Cliff Barrs

Three Mexicos:  It was just another normal weekend in Trump’s America.  Trump played golf, stopped aid to three desperate Latin American countries, threatened to close the border with Mexico, sent his minions out to defend indefensible policies and continued his mission of rebranding the Republican party as the party of health care.  And for good measure, despite Melania’s #BeBest campaign or maybe inspired by the irony of it all, his campaign started selling t-shirts emblazoned with a cartoonish picture of a clown nosed, pencil necked House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.  The  $500 plus million Latin American aid cut and Mexico border closing threat reflect Trump’s fury at the increasing number of people, largely family units, seeking refugee status at the southern border.  Trump is correct when he says that the number of refugees is up, however he’s wrong when he says that the figures are at historically high levels.  What is different is the make-up of the migrants, right now the mix includes more women and children than in the past, a reflection of the desperate conditions in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, the three countries that they are coming from Moreover, the massing at the border and the increases in illegal crossings are partially attributable to his Homeland Security Department’s policy of creating bottlenecks at legal border crossings by “metering” the number of people who can enter legally.  There are no easy solutions to this problem, but one thing is for certain, cutting aid intended to address starvation and violence, the conditions spurring mothers to make the dangerous trek north, won’t help and is likely to be counterproductive and doing it at the same time that a Democratic Congressional delegation was meeting with leaders in El Salvador, as Trump did, is even more absurd.  In response to Trump’s command, the State Department announced that they are making plans to divert the money elsewhere, WALL maybe?  It’s not clear that they can do that without Congressional approval, but that won’t stop them from trying.  The concept of actually closing the Mexico border is even more ridiculous, it will cause financial harm to the economy of border states, decrease trade, impact the availability of fresh vegetables and cause havoc for those who legally cross the border on a daily basis.  Trump who doesn’t understand trade economics doesn’t get that, so he tweeted “With a deficit like we have with Mexico and have had for many years, closing the border will be a profit-making operation."  Wrong again, approximately $1.5 billion worth of commerce happens along the US-Mexico border every day and nearly half a million people cross the border legally every day through Texas ports of entry alone.  His supporters at Fox News are a bit confused too, the chyron running across the screen while they reported the story said that “Trump  cuts aid to three Mexicos,” maybe because to Fox and Trump countries with largely Spanish speaking populations and people who don’t resemble Swedes are all the same?   As to Obamacare, Axios reports that despite directing his Justice Department to support efforts to have Obamacare declared unconstitutional, Trump really doesn’t expect the Supreme Court to rule that the program is illegal he just believes that he can win points with voters by claiming that the Republicans have a better plan, one that he insists will lower costs and protect people with pre-existing conditions, even though they don’t have such a plan.  As back up, he’s directed three Republicans,  Senator Barrasso of Wyoming, Senator Cassidy of Louisiana and newbie Senator Scott of Florida to come up with a Republican plan.  Senators Barrasso and Cassidy are medical doctors, Scott is not but he does have a background in medicine, he was formerly the CEO of a company that plead guilty to and paid $1.7 billion in penalties and fines for committing Medicaid and Medicare fraud and while he was the Governor of Florida though at times he promised to sign the state up to the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, he never did.     

Democrats:  Former VP Joe Biden hasn’t formally announced his candidacy for president and after this weekend’s news he might be having second thoughts.  Lucy Flores, a Nevada politician, claims that he “made her feel uncomfortable” in 2014 by kissing her on the back of her head.  Though she said that she didn’t believe that he was sexually accosting her she was made to feel uneasy, and to her that’s disqualifying; odds are she has never ridden an NYC subway.  Biden responded that “In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort, and not once - never - did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention."  Kellyanne Conway who works for a man who at last count was credibly accused of sexually harassing somewhere in the neighborhood of eighteen women responded that she thinks “Biden has a big problem here because he calls it affection and handshakes while his party calls it completely inappropriate.” Well she’s right in pointing out that some Democratic candidates including Senator Warren who says that she’s camp Flores on this one will use it to try to disqualify Biden and she and Trump are probably giving each other high fives in celebration of the way that virtually every news organization ran with the story.  Just the idea of Conway weighing in on Biden’s alleged impropriety is an indication that this #MeToo movement has gone off the rails.  At least one Democratic candidate is cutting Biden some slack, while saying that we need to change the culture to make women feel more comfortable, Bernie Sanders who has himself been accused of fostering a hostile work environment,  said that absent other accusations he thinks that Biden should be cut some slack.  For the record, Sanders still hasn’t released any of his tax returns.

Barr’s Cliff Notes:  We learned on Friday that at close to four hundred pages, the full Mueller Report is just a wee bit more detailed than the four pages of Cliff Notes that Barr released last weekend.   Barr has walked back his four page “exoneration” a bit by saying that he never intended it to be a summary, just a way for Trump to get a jump on the news cycle, he then went on to say that he is working with Special Counsel Mueller to produce a version of the Mueller Report for public consumption and that he expects to have one ready by mid-April but no sooner because the public needs to get Trump’s “no collusion, full exoneration” mantra more fully absorbed into their brain matter before anything that could disabuse that premise gets released.   It’s still not clear whether the version of the report that gets released will be revealing or whether it will be so chock full of redactions so as to render it unreadable.  Also, though Barr said that he’s working without White House oversight, no one really believes that Trump and his devious lawyer/fixer Giuliani won’t step in at some point to take out anything that they don’t want the public to see. House Judiciary Chairman Nadler who spent part of his weekend on the EL Salvador junket is still insisting that the full report be released by tomorrow. Neither he nor his Democratic colleagues or the 77% of us who still want to see the full Mueller report are likely to be satisfied anytime soon or ever.    

Other News:  The Brexit situation remains inexplicable.  Something called a “soft Brexit” may or may not be on the table now, not that anyone knows what that is.  Turkey’s President Erdogan suffered some serious local election losses this weekend after voters in the capital of Ankara and, subject to final vote counts,  possibly even in the business capital of Istanbul turned against his party.  Trump Cabinet member Linda McMahon, the head of the Small Business Administration, announced that she is leaving.  She is moving to chair Trump’s 2020 PAC.  Unlike other Trumpkins who’ve been forced out of the administration to faux PAC positions, she’s leaving in good standing and really will be helping Trump raise money.  Lastly, though it’s been out of the headlines for a bit, the investigator looking into the release of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ sexting selfies is once again insisting that the Saudis were involved in the hacking of Bezos’ personal data as retribution for the Washington Post’s coverage of the Khashoggi story.  The investigator reports that he has turned his evidence over to federal authorities.