Food Fight

Hunger Games, Part Two:  Part two of the Democrat’s first debate installment was raucous.  California Senator Kamala Harris took control early, landing the night’s first zinger when she broke up one of the evening’s many shouting matches by saying “America does not want a food fight. They want to know how we're going to put food on their table.” The former prosecutor then went after Joe Biden, who as expected, was the target of the night, in the crosshairs almost as much as Trump who the crowd also slammed.  Harris did that by challenging Biden’s civil rights record, ironic since Biden’s record isn’t so bad it’s just appears quaint by today’s standards.  Specifically she hit him for not supporting federal government involvement in school busing back when busing was the hot button issue of the  day.  Not coincidentally while the debate was raging her campaign released an old but endearing picture of a pig-tailed young Kamala waiting for the bus that took her to a better school outside of her neighborhood.  For his part, Biden seemed out of step, he kept harkening back to his and President Obama’s past accomplishments with answers that were too prepared and in some cases hesitantly delivered. Still we’ll have to wait for the polls to see whether or not the African American voters who until now have remained largely in Biden’s court are ready to throw him aside for Harris, Booker or anyone else.  California Congressman Eric Swalwell, one of the younger guys on the stage glared at Biden while saying that it was time for older politicians to “pass the torch” to the new generation, then he went on to hammer home his anti-gun message for the rest of the night, the gun part was great but he needed more and didn’t seem to have it.  Biden responded to the torch crack by saying that he wasn’t ready to hand it over just yet, while Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders, the other septuagenarian in the room, hit harder saying he wasn’t for any kind of discrimination, making it clear that as far as he was concerned ageism ranks right up there with racial bigotry and anti-migrant xenophobia.  Bernie was Bernie, he was articulate, accept for a weird suggestion that he would solve the too conservative Supreme Court problem by rotating judges, but he was too loud and also seemed very frustrated that others were running with “his” vision.  Not surprisingly, he pushed back on any suggestions that his “socialist” policies, particularly his plan to kill the private health insurance industry on day one would freak out the electorate, paving the way for a Trump victory.   Those concerns were expressed most pointedly by the twosome from Colorado, former Governor John Hickenlooper and current Senator Michael Bennet.  Of the two, the more charismatic Bennet had the better night, his recounting of how his own recent cancer scare and mother’s experience as a Holocaust refugee helps him appreciate even more the value of affordable heath insurance and the importance of the US being open to refugees fleeing dire circumstances was a good touch.  NY’s Senator Kirsten Gillibrand tried very hard to interject herself into almost every conversation by pulling out her women’s advocacy card and citing all of her legislative initiatives, unfortunately for her, despite her earnestness, she had a hard time breaking through, literally, despite trying to speak over others she kept getting shut out of the discourse.  South Bend Mayor Buttigieg, the only Spanish speaker of the night, and also the only  veteran of the Afghanistan war, was his usual articulate self but seemed a little muted, not surprising given that he’s been dealing with a local police shooting situation, something that Eric Swalwell threw in his face when he shouted that the Mayor should just fire his police chief and be done with it.  Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang explained his $1000 a month universal basic income concept well enough saying that it would provide workers displaced by technological advances with the cushion they need to get their lives back in order but otherwise seemed out of place and nerdy, nevertheless he was clearly far more qualified than author Marianne Williamson, whose wackadoodle, holistic, love pitch was outer worldly and not in a good way.  Of course Trump weighed in from Japan, attacking all the Democrats as migrant loving socialists.  He did that while playfully reminding Putin that he shouldn’t interfere in the upcoming election, wink, wink.  And though NY Mayor’s Bill De Blasio wasn’t on the stage last night, he did manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yesterday while further feeding Trump’s socialist scare tactics.  Instead of just basking in the glow of the kudos that he received for his Wednesday night debate performance he attended a Miami Airport union rally where he urged the workers on with a quote from Che Guevara, the Argentine Cuban Marxist revolutionary who is despised by Miami’s Cuban population.  Como se dice “oops” en Espanol?

The Supremes:  The Court’s much awaited decisions on partisan gerrymandering and the census questionnaire citizenship question were announced yesterday and the results were somewhat good and very bad.  First the bad, by a 5 to 4 decision the court ruled that partisan gerrymandering, while not necessarily a good thing, was perfectly legal.  Chief Justice Roberts who wrote the majority opinion acknowledged that “excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust,” but concluded that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts,” his way of saying that the court won’t be hearing anymore of these cases, that going forward it’s up to the states and legislators to solve their own problems.  Justice Roberts switched sides on the citizenship question.  Though he didn’t say that a citizenship question could never be justified, he joined with the liberal wing by saying that the administration had to “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public, accepting contrived reasons would defeat the purpose of the enterprise. If judicial review is to be more than an empty ritual, it must demand something better than the explanation offered for the action taken in this case.”  In other words, he slammed the Trump administration for lying about their rationale for adding the question.  It’s not clear what happens next.  Theoretically, the administration could come back to the court with a better explanation for wanting the question in the census form but the clock is running out, the census forms take a very, very long time to print.  Trump of course has an answer for that, he’s now threatening to hold up the constitutionally mandated census until he gets the court to rule his way.      

