Yesterday Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton, a former Marine with three degrees from Harvard, threw his hat into the ring.  Though I am not totally sure, I think his entrance into the race brings the number of Democrats seeking the presidency to nineteen.  Moulton is best known for having opposed Nancy Pelosi’s return to the Speakership.  He now admits that she’s doing a great job but stands by his decision to oppose her leadership. Senator Elizabeth Warren made some news yesterday by announcing a $1.25 trillion plan to reshape higher education by canceling most student loan debt and eliminating tuition at every public college.  She plans to pay for her plan with money from her proposed wealth tax, an idea that appeals to most people without $50 million in assets, but one that will probably never come to pass. When asked about the Warren student debt plan during one of the many townhalls that CNN hosted last night, Bernie Sanders said that he wasn’t up on the details because details aren’t his thing but that he was all in on free education. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s plan was much more realistic but far less sexy, probably another one of the reasons that she is having trouble gaining traction in the polls. She said that she wants to reduce student debt burdens but that her plan would involve expanded Pell Grant programs, free community college, and provisions permitting graduates to refinance their student loans. "Everything that I have proposed to you, I have found ways to pay for it that I think makes sense, that we can actually get done."  It’s not clear that practical works right now.

Human Resources:  Pizza executive Herman Cain has pulled himself out of the running for a Federal Reserve Board slot because he just realized that the position doesn’t pay enough and he really wants to make more money, that and the fact that Trump told him to pull out because he doesn’t have the votes to be confirmed.  Trump’s other potential nominee Stephen Moore who isn’t all that qualified for the job either might or at the very least should be facing confirmation difficulties too.  Some old interviews where he called it a “travesty” that women feel free to play sports with men and that women should be banned from refereeing, announcing or beer vending at men's college basketball games, asking if there was any area in life "where men can take vacation from women" surfaced yesterday.  Although he made these remarks in at least four separate settings, taking a page from the Trump Access Hollywood “grab them by the whatever” playbook he insists that he’d only been kidding.  Just more some more of that locker room talk, right?   

We're Screwed

Conspiracy: Thursday morning, flanked by a somber faced and silent Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and some bearded dude, a former Southern District of NY attorney, Attorney General Barr presented still another “summary” of Special Counsel Mueller’s Russia Report.  Mimicking Trump’s usual twitter patter he repeated several times that Mueller had found NO COLLUSION between Trump and the Russians. He then went on to say that Trump, who had refused to grant the Special Counsel an interview, who had refused to answer any questions related to obstruction and who more than thirty times responded that he “couldn’t recall” things in the written answers he had his lawyers provide Mueller about Russia, had been incredibly cooperative with the investigation and that he couldn’t be blamed for any of the many things he did that looked, walked and quacked like obstruction because he, in his own words feared that he would be f-cked by the very fact of an investigation, was mad as hell and justifiably frustrated and couldn’t help himself.  And anyway, what’s a little bit of obstruction between friends.  Okay, he didn’t say that last part, but he might as well have because he also said that by not reaching a firm conclusion on obstruction, Mueller had tossed the ball back to him and he, ever the Trump loyalist, had been justified in concluding that there was none.  The End.  Well not really the end.  A few hours later, the Justice Department released the much waited for redacted version of the Mueller report. To be honest I’ve only made it through Mueller’s summary sections and a few dozen news reports and articles, but from what I’ve read and heard it’s clear that the Russians engaged in a lot of election interference, manipulated social media, hacked into servers and reached out to a lot of very receptive Trumpkins.  Mueller’s focus was on criminal conspiracy, not collusion; though he couldn’t find any “jury convincing” evidence  he found a lot of smoke, lying and bad acts.  There were plenty of bad actors, outright criminals like Paul Manafort who really did share Trump polling data with Russia operatives, liars who got caught and were prosecuted like Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos, likely liars who didn’t get prosecuted like Donald Trump Jr and Erik Prince, and those who were smart enough to “lose” their records or use encrypted communication applications such as WhatsApp like Jared Kushner.  And all of those people who were earlier cited as either Russian spies or oligarchs acting on behalf of Putin, like Konstantin Kilimnik and Yevgheny Prizoghin, they did do all of the bad things that they were reported to have done.  Even the strange story about Peter Smith, the Republican operative who died shortly after telling a Wall Street Journal  reporter that he had worked with Michael Flynn to find Hillary’s emails, was true.  Mueller concluded that Trump and his team were receptive to the Russian outreach, that the Russian’s ramped up their activities in response to their willingness and  encouragement, but that he couldn’t find enough to prove a bullet proof conspiracy case. Also, reading between the redactions some things, probably in relation to Roger Stone and or WikiLeaks, are still being investigated   

