Malware and Swimsuits

Trump as Trump:  Trump was in fine form yesterday.  He lashed out at Puerto Rico again, calling local lawmakers grossly incompetent, adding that San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, one of his favorite targets was also crazed, an indication of just how much the outspoken critic of his inadequate hurricane relief  gets under his skin.  Then with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg by his side, Trump again accused Germany of failing to bear its share of NATO’s defense obligations, adding it was fair for him to criticize Germany because his father had been born there, an outright lie, his father Fred was born in the Bronx. During the same press conference, when answering a question about the Mueller report, the one he used to say should be released in its entirety but that he now says should be hidden under a rock somewhere, he tried three times to attack the the origins of the Russia investigation, instead attacking oranges, leading members of the press to ponder if his garbled language was another sign of dementia or just the result of having ingested too much tanning spray. During the day Trump further backed down on his promise of a new Republican designed health care plan, not because he doesn’t hope that Obamacare will implode or be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court but because Senate Majority Leader McConnell, who is himself up for reelection in 2020, gave him a stern talking to about the dangers of going down the health care rabbit hole again in the run up to the election.  Trump’s revised, McConnell approved, tactic is to slam the Democrats’ Medicare for all mantra as a socialist ploy, one that combined with the Green New Deal, the plan that he is now referring to as the foolish idea pushed by that young bartender woman from his father’s true birthplace, will turn the USA into Cuba or, possibly worse,  Venezuela.  Part of that spiel includes his insistence that on cloudy days solar energy will fail miserably blacking out TV sets during key football plays, Hail Mary passes or those important #TakeTheKnee moments and that turbine noise causes cancer.  Though Trump insists that national security is more important than trade, he is also showing signs of backing off of his threat to completely close down the Mexican border. Yesterday he complimented Mexico for its improved efforts to rein in border crossings, even though Mexican officials insist that they haven’t aren’t doing anything different.  Apparently Trump’s economic gurus are trying really hard to impress upon him the damage that closing the border would do to the economy.  Trump hasn’t bought into their argument yet but word is that he was really taken by their very pretty slides and all their colorful bullet points. Trump wasn’t the only one garbling his speech yesterday, White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley tried to defend Trump’s claim that he had given that ungrateful and undeserving “country” Puerto Rico more than $91 billion of aid, a fantastical made up and false number.  During his Trump defense, Gidley referred to Puerto Rico as “that country” three times.  Later in the day, he apologized  for that “slip of the tongue,” admitting that Puerto Rico was part of the US, emphatically denying that anyone in the administration named Trump wishes it wasn’t.

Democrats:  Yesterday the Elijah Cummings led House Oversight Committee voted to authorize four subpoenas related to two issues: White House Security clearance procedures and the administration’s attempts to include a controversial question about citizenship in the upcoming US census.  Although the vote was largely along party lines, with just one Republican joining in with the Democrats on the census concern, the fact that anything was put up for a vote was in and of itself unusual.  Under Republican control the whole vote thing had been dispensed with altogether.  All four subpoenas have already been served.  Separately the House Judiciary Committee is expected to vote today to subpoena the full, unredacted Mueller report and all the related underlying evidence.  Pressure is also being put on Attorney General Barr to ask the judge overseeing the Mueller grand jury judge to lift grand jury secrecy, a request that has already been made by a Journalist advocacy group.  Their legal argument, which is not without precedent, is that “the court should enable the release of the Special Counsel’s Report to the public to the greatest extent possible….. and the grand jury material the Attorney General has proposed to redact therein—is of unique public and historical significance...”  In other words, grand jury testimony was released during Watergate and how else is the public going to learn who did what to whom if it doesn’t get released here.  On the 2020 election front, Senator Bernie Sanders who has still not released his tax returns has released his fund raising take.  He raised an impressive $18 million during the first quarter, less than either Hillary or Obama did during their first quarters but still a substantial number.  Though Senator Amy Klobuchar hasn’t released her fundraising numbers yet, she did release twelve years of her tax returns. And more women have accused former VP and possible presidential candidate Joe Biden of inappropriate hugging and other such actions though none suggest that his intentions were evil. Biden and his supporters appear to be flummoxed by all of this, one of his selling points has always been his compassion and personal touch, it turns out that that touch is no longer acceptable.  They are now pointing fingers at the Bernie campaign, asserting that, despite their denial, that a wing of the Berniac contingent has been digging up the accusers.  For his part, Trump is loving it, last night during a speech to Republicans, he said "I was going to call him. I don't know him well. I was going to say, 'Welcome to the world, Joe. You having a good time, Joe? Are you having a good time?”   

Den of Spies:  It turns out that Mar a Lago really is a den of spies, or wannabee spies.  Yesterday, the Miami Herald reported that Federal authorities have filed charges against Yujing Zhang, a Chinese woman who gained access to Mar a Lago on Saturday by convincing Secret Service agents in broken English that she was meeting up with a club member to go swimming. She didn’t get far after a much sharper receptionist grew suspicious when the woman, who by then was speaking perfect English, claimed that she was there to attend a non-existent United Nations Friendship Event between China and the United States that evening.  After she was detained,  Secret Service agents searched her belongings and found multiple electronic devices including four cellphones, a laptop computer, an external "hard drive type" device and a thumb drive loaded with malware but no bathing suit.  According to the Herald, the woman also has some kind of a connection to Chinese entrepreneur Cindy Yang, the prior owner of the now infamous Orchids of Asia Day Spa/massage parlor who has marketed her access to Trump and Mar a Lago and who is suspected of having ties to Chinese government authorities. One of the Republican members of the House Oversight Committee attacked Democrats for being so concerned about those twenty-five fine people who had their security clearance rejections overridden by Trump and his designated enforcer by pointing out that one of those people was just a custodian, so why would it matter.  Well Zhang was just a “swimmer” and Yang is just a “spa owner,” it looks like security clearance procedures do matter, or at least they should.  Just another day in Trump world, Swiss cheese security and all.