That Rape Thing:  The NY Times has made up for the failure to give front page coverage to columnist E Jean Carroll’s allegation that Trump attacked her.  The paper’s intrepid reporters managed to track down and convince the two unnamed women who E Jean confided in “contemporaneously” to come forward. One of those women is Lisa Birnbach, a well-known popular journalist who wrote the bestselling “The Official Preppy Handbook” and the other is Carol Martin, a former local NY news anchor.  Both women confirm E Jean’s harrowing account.  Birnbach, who E Jean called as she was running from Bergdorf Goodman, is the one who encouraged her to report her attack to the police; Martin is the one who told her to keep quiet, that Trump and his coterie of expensive attack lawyers would make her life miserable. If only anyone cared.

Aqui Se Habla Espanol

Debate Part One:  Kudos go to former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro whose closing remark “On January 20, 2021, we’ll say Adios to Donald Trump” best summarized last night’s sentiment.  The generally monotone Castro also showed a side of himself that we haven’t seen before.  He was animated, forceful and picked one of the few direct fights with another candidate, distinguishing himself from Beto O’Rourke by chastising his fellow Texan for not calling for the end of criminalizing border crossings.  That issue is particularly relevant right now because officials “count” an illegal crossing as a crime that justifies the separation of a migrant child from his or her parents.  As to Beto, he spoke a lot, and was the first of several of the candidates to show off his Spanish skills, but he wasn’t all that impressive.  He kept on telling stories but was mostly short on substance.  To no one’s surprise, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the “I have a plan for that” candidate was full of substance and started off strong, helped along by the NBC team who initially directed more questions to her than to the others but she seemed to fade as the evening went on partially because once the debate turned into an actual debate she stayed on the sideline. The more moderate Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who was among those in no rush to throw private health insurance by the wayside and who is all in on helping out with education financing and free community college but not so much interested in cancelling all student loans or free four year education for all, managed to get in a few zingers of her own.  She called Trump’s promise to reduce drug costs “all foam and no beer” as she pointed out the amount of money still going to pharmaceutical companies and the rising price of drugs under his watch and shaded Washington Governor Jay Inslee for saying that he was a leader on reproductive rights by pointing out there were three women on the stage who were way ahead of him on that issue.  As to Inslee, while he didn’t clock as much speaking time as the others he did drive home his history of implementing progressive policies in his state and also hammered home the importance and economic potential of focusing resources on climate change.  I am not much of a fan of  Hawaii Congressman Tulsi Gabbard, that said though she initially rambled a bit, the military veteran found her niche discussing the realities of war and did get in a zinger of her own correcting Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan’s assertion that the Taliban rather than Al Qaeda were the World Trade Center bombers.  Ryan who sees himself as a representative of all those middle of the country white guys who deserted Hillary for Trump looked uncomfortable especially when the others spoke Spanish.  As to those Spanish speakers, it’s not surprising that either of the Texans are fluent but it turns out that New Jersey native Corey Booker is too.  Booker, who clocked the most speaking time of any candidate, managed to display his language skills.  Though neither he nor anyone else on the stage attacked or even criticized former VP Biden, Booker went out of his way to remind voters, particularly the many African American older ones who seem to be all in on Biden that that he lives in Newark, experiences inner city life first hand, and is deserving of their support.  NYC Mayor De Blasio who made it clear that he was the leftist guy on stage and is fully supportive of raising taxes on the rich or on anyone who knows a rich person, was fairly loud and obnoxious, a performance that seemed to endear him to some pundits but that left me wishing he would go away.  Former Maryland Congressman John Delaney who  was trying to fill one of the middle road spots barely registered.  For his part Trump  mocked NBC’s technical difficulties, and yes they had a few, while tweeting that the evening was “BORING.”  As to Trump, before he left for the G 20 meeting he questioned the value of the US’s long term defense treaty with Japan and then went full cray cray during a live call in to Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business News program. Proving that he is concerned about former Special Counsel Mueller’s upcoming testimony, testimony that lawyer Jay Sekulow says won’t be blocked, Trump ranted incoherently about Mueller’s crimes asserting that the special counsel had personally “terminated” love bird FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s texts whatever that means.  Bartiromo tried to talk over him but even she couldn’t hide his apparent dementia.  Trump also managed to blame the Democrats for the tragic deaths of Valeria and Oscar Alberto Martinez, the child and father who died trying to cross into the US after they were turned away at a legal crossing point, one of those results of the metering procedures that Trump has put in place to discourage migrants from legally requesting refugee status.  And of course, the Senate’s response to the $4.6 billion emergency funding package passed by the House was legislation of their own; no money will flow south until the two sides reconcile their differences.