Obstruction:  Mueller’s report addressed ten areas of  obstruction,  essentially concluding that had Trump been anyone else and had Mueller not felt constrained by the Justice Department’s practice of not indicting sitting presidents, he would have concluded that Trump had obstructed bigly but instead he threw the whole obstruction thing back to Congress while also suggesting that Trump could be prosecuted once his term ends, assuming that the statute of limitations for those obstructive acts has not expired, a big “if” that depends on Trump getting voted out in 2020.  As to all those obstructive acts, Trump tried very hard to stop the investigation.  He tried to convince former FBI Director Comey to end it, he tried to get Comey to lay off former national security advisor Flynn, he tried to get Flynn’s deputy KT McFarland to write a letter that lied about directions he had given to Flynn concerning talking to Russian Ambassador Kislyak about sanctions, he tried to convince former Attorney General Sessions to “un-recuse” from the investigation to get him to fire or hem in Special Counsel Mueller and he tried really hard to get several of his aides and former aides to fire Mueller. Most notably Trump repeatedly directed former White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller but McGahn refused saying that he would resign before triggering what he firmly believed would be a Watergate like Saturday Night Massacre.  Most comically, Trump dictated instructions to Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager who wasn’t even a White House employee, directing him to tell Sessions to fire and/or restrict Mueller or else, a directive that Lewandowski stored in his safe but didn’t follow through on although when further pressed by Trump he did try to get then Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn to do the dirty deed but Dearborn also let it slide.  Though she had little to do with the actual obstruction, the Mueller report proves once and for all that Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a liar, or at least that she lies to the public.  Sanders admitted to Mueller that her public claim that “countless” members of the FBI had told her how absolutely thrilled they were that Trump had fired Comey was a total fabrication.  Sanders, ever the Trump loyalist, is still reserving her truth telling for times when she’s under oath; this weekend she was back to telling lies, claiming that her statement about Comey was just a slip of the tongue, blaming Democrats for her mendacity.  Trump’s other spokespeople were also out all weekend trying to diminish the impact of the damaging parts of the Mueller report.  Spokes lawyer Giuliani continues to insist that taking dirt from the Russians was and is totally fine and like Trump he insists that the real story is that the investigation was triggered by nefarious Democrats, that Hillary and all those Democrats at the FBI should be investigated and that Mueller’s investigation was flawed because he should have spent his time investigating Hillary and the FBI “love birds” Peter Strzok and Lisa Page instead of digging into anything Trump.  Similarly, while her husband George responded to the report by calling for  Congress to remove  the “cancer” of Trump, Kellyanne spent Sunday spinning Trump’s innocence.   Most Republicans left town for the holidays, doing their best to avoid getting caught on record saying anything about the Mueller Report but two of the usual suspects did speak up.  Maine’s Senator Susan Collins did some of her usual handwringing saying  the report provided an “unflattering portrayal” of Trump and Utah newbie Mitt Romney  aid he was “sickened” by all the Trump administration lying, a comment that earned him a Trump slam tweet.  Notably North Carolina’s Senator Richard Burr, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee remained undercover all weekend, he can’t be all that happy that the Mueller report revealed that he, like one time House Intel Chair Devon Nunes, had served as a backdoor channel of information about the FBI investigation to the White House.

