Say What?

Oops: Yesterday in the aftermath of former Special Counsel Mueller’s pop-up news conference Trump woke up with Russia on his mind and tweeted "Russia, Russia, Russia! That's all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax...And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected. It was a crime that didn't exist." With that tweet, he inadvertently admitted what Mueller concluded and the intelligence agencies have been saying for some time, that Russia contributed to his 2016 election victory.   Once he realized what he had admitted, he pulled the tweet.  Shortly afterwards during a brief press moment on the White House lawn he responded to reporters’ questions about his  “accidental” admission by defensively shouting "Russia did not help me get elected. You know who got me elected? You know who got me elected? I got me elected. Russia did not help me at all."  The press also questioned him about reports that the Pentagon had gone out of its way to hide the USS John McCain from his view during his Memorial Day sojourn to see Sumo wrestling in Japan.  Trump replied that he had only just learned about that little incident and had nothing to do with it but then complimented whoever had done it, saying that they were only trying to make him happy because everyone knows how much he hates McCain, the man who doomed Obamacare repeal with his errant thumb.  Later in the day, Trump tried to walk back that comment by asserting that the story about the carrier being hidden from view was just “fake news” but the damage had been done.  Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan will now have one more thing to ‘splain during what is expected to be his contentious Senate confirmation hearing.  A number of Senators from both sides of the aisle are already upset about the administration’s pre-Memorial weekend decision to invoke an obscure state-of-emergency provision allowing the sale of billions of dollars in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates without giving Congress a chance to block the sale.  Before getting on his helicopter Trump also shared a few choice words about Mueller, once again pulling out the debunked story that the much “conflicted” Mueller had accepted the special counsel assignment only because he hadn’t been offered the FBI Director slot, the one he didn’t want. Then Trump threw in his oft repeated statement about Mueller’s eighteen Clinton loving agents, as well as a new one about how much Mueller, that never Trumper, really hates him.  He also weighed in on impeachment, with a nonsensical remark saying that  “I don't see how they (the Democrats) can because they're possibly allowed, although I can't imagine the courts allowing it. I’ve never gone into it.  Adding “I never thought that would even be possible to be using that word. To me, it's a dirty word — the word impeach. It's a dirty, filthy, disgusting word,” unlike all those expletives he regularly uses during his campaign rallies or that whole grab them by the crotch thing.  In any case, Trump needs to brush up on the Constitution, the courts, even “his” Supreme Court have nothing to do with impeachment, and in any case at last count only 50 Democratic Representatives and one Republican are ready to go that route, at least so far.  Attorney General Barr knows a lot more about the  Constitution and the inner workings of the Justice Department than Trump but that didn’t stop him from questioning Mueller’s conclusion that even though Trump had obstructed justice as many as ten times he couldn’t say it because of that Justice Department policy of not indicting sitting presidents.  Barr made that observation during a hastily scheduled fireside chat with CBS News that took place in Alaska because that’s where Barr was when Mueller gave his surprise parting words.  Being out of town couldn’t stop him from trying to poke holes in Mueller’s statement because after all that’s what Trump hired him to do. Makes you wonder whether the Constitution was burning in that fire place

Dead Man Talking:  With all the attention on the spate of newly restrictive abortion laws it would be easy to forget that curtailing women’s reproductive rights is just one of those social engineering things that the conservative leaning Supreme Court is likely to rule on at some point soon.  A ruling on another one of those items, whether or not the administration will be allowed to disenfranchise minority voters by including a question about citizenship status in the 2020 census, is due shortly.  Several lower courts have weighed in with extensive and persuasive argument about why the inclusion of such a question would be a bad thing, largely because it’s likely that many immigrant households, particularly those with undocumented residents, would all together avoid answering any questionnaire that included the immigrant question, skewing census results so that districts and states with larger immigrant populations would get less government funding and would lose Congressional and state house representation.  However, the five conservative members of the Supreme Court all seemed very sympathetic to the administration’s case during recent oral arguments.  SCOTUS is due to hand down a decision on the case by the end of the month and given the questions asked during the arguments and the sympathy to the administration’s position expressed by the conservative five, it’s been widely expected, or feared depending on your view, that they will allow the inclusion of the citizenship question.  That expectation and the court decision may now be up in the air.  Yesterday, the  New York Times reported that new evidence that could impact the outcome of the case has come to light.  That evidence was found in the files of a now deceased prominent Republican redistricting strategist named Thomas Hofeller.  The files reveal that Hofeller “played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question” to the 2020 census in order to “create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, ‘Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.’ ” That evidence has now been provided to the courts along with an additional assertion that administration officials, including Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, intentionally obscured Hofeller’s role in court proceedings. It’s not clear if the newly found evidence is too little too late given how close SCOTUS is to releasing their decision.  We should know soon enough.  As to abortion, proving that its not just Republican Governors who are into restricting reproductive rights,  Louisiana’s Democratic Governor signed another one of those abortion bans into law yesterday.

Holy Crap:  Yesterday it was reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong un, that really nice guy who sends love letters to our exalted leader when he isn’t launching intercontinental ballistic missiles executed his special envoy to the United States following the collapse of the last summit he had with Trump.  That envoy, Kim Hyok Chol, who laid the groundwork for the Hanoi meeting and accompanied the Little Rocket Man on his private train, was executed by firing squad for "betraying the supreme leader" after he was "won over to the US" during pre-summit negotiations.  Four other senior foreign ministry officials were also executed and at least one other was sent to a work camp for reeducation.  It’s also reported that Kim Jong un’s sister is laying low for fairly obvious reasons. No comment yet from Trump but late yesterday he did express his dismay with Mexico about all those migrants seeking refugee status in the US by promising to impose a 5 percent tariff on all imported goods from Mexico beginning June 10, a tax that he plans to gradually increase until the flow of undocumented immigrants across the border is stopped.  Oh goody, another way to increase the cost of goods for US consumers and depress the stock markets, one that former US diplomat John Negroponte says is “both bad politically and bad economically” and that he doesn’t believe will solve the immigration problem, either.