The Supremes:  We’re still waiting for the SCOTUS to announce decisions on partisan gerrymandering and the census citizenship question.  However, the court did announce one decision yesterday that inflamed conservatives while giving hope to other court watchers that Chief Justice Roberts appreciates, or at least sometimes appreciates, the value of sticking to precedent.  The Chief Justice mostly joined with the liberal wing of the court by refusing to overturn a 1997 ruling that established the Auer deference, a decision that gives power to federal agencies to interpret their own regulations. Hope springs eternal that he will do the same when it comes to Roe, if, or more likely, when the conservatives on the court try to kill reproductive rights.  As to the citizenship question, a lower court is now reconsidering whether or not it’s inclusion in the 2020 census is discriminatory so even if SCOTUS hands down a ruling today in favor of the administration, the Trump team’s efforts to the question into the 2020 census questionnaire, which takes months to print, may be stymied.       

Sticks and Stones

It’s Raining It’s Pouring:  It was just another normal day in Trump America.  Days after saying that bombing Iran and risking the killing of more than one hundred civilians in retaliation for the downing of one of our drones would be a disproportionate response to the loss of military equipment Trump launched into a twitter tirade threatening Iran with total annihilation in response to Iran President Hassan Rouhani’s calling him out as mentally retarded.  Apparently name calling is only okay when Trump is doing it otherwise, not so much.  Then a haunting picture of an El Salvadoran migrant father and his 23 month daughter lying dead in the Rio Grande river bed alongside the US border with their arms wrapped around each other went viral.  The desperate father had opted to take his family across the river after the family’s efforts to apply for asylum were stymied by the weekend closure of an official crossing point. Tragically, the father had actually gotten his daughter safely across the river but she followed him back into the river after he went back across to retrieve his wife and other child, he then died while trying to save her. When asked about that tragedy and the conditions at the migrant detention centers Trump of course blamed the Democrats and his favorite punching bag, Obama, claiming conditions were much worse when that Black guy was president as if that would even be an acceptable excuse for gross mismanagement now.   Then, because that wasn’t enough for one day, late yesterday Trump’s day got just a bit worse after House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler and House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff announced that one of their subpoenas appears to have worked, the very reluctant Special Counsel Mueller has agreed to testify in front of an open session of Congress.  After learning that his appearance is scheduled to take place on July 17, pundits on Fox and a number of Trump’s Republican abettors went on the attack, promising to question Mueller about the origins of his investigation because who cares about election interference, collusion or obstruction anyway.  Also, for good measure, the press which had given columnist/journalist E Jean Carroll’s rape allegations against Trump short shrift tried to make up for their lack of attention by giving her accusations more air time asking every Republican they could find as well as daughter Ivanka for comments on the assault accusation.  For the record, all of them said that they believe Trump’s statement that he didn’t rape her because she wasn’t his type, Ivanka pretended not to hear the question.  Getting back to the migrant crisis, for some inexplicable reason after moving 300 children out of the ill equipped, filthy facility in Clint Texas,  Customs and Border Control moved 100 children back into that facility later in the day.  When asked about the horrific conditions at that border center, Texas Republican Congressman Michael Burgess actually said “You know what? There’s not a lock on the door. Any child is free to leave at any time, but they don’t. You know why? Because they are well taken care of.” If he truly believes that someone should send child services to his home to check on his family. Despite reports that children at the Clint facility were going without soap, blankets, edible food, water and other provisions, Customs and Border Patrol has been refusing donations from the public saying that they’ve got plenty of supplies, they just have a distribution problem.  You think? Maybe a lack of empathy and conscience problem too. As to blaming the Democrats, Speaker Pelosi has an answer for that.  Late last night “her” House passed a $4.5 billion humanitarian aid bill, tossing the problem back to the Republican led Senate and Trump.  One more thing, because these days there is always one more thing, yesterday Federal District Judge Emmet Sullivan denied an attempt by the Justice Department to stop House and Senate Democrats from collecting information from the Trump organization related to their emoluments case.  When it rains, it pours.  

Rain, Rain Go Away:  Yesterday was one of those revolving door days.  With Sarah Huckabee Sanders exiting on Friday, Trump needed a new Press Secretary, or at the very least someone he could call a Press Secretary because without daily press briefings he really doesn’t need one so Melania tweeted out that her press secretary Stephanie Grisham would be moving into the role while keeping, at least for now, her Melania related responsibilities. For good measure Melania ended her tweet with a #BeBest because who doesn’t highlight their anti-bullying mission when dead parents and children are floating up on river bank?   Grisham, who will also be Trump’s communications director, another one of those part time positions since Trump pretty much is the communications director in chief, is jumping right into her new position.  She’ll be traveling with Trump to the upcoming G-20 meeting where he will be meeting with China’s President Xi to discuss their trade war.  In other human resources news possibly in response to the Clint facility fiasco  John Sanders the acting head of Customs and Border Protection resigned, notifying acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan of his imminent departure.  It’s expected that he will be replaced by Mark Morgan, an immigration hardliner, who is currently the acting director of ICE. Apparently everyone at DHS is acting, or in their case, acting out. Though he’s still serving, California Congressman Duncan Hunter should probably be reconsidering his career options. Prosecutors have upped allegations against him saying that he used campaign funds to pay for extramarital affairs with lobbyists and congressional staffers.  Those additional charges may explain why his wife, who Hunter had previously claimed was the one responsible for the wire fraud, record falsification and campaign violations he’s also been charged with, has been cooperating with prosecutors.  