Democrats:  Though there is certainly enough in the report to justify the initiation of House impeachment proceedings, House Judiciary Chair Nadler calls it a roadmap to impeachment, House leadership is likely to keep holding hearings, calling in such luminaries as AG Barr and Special Counsel Mueller, before moving forward with the big “I” largely because they know that the Republican dominated Senate would never vote to convict Trump but also because they are focused on the 2020 elections and can’t quite figure out how impeachment hearings will impact those very key elections.   For her part Senator/Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is already on record calling for the initiation of impeachment proceedings, saying that not doing so “would inflict great and lasting damage on this country, and it would suggest that both the current and future Presidents would be free to abuse their power in similar ways.”  For the record, Senator Warren is also a huge Game of Thrones fan, and must be a very fast reader because in addition to digesting the whole Mueller report, she also found time to write some GOT commentary, for the record she’s all in on Daenerys Targaryen.  As to 2020,  former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe has taken his hat out of the crowded field, he will not be running for president.

The World: The North Korean’s are saber rattling again, playing with some of their weaponry and demanding that Trump pull Secretary of State Pompeo from  future negotiating sessions because he, unlike Trump, doesn’t do enough kowtowing to the little rocket man, Kim Jong un.  Yellow vest anti-government demonstrators in Paris are really furious with all of those super rich people who have contributed large amounts of money to rebuild Notre Dame mostly because they don’t understand why they can’t get their cut.  And a little known Islamist Jihadist Group called National Thowheeth Jama’ath has been blamed for the tragic terrorist bombings that resulted in the deaths of 290 people and the injuries to 500 more in Sri Lanka over the weekend.  On a more uplifting note, though she hasn’t had her baby yet, Megan Markle’s due date must be imminent. It’s reported that her mom Dora Ragland has arrived in London to be by her side.     

Egg Roll Please......

It's Mueller Time:  The redacted Mueller Report will be released today sometime after 11 AM but not before Attorney General Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein hold a 9:30 AM press conference during which Barr is expected to once again provide his personal, very Trump friendly, overview of the report’s contents. Notably neither Special Counsel Mueller nor any members of his team are expected to attend the conference, an indication that they are keeping their distance from Barr, possibly because they aren’t all that happy about his efforts to spin their work product into something that that it isn’t, an exoneration of Trump.  It’s extremely unusual that the press conference is taking place before the report’s release and even odder that Trump, the subject of much of the report was the one to reveal that there would even be a press conference.  His reveal came during a radio interview where he said that “You'll see a lot of very strong things come out tomorrow,” whatever that means.   Trump also indicated that depending on his mood, he might follow the Barr presentation with a press conference of his own giving him another opportunity to scream NO COLLUSION, TOTAL VINDICATION before everyone leaves town for the combined Easter/Passover holiday weekend.  That’s not the only peculiar thing about this process; last night the NY Times revealed that Barr has thoroughly briefed the White House lawyers about the contents of the report which explains why he refused to respond to any questions on that subject during his recent Senate testimony, instead mumbling something nonsensical about everyone just having to wait for that plane to land.  It also explains Rudy Giuliani’s assertion that he and the other White House lawyers, including the very faithful Jay Sekulow, have already prepared a rebuttal to the report.  Among other things that rebuttal is expected to attack the origins, or as Trump has been known to say, the oranges, of the investigation and the credibility of the individuals who conducted it.   As to Barr, Just Security, the online national law security forum based at NYU, reports that he has a history of obscuring inconvenient documents.  In 1989 when he was the Assistant Attorney General for the George HW Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel he misleadingly summarized an OLC opinion, one that concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the consent of the foreign state, an opinion that paved the way for the abduction of Panama’s leader Manuel Noriega.  He did a pretty good job, the true contents of that opinion remained hidden for years.  Getting back to the Mueller report, the Washington Post reports that it will be only “lightly redacted,” that it will “offer a detailed blow-by-blow of Trump’s alleged conduct, analyzing tweets, private threats and other episodes at the center of Mueller’s inquiry” while explaining that Mueller found that he couldn’t conclude that Trump was guilty of obstruction because he hadn’t been able to get to Trump’s intent.  The Democratic Chairs of the House Committees, most notably Judiciary Chair Nadler, are fairly furious that the press conference is taking place before any of them get to see the report, they’ve called for it to be cancelled but like a lot of things they call for, that’s not going to happen.  However, as a result of a motion filed by Trump’s long term buddy Roger Stone’s lawyers, Judge Amy Jackson Berman has order that they and select members of the House, a group that will probably include Nadler and Intel Chair Schiff should get another less redacted version of the report, one that reveals more information about what led to Stone’s indictment.

