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?