2020:  The first Democratic debate takes place tonight.  As a reminder tonight’s roster includes:  Elizabeth Warren, Beto O'Rourke, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Julián Castro, Jay Inslee, Bill de Blasio, Tim Ryan, John Delaney and Tulsi Gabbard.  While all eyes will be on Warren, who of late has been outpacing that other progressive darling Bernie Sanders, and Beto keep an eye on Washington Governor Jay Inslee, his focus is climate change but he’s got a lot of practical experience and is very articulate.   On the Republican front, it turns out that kowtowing to Trump pays off.  Yesterday he endorsed vulnerable Republican Senator Thom Tillis who is seeking reelection in North Carolina, ensuring that Tillis won’t get primaried from the right. She hasn’t received his endorsement yet but Arizona’s Senator Martha McSally, who lost when she ran against now Senator Krysten Sinema but got to the Senate anyway when she was appointed to fill the John McCain seat, is seeking equal treatment but so far Trump hasn’t jumped on her bandwagon.

The Not My Type Defense

Potato, Potahtoh:  Yesterday Trump signed an executive order imposing “hard hitting” sanctions on Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying that he was responsible for Iran’s “hostile conduct.”  Well at least he intended to target Kahmenei but in classic Trump form he bungled the Iranian leader’s name and instead announced sanctions on the long dead Ayatollah  Khomeini who was Iran's Supreme Leader from 1979 to 1989.  Khomeini was succeeded by the current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei and easy mistake for the rest of us to make but then again we’re not president and don’t get to read from cue cards.  While the new sanctions aim to deny top Iranian officials access to important financial resources, the Ayatollah and most of the people closest to him don’t really have bank accounts in their names in Europe or outside of Iran that would be hit by the sanctions. Iran responded by saying that any efforts at a diplomatic solution to hostilities between the two countries are now permanently dead, not that they’ve been all that alive since Trump moved into  the White House, but Trump has been saying that he’d like to have Khamenei join his BFF squad alongside North Korea’s Kim Jong un, who he sent another love note to last week, so being so publicly rebuffed can’t be making him happy. Additionally Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani mocked Trump saying the White House is “afflicted by mental retardation.” Apparently Rouhani doesn’t know that the more politically acceptable term now is intellectually and developmentally disabled but we get his point.  In any case Trump isn’t one for political correctness.  During an interview with The Hill TV, he “vehemently” denied raping his most recent accuser journalist/columnist E. Jean Carroll stating “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?“ So if only she had been his type,  attacking her would have been justifiable?  For it’s part the NY Times admitted that the paper had dropped the ball on the coverage of Carroll’s accusation by downplaying the story and keeping it off of page one.  The  Times editors now acknowledge that the Carroll news should have been presented more prominently with a headline on The Times’s home page.  That’s from the paper who went almost apoplectic over Joe Biden’s excessive “hugging” not to mention Al Franken’s inappropriate touching.    

2020:  The press, liberal pundits and a number of his Democratic rivals continue to dwell on Joe Biden’s verbal flubs but apparently voters who like him still like him, and his appeal to African American voters, most notably the large number in early primary state South Carolina, remains high.  In preparation of the debates that are scheduled for later this week, a number of the Democratic candidates are following Senator Elizabeth Warren’s lead by announcing that they too have a “plan.”  In Bernie Sanders case, that plan includes forgiving $1.6 trillion in student debt, Sanders' plan will have no eligibility criteria and will be available to the nation's approximately 45 million student loan borrowers of both federal student loans and private student loans.   Sanders would fund his forgiveness plan through, what else, a new tax on financial transactions, which he says could raise more that $2 trillion over the next 10 years.  The plan would include a 0.5% fee on all stock trades, a 0.1% fee on all bond trades and a 0.005% fee on all derivatives trades.   Not to be outdone Beto O’Rourke is calling for a “war tax” to establish a new trust fund for veterans’ health care for every war the U.S. fights. The tax would range from $25 for taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes below $30,000 to $1,000 for taxpayers making more than $200,000 a year and would be levied on households without military members or veterans.  Mayor Pete Buttigieg has been a bit too busy to get into more detail about his plans.  He’s been dealing with the aftermath of a racially charged police shooting at home in South Bend, Indiana where the population is somewhere around 35 to 40% minority but the police force remains 90% white.  He has acknowledged that his city’s “effort to recruit more minority officers to the police department and introduce body cameras have not succeeded” and has said that he accepts “responsibility for that” hardly an acknowledgement that he wanted to make this week when he was already facing criticism about his lack of appeal to African American voters.   On the Senate front, Maine’s Democratic House Speaker Sara Gideon announced plans to challenge Collins who is up for reelection in 2020.  Though a few other Democrats plan to run, Gideon is viewed as the candidate with the best chance of defeating Collins.      