Barring:  AG Barr has been a busy bunny.  In addition to prepping the Trump White House and preparing another summary of the Mueller report he’s also doing his best to cut back on the rights of some of those migrants crossing over from Mexico.  On Tuesday he  unilaterally revoked the right of asylum seekers who enter the US illegally to ask an immigration judge for release on bond.  If Barr’s ruling is allowed to go into effect, the only way for an asylum seeker to be released from detention during the weeks or months it takes for his or her case to be heard by a judge would be for ICE to allow him/her to be released on parole. Not surprisingly, the ACLU plans to sue to block the ruling.  The ruling which is not scheduled to go into effect for 90 days does not apply to migrants with children or to those entering through any of the  “legal” crossing points, the ones that are backed-up because of the government’s current policy to “meter” the number of people who are allowed to seek asylum at any given time.  As to those immigrants that Trump, Barr and little Stevie Miller are trying so hard to stop at the border, this morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that the country has become increasingly dependent on them “to fill jobs and fund programs like Social Security and Medicare” and that their inflow is contributing to, rather than diminishing economic growth.

Human Resources: During an interview conducted while she was in Africa on her women empowerment tour, first daughter Ivanka confirmed that her father really did offer her the World Bank president job but that she turned him down because she really likes what she’s doing whatever that is.  She also revealed that he has offered her a few other jobs, probably the Ambassador to the UN slot, she refused to go into any specifics but confirmed that she had turned down those offers too. She also insisted that she had been telling the truth when she’d earlier told ABC’s Abby Huntsman that she had gotten her security clearance the “regular way,” saying that all those reports that her father had weighed in on her behalf were just more FAKE NEWS.  It’s hard to tell if she was serious as her face was so expressionless and frozen, an indication that she may have inherited that “lying with ease” gene or the result of too much Botox or most likely as the result of both. On the Federal Reserve front, although Trump has hinted that its time for him to withdraw his nomination, one time presidential candidate and pizza purveyor, Herman Cain insists that he’s not going anywhere even though he knows that he doesn’t have enough Senate votes to be confirmed.  Lastly, Politico Reports that Energy Secretary Rick Perry who has managed to keep a low profile for the past two years wants out of the administration and is already prepping his deputy to step into his position.  There had been rumors that Perry was under consideration to replace Nielsen as the Homeland Security Secretary, but Perry, who was relatively friendly to immigrants during his years as Texas Governor wasn’t all that interested.   

Happy Passover and Easter. Chocolate Eggs and Matza for all!     