The Stench:  The children, including the toddlers who had to rely on other young children for care have now been moved from the despicably filthy Border Control station in Clint, Texas that got all that unwanted press attention to another location, a tent facility near El Paso.  The administration continues to blame Congress, most notably the Democrats, for refusing to provide more money for detention centers, a criticism that isn’t totally unwarranted as Democrats remain concerned that providing additional funding to improve the condition at detention centers will just encourage the administration to detain more undocumented migrants and refugees.  In any case, though Congress will probably get its act together in order to provide more funding, it’s fair to say that an administration that has found ways to divert funds to wall building should be able to find money for soap, blankets, water, food and caregivers for kids.   In other news that stinks, after the House Oversight Committee announced plan to call Kellyanne Conway in to “discuss” her Hatch Act violations White House Counsel Pat Cipollone sent a letter to Chairman Elijah Cummings telling him  that the White House “respectfully declines the invitation to make Ms. Conway available for testimony before” because who cares about ethical violations anyway.  As to ethical violations, somehow or other Axios managed to get hold of copies of a large number of the amateurish vetting reports that were completed on Trump team members before they were hired. Not surprisingly, Trump’s “vetters” were far more concerned about nasty comments made about Trump than any obvious conflicts or ethical lapses, which goes a long way to explaining why so many Trump team members have fallen by the wayside.  As one vetter put it,  "To be honest, the process was such a disaster and such a sh-t-show and there were so many unqualified people coming through that the issues with [future HUD Secretary Ben] Carson don't really stick out to me, you know, I'm like, 'Oh gentle Ben is unqualified and thinks that pyramids store grain or whatever. Great. At least he's not beating his wife and his wife's not appearing on Oprah.'" That last comment related to Trump’s first nominee for  Labor Secretary, Andrew Puzder whose nomination was pulled after it was discovered that his wife really did accuse him of abuse on an episode of Oprah.   

Mind-bending

Whiplash: There’s an old song that says that it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, who knew that Trump had a feminine side? First he ordered retaliatory bombing strikes against Iran in response to the shooting down of one of our drones.  Then shortly before those bombs were due to drop he changed his mind, cancelling the mission.  The exact timing of events remains somewhat vague, Trump claims that he never formally gave the go ahead and didn’t learn that the bombing raid could kill up to 150 Iranians until the last minute and then only found out about the possibility of casualties because he, and only he, thought to ask if there would be any.  Clearly that’s just another Trumpian fabrication, the military always provides the commander in chief with casualty estimates before asking for mission approval. Trump says he then cancelled the strike because as much as it crushed him to lose an expensive drone, he didn’t think that leaving 150 people in the dust was a fair response.  That sounds great but experts and quite a few leakers say that he knew all along that there was a good chance there would be casualties, that the 150 number was  intentionally exaggerated by some of his generals, who hoped to convince him to scuttle the mission because of their concerns that bombing Iran would dangerously escalate an already fraught situation into a regional conflagration.  In any case, Trump’s spinners are now saying that he should be celebrated for showing prudent restraint.  The restraint part is commendable, the prudent part probably an accident, one that almost came too late.  Trump has also put his plans to start deporting thousands, if not millions of undocumented migrants on the back burner, at least for now.  He says that he’s giving Congress two weeks to change the asylum laws that even he knows won’t be changed, threatening that if they, and by they he mostly means the Democrats, don’t act he’ll go all in on those deportations. Like the planned Iran attack, it’s hard to get to the bottom of Trump’s decision process.  Speaker Pelosi did call Trump to press him not to go into deportation mode, but he generally doesn’t listen to her so it’s hard to believe that her pleas were the cause of his change of mind. Some members of his team say that he retreated because the deportation plans were “leaked” before details were worked out, of course they failed to note that Trump was the leaker, that ICE “only” had plans to arrest a few thousand, nowhere near the numbers Trump claimed and in any case the whole immigration system is at a breaking point, there’s nowhere to house people as they await deportation, especially families with children.  Complicating matters a video of a Justice Department attorney arguing to a stunned panel of somewhat elderly, thought they’d seen it all,  9^th Circuit Federal judges that it was okay for government funded facilities to deny children basics like soap, toothpaste, and bedding while feeding them nothing more than uncooked frozen food has gone viral.  Maybe Trump or one or more of his advisors realized that initiating mass arrests just days after that was a step too far, even for this crowd.  Or maybe it was the reports from a team of lawyers advocating for the migrants who forced the transfer of four seriously ill children to a hospital for critical care after seeing that the children’s situation was being ignored by staff at another facility. Or maybe some White House spin master realized that raids and round-ups so close to this week’s Democratic debate-a-thon would give the twenty Democratic candidates an additional reason to focus their attacks on Trump instead of each other. Or maybe, just maybe, Trump realized that his planned Fourth of July celebration, the one that he’s morphing into a Trump/MAGA rally, would be subject to even more ridicule if it was aired next to split screen pictures of migrants kids being pulled from their parents arms.  As to Trump’s feminine side, on Friday we learned that he does have a penchant for women’s lingerie so much so that he flirtatiously said he would try one particularly sexy item on in order to lure long time Elle Magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll into a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room where, according to her, he grabbed her Access Hollywood style and raped her. In a NY Magazine article that includes an excerpt of her soon to be published book Carroll says the assault took place in the mid-1990s. She also reports that she told two close friends shortly after the incident occurred.  Though neither of those friends are identified by name, both women confirmed to her publisher, NY Magazine and CNN that she did in fact confide in them.  At that time, one of the women encouraged her to go to the police, the other told her that given Trump’s power and position there would be no point in that since they wouldn’t take her word over his. She decided to take the second woman’s advice, did not report the attack, but shades of Monica she kept the dress she was wearing at the time and a current photograph of her in it is on the NY Magazine cover.  Of course Trump denies that her accusation is true, he says that she’s just trying to goose book sales and he also denies ever knowing her, despite a photo that shows him schmoozing with her back in the day.  This being Trump, it’s unlikely that he will suffer any consequences but it would be nice, to say the least, if the two women Carroll confided in contemporaneously would emerge from the shadows to corroborate her version of events.  

International Charades:  Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan appears to be going over like a lead balloon with its intended beneficiaries. He’s in Bahrain for a summit on the plan, however neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis are present.  The plan which calls for $50 billion in economic investment in infrastructure and tourism in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip, and in the neighboring countries of Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon reads like a real estate term sheet which isn’t all that surprising since real estate is Kushner’s forte, well more or less.  Turkey’s President/strongman Erdogan plans to take back control of Istanbul aren’t working out all that well either.  Erdogan forced a do over election there for no particular reason except that he didn’t like that his party had lost the earlier one.  Despite his best efforts his party lost again and this time it appears that the results will stick; his iron fisted rule may be approaching his expiration date, well maybe.

Other News:  Trump is expected to block Annie Donaldson from answering the House Judiciary Committee’s written questions about her tenure as White House deputy counsel by once again pulling out his questionable executive immunity card. Her detailed notes about all the times that Trump tried to get former White House Counsel Don McGahn to help him obstruct justice are featured prominently in the Mueller Report but since few have actually read the report, few know who she is and why her notes matter.  Trump wants to keep it that way.  On the Supreme Court front, decisions on partisan gerrymandering and the census citizenship question are due out during the week but another less attention grabbing decision announced last week in a property rights case is alarming.  By a 5-4 vote SCOTUS ruled that property owners can go directly to federal court with claims concerning state and local regulations that they believe deprive them of the use of their property.  Though the subject might be less attention grabbing than something like abortion rights, the decision is particularly notable because the conservative wing of the court showed that it has no problem overturning decades of precedent, raising concerns that the same crowd would be willing to do the same when Roe v Wade gets challenged.

Bombing Runs

Steady Hand?  Yesterday Trump authorized the bombing of selected  military sites in Iran.  The plan called for striking specific radar and missile batteries with the hope of minimizing or all together avoiding human casualties.  US bombers were in the air on the way to their targets and US ships were in position when Trump changed his mind and ordered the cancellation of the mission, telling forces to stand down at least for now.  The NY Times reports that there is a real schism among Trump’s advisors with hawks Secretary of State Pompeo, security advisor John Bolton, and CIA Director Gina Haspel all in on what they were calling just a  “retaliatory” strike while the more pragmatic Pentagon generals were urging caution, warning that military action could lead to “spiraling escalation.”   It’s not clear if he was involved in Trump’s decision to call off the strike but earlier in the week it was reported that Fox’s Tucker Carlson has also become one of Trump’s Iran whisperers and surprising as it may sound, he too has been urging caution.  Who would have ever thought that taking advice from Carlson could be a good thing?  It’s also not clear if Trump was influenced by his idol Vladimir Putin who is also on the record saying that attacking Iran would be a very, very bad thing.  Just a reminder, Trump still doesn’t have a Secretary of Defense, just another one of those defense contractors serving in an acting position.  In summary it looks like withdrawing from the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal and applying maximum sanction pressure is working, just not in a good way.  Separately, the Senate voted to block Trump’s planned arm sales to Saudi Arabia, unfortunately that vote won’t mean much since they don’t have enough votes to override the expected Trump veto.   