Kindle Time

Reading List: The redacted Mueller report is due out to tomorrow. Trump lawyer/fixer Rudy Giuliani asserts that he’s already written a 34 to 35 page counter report for the White House to release at the very moment that Attorney General Barr drops the redacted Mueller report.  To the extent that Rudy is telling the truth, something that in and of itself is suspect, the implication is that the Trump team has had a preview of the Mueller report, and that is possible as last week, during his Senate testimony, Barr was intentionally vague about whether he’d “spoken” to the White House about the report’s contents. Of course it’s also possible that there is no counter report or that Rudy and company went ahead and wrote one based on what they fear is in the actual report, a risky strategy that could have them countering items that they know Trump or his team did but either weren’t covered in the Mueller report in the first place or were redacted by the Trump friendly Barr.  In any case if you are interested in getting your own copy, text and audible versions of the redacted report, are already available for pre-order on Amazon.com.  And if you are willing to wait a few days and care, Alan Dershowitz is planning to release a version with his very own Trump friendly commentary.  As to the report itself, the House and the press are still pushing to receive an unredacted version. In response to a Buzzfeed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to see the whole Mueller Report,  though he said it was premature to rule in favor of the press, Judge Reggie Walton of the US District Court for the District of Columbia put the Justice Department on notice that too much redaction wouldn’t fly with him when he said that “Obviously there is a real concern about whether there will be transparency … I hope that the government will be as transparent as it can be, the attorney general has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the American public to be concerned about whether there will be full transparency." Give that judge points for stating the obvious.  As to the House, to the extent that House Judiciary Chair Nadler is unsatisfied with what he gets to see, he, together with Speaker Pelosi, could opt to initiate impeachment proceedings because even if they aren’t prepared to move forward with impeachment, just the fact that they’ve started an impeachment process would bolster their chances of convincing the courts that Congress is entitled to see the full report.  Moving beyond the report to all of the other things that the House has requested and subpoenaed from the White House like how Jared and Ivanka got their security clearances, what Trump discussed in those private conversations with Putin and absolutely anything having to do with Trump’s finances, White House Counsel Cipollone has put Congress on notice that he isn’t all that interested in complying with any of their requests or subpoenas, instead the White House is prepared to fight almost everything in court, a process that could extend well beyond this term. That said, the White House might not be able to prevent the banks, most notably Deutsche Bank from cooperating with Congress so some of Trump’s financial information might show up sooner rather than later.

2020: Unless their plans change, the Democratic National Committee will not be broadcasting any of their debates on Fox TV.  However, their ban doesn’t preclude any of the Democratic candidates from appearing on Fox and like it or not Fox watchers vote, and some of them might even vote for Democrats, at least that’s Senator Bernie Sanders’ position, and anyway he’s not a Democrat so he doesn’t take instructions from the DNC.  Monday night Fox hosted and aired a Bernie town hall from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  The crowd took Fox hosts Brett Baier and Martha MacCallum by surprise with their response to what the Fox hosts thought was a gotcha question about Bernie’s Medicare For All plan; even though a significant percentage of them said that they had health care coverage through their employers they raised their hands in support and applauded enthusiastically for Medicare for All.  During the town hall Bernie needled Baier and MacCallum about how much Trump watches Fox news and apparently Trump was watching and wasn’t all that happy about seeing Bernie on “his” station in “his” part of Pennsylvania.  Yesterday he tweeted “So weird to watch Crazy Bernie on @FoxNews. Not surprisingly, @BretBaier and the “audience” was so smiley and nice. Very strange, and now we have @donnabrazile?”  Donna Brazile is the former DNC head who is now a Fox commentator, something that appears to be irking Trump to no end and doesn’t seem to be making many of her former Democratic colleagues all that happy either.   The ratings  were the highest for any town hall held so far this cycle, an indication that anyone who thinks that Bernie isn’t a real contender for the Democratic nomination this time around is wrong and also proving that appealing to Fox viewers isn’t such a bad idea, a message that has already gotten to Democratic contenders Pete Buttigieg, Eric Swalwell, Tim Ryan and Julian Castro who all appear to be negotiating for some of that Fox time.     

Another Veto:  That bipartisan resolution that would have forced an end to US military involvement in Saudi Arabia’s Yemen war, #fuggedaboutit.  Yesterday Trump rejected it with another veto, his second since vetoing the resolution against his border emergency declaration.  Apparently, despite what the NY Times calls his “deeply rooted instincts to withdraw the United States from bloody foreign conflicts” pushing back against Congressional infringement on his authority and staying on good terms with Saudi Arabia is much more important to Trump than preventing the murder of civilians or famine.  Got to keep those priorities straight, right?

Is Paris Burning?