Absolute Immunity?  The transcripts of Hope Hicks’s congressional testimony were released yesterday.  Guided by a team of White House lawyers who were there to make sure that she said as little as possible, Hicks declined to answer 155 times.  In addition to refusing to confirm where in the White House her office was located she also refused to confirm that there hadn’t been a war between Israel and Egypt during her tenure, a question thrown in to highlight the ridiculousness of the situation.  She was however allowed to answer one question about her White House tenure, the one that concerned the weather on her first day of work.  She did confirm that the Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference but defended the use of WikiLeaks’ stolen John Podesta emails as okay because they were “publicly available” information.  As frustrating as her testimony was, House Judiciary Chairman Nadler is hoping that the absurdity of her White House guided testimony or lack thereof will help bolster the Democratic case that this absolute immunity thing is mostly bunk when they go to court to try to force more cooperation from Hicks and others like Don McGahn.

2020:  The Democratic debates are scheduled to take place next week on Wednesday, June 26 and Thursday, June 27.  The nominees will be positioned so that those currently doing the best in the polls will be placed towards the center of the stage with the one percenters at the outermost corners.  Night one we will hear from Bill De Blasio, Tim Ryan, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee and John Delaney, positioned in that order so that Warren, the leader in this group is in the middle.  Night two the set-up will be as follows: Marianne Williamson, John Hickenlooper, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Michael Bennet and Eric Swalwell.  Expectations are that Wednesday night will be Warren’s to lose while Thursday night, given it’s more interesting make-up, will be more of a toss-up.  Then again with this crowd, who knows.  Anyway, right now everyone continues to attack Biden for saying that he was civil to and when necessary worked with segregationist Senators during his Senate tenure in order to get legislation passed.  Oprah guru Williamson is trying to dig herself out of a hole that she dug for herself by making some anti-Vax comments and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is temporarily off the trail, dealing with a racial police shooting situation in his hometown.  On the Republican front, Alabama’s Judge Roy Moore is back.  Much to the chagrin of Majority Leader McConnell and Trump who’d both prefer a more mainstream, or at least mainstream by Republican standards candidate, yesterday he announced that he once again plans to run in the Republican primary for Senator because the Republicans really need another reactionary pervert in their mix.    

The Supremes:  By a vote of 7 to 2 SCOTUS ruled that a 40-foot World War I memorial cross can stay on public land at a Maryland intersection because it has become a “prominent community landmark” and removing it would be hostile to religion.  Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, who remain a little more focused on that whole separation of church and state thing dissented.  Rulings are still due out on partisan gerrymandering and the census immigration question.  As to that last issue, on Wednesday a federal district judge in Maryland ruled that the new evidence in that case merits more consideration, opening the possibility that the question could come before the Supreme Court again even after it rules.  The new information referred to by the federal district judge involves what was found on files on a thumb drive inherited by the daughter of a now deceased Republican operative.  Those files reveal that the purpose of the inclusion of a citizenship question has nothing to do with advancing minority voting rights but has a lot to do with impeding minority representation.

Merry, Marry and Maria

Hopeless:  Former Communications Director/Gal Friday Hope Hicks testified in front of a closed door session of the House Judiciary Committee yesterday. She strutted into the hearing room accessorized with dark sunglasses, lots of make-up and her very own White House lawyer who was there to make sure that she didn’t violate Trump’s overly broad assertion of executive privilege by responding to questions about anything she’d heard, seen or participated in during the transition period after the 2016 election and during her days in the White House.  Though she was grilled for seven hours, reports are that she refused to answer far too many questions, wouldn’t say anything about the Comey firing, calls/meetings with Russians  and wouldn’t even reveal the location of her office, which everyone knows was within whispering distance of the Oval Office.  Democrats assert that Trump’s broad immunity assertion was made up, accusing the White House of trying to stonewall their investigations and are now expected to go to court to force Hicks to be more forthcoming and to force former White House Counsel Don McGahn, who has so far refused to even honor his subpoena, to show up to testify.  Although there’s a good chance that they will win in court, the process is likely to be time consuming which is of course what Trump wants, to stall as much as possible until after the 2020 election.  When asked about Hicks’s performance, or lack thereof, Speaker Pelosi said only “Obstruction of Justice” as she hurried off to her next meeting.  Last night Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, a member of  Pelosi’s leadership team, announced that she has now joined the impeachment bandwagon.  Though she said that it was a personal decision, it’s hard to believe that she would cross Pelosi. The House pro-impeachment count is now up to around 70.      

Enough Said:  Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been getting skewered by a number of Republicans, most notably Wyoming’s Liz Cheney for using the term concentration camp to describe the migrant detainment centers.  While her reference is a stretch, the term concentration camp predates the Nazi horror and not all concentration camps were death camps.  In any case, if the best thing you can say about detention centers for thousands of young children, men, and women is that calling them concentration camps is another example of Godwin’s law*, you probably aren’t doing the right thing.  Democratic candidates are rushing to support the concept of slavery reparations as a “path to restorative justice,” an idea that’s been discussed for a while.  It’s not clear what that would involve and how anything substantive could actually be implemented still Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s statement that reparations aren’t necessary because “we’ve passed civil rights legislation” and “we’ve elected an African American president” seems just a bit tone deaf, especially given the “fine people on both sides” guy in the White House who still insists that the Central Park Five are guilty and whose campaign launch rally was just attended by a contingent of white supremacist Proud Boys, the modern day equivalent of the KKK.  Lastly, former VP Joe Biden is getting slammed for some remarks he made at a recent fund raiser. Meaning to make the point that to get legislation passed you have to reach across the aisle, he used the example of having worked in the past with some segregationist Senators. To be clear, he didn’t say that he ever condoned their views but judging by the reaction from the his Democratic presidential opponents, you’d think he had.  One of the downfalls of leading the pack is that your opponents, especially those polling around 1% are eager to pull out the knives to take you down.  That may also explain why Bernie Sanders is now calling Elizabeth Warren, who appears to be gaining traction at his expense, horror of horrors, a centrist.   