Always Mueller:   Yesterday the Justice Department revealed plans to release the redacted version of the Mueller report on Thursday, a release suspiciously timed to coincide with the beginning of the Easter and Passover Holidays.  The White House has already been briefed “in broad strokes” about the report and appears to be concerned about what Barr intends to leave unredacted because the “good news is already out there.”  In particular, they are reported to be most concerned about what former White House Counsel Don McGahn told Mueller’s team about Trump’s “obstructive” actions during the thirty hours that he spent with them.  For his part Trump continues to insist that he’s been fully exonerated but his tweet screeching of things like “Mueller, and the A.G. based on Mueller findings (and great intelligence), have already ruled No Collusion, No Obstruction, These were crimes committed by Crooked Hillary, the DNC, Dirty Cops and others! INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS!” betrays his concern.  The Mueller report and what it does or doesn’t reveal is only part of what is bugging Trump right now.  In addition to all those migrants at the border, he is also very alarmed by the attempts to get hold of his financial information and in that regard he is right to be worried.  Yesterday, the House Intelligence and Financial Services Committees led by Adam Schiff and Maxine Waters respectively, issued subpoenas for records from Deutsche Bank and a number of other financial institutions seeking information regarding Trump’s business ventures.  The subpoena to Deutsche Bank has been characterized as “friendly.” It’s been reported that Deutsche has been cooperating with the committees for some time and is prepared to release an already agreed upon trove of documents.  The Elijah Cummings led House Oversight Committee is also into the friendly subpoena thing, at their request, Chairman Cummings plans to send one to Mazars USA, the accounting firm responsibility for preparing many of the financial statements that Trump and the Trump organization used for loan applications, the ones where he exaggerated the size and value of his assets.  Trump’s newest attorneys, William S. Consovoy and Stefan Passantino  are so concerned about what the Mazars’ files will reveal that they’ve preemptively put the firm “on notice,” threatening legal action if they comply with the House subpoena. Despite all of these worries, Trump found time to weigh in on the Notre Dame fire and Boeing’s 737 Max problem.  On the conflagration front, he tweet advised French fire fighters that “Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!"  The French Civil Defense Department made it clear that they were not all that interested in taking advice from Trump, they responded in both French and English that “Hundreds of firemen of the Paris Fire Brigade are doing everything they can to bring the terrible #NotreDame fire under control. All means are being used, except for water-bombing aircrafts which, if used, could lead to the collapse of the entire structure of the cathedral.”  As to the 737 Max, Trump is all in on a name change, forget about fixing the equipment’s fatal  flaw, just call the plane something else and put it back in the air, that’s what he would do.

Prizes for All: Trump was so thrilled with the outcome of this year’s Masters’ Golf Tournament that he announced plans to award Tiger Woods the Presidential Medal of Freedom, because who can’t relate to a comeback by a great golfing buddy who cheated on his wife a few zillion times.  Unfortunately for Trump the Pulitzer Prize committee didn’t consult with him before announcing this year’s prizes.  If they had he probably would have nixed a number of this year’s awards starting with the one to the New York Times whose reporters received the explanatory reporting prize for their  18-month investigation into how Trump and his siblings avoided paying roughly half a billion dollars’ worth of taxes.  Similarly he probably would have put the kibosh on the  national reporting prize that the Wall Street Journal won for disclosing the clandestine “hush” payoffs made before the 2016 election to Trump’s playmate and adult film star honeys.  On a more serious note, the South Florida Sun Sentinel won the prize for public service, considered the most prestigious of the Pulitzers, for documenting the massacre of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette won for Breaking News Reporting for its coverage of the shooting deaths of 11 people and the wounding of seven others at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill.  Though both papers deserved their prizes it’s a sad commentary on the times that mass murder by lunatics with guns are so prevalent.

2020:  Bernie Sanders finally released ten years of tax returns, he’s a millionaire now and he wants you to know that you can be one too if you write a really good book that everyone rushes out to buy.  Kamala Harris out did him, over the weekend she released fifteen years of her returns.  She’s and her husband are millionaires too.   Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, who was the VP candidate on the Libertarian ticket in 2020,  is also very wealthy, and prepared to spend some of his money on what will be a Quixotic run for the Republican nomination for president.  Still, if spending money yelling about and at Trump makes him happy, why not?