WTF: Last night the Washington Post reported that Andrea Thompson, now the State Department official in charge of arms negotiation with Moscow, and her husband had a long term relationship with Russian agent of influence Maria Butina’s boyfriend/ Republican operative Paul Erikson.  They were so close that Erikson officiated at their wedding bringing along Butina as his plus one.  The wedding took place when Thompson was “just” a national security advisor to VP Pence.  Thompson failed to disclose her husband’s ties to Erikson, ties that also involved him “investing” $100,000 in Erikson’s dubious business,  during her security reviews. As one senior administration told WaPo  “When the person who marries you gets into trouble with the Russians and your job is to negotiate with the Russians, you have to disclose that, everybody with an intelligence clearance knows that.”  It’s fair to assume that we will soon learn that Thompson is leaving the administration to spend more time with her family.  As to family ties, it looks like Deutsche Bank, the Trump and Kushner family lending institution of choice is facing some problems of their own.  The NY Times reports that the bank is under investigation for potential criminal money laundering lapses.  In turns out the bank’s problems may extend far beyond mishandling a few Kushner “suspicious activity reports.” In addition to the FBI, the Justice Department’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section in Washington and the US attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn are involved in the investigations.         

Winds of War:  Members of the Trump team are promoting the narrative that Iran is involved with Al Qaeda terrorists, an echo of the Bush administration’s pretext for the invasion of Iraq.  They are trying to make a convincing case, not because there are substantive ties, but because saying so would allow them to use the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that was passed in the aftermath of 9.11 to justify going to war against Iran without seeking new congressional sign off.  For their part the Iranians continue to act out, this morning they shot down one of our drones, one that they claim, and we deny, was over their territorial waters.

*Godwin’s Law – as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

Both Sides Now 

And So it Starts:  Trump is off and running, well he’s been off and running since he took office but now it’s official.  Sticking with the themes that worked for him in 2016, he’s still attacking Clinton and her “acid washed” emails, he’s ramping up his immigrant hate, and promising to drain the swamp.  That swamp point is superbly ironic given the criminal element that he keeps on hiring and reluctantly letting go.  Also ironic, Trump the admitted crotch grabber managed to get in a few words attacking Joe Biden for his  touching/hugging “problem.” Of course, he also went after the press and everything to do with the Mueller “witch hunt,” the one that he insists found neither collusion nor obstruction. Trump made his announcement in Orlando, Florida chosen because it’s the swingiest part of one of the swingiest states, one that he has to win in 2020.  Shortly before he arrived the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board slammed him by endorsing any presidential candidate other than him.  The usually reliable Republican paper went on to say that “Some readers will wonder how we could possibly eliminate a candidate so far before an election, and before knowing the identity of his opponent. Because there’s no point pretending we would ever recommend that readers vote for Trump. After two and one half years we’ve seen enough.” The paper  cited the “chaos, the division, the schoolyard insults, the self-aggrandizement, the corruption” and lies that have occurred during Trump’s tenure as reasons to endorse anyone but him for president. “Trump has diminished our standing in the world. He reneges on deals, attacks allies and embraces enemies.” The editors were particularly distressed by his Russia obsession saying that Trump siding with Putin and against the US intelligence community in Helsinki was a “humiliating public moment” and an “unforgivable political sin.” As if that wasn’t enough, the paper’s editors also went after Trump’s economic accomplishments saying they were no different, or even worse, than milestones reached in the Obama administration.  

Human Resources:  Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan who had served in an acting capacity longer than any other Defense Secretary is no longer acting.  He pulled his name out of consideration after details about his family’s tragic history of domestic violence went public.  Apparently, a few years ago, his then seventeen year old son got into a nasty altercation with his mother during which he fractured her skull with a baseball bat.  She ended up unconscious in a pool of blood, was ultimately hospitalized and had to undergo surgery.  The divorced Shanahan, who at that time was already separated from his wife, flew into town to help his son out.  Understandably Shanahan got his son the best legal representation money could buy, less understandably he also argued that his son’s attack was justified arguing that a lot of teenagers would crack the skull of their mothers if they were harangued for hours about an inappropriate relationship with a significantly older woman.  Remarkably, neither the attack nor Shanahan’s letter of justification came out when he was confirmed to serve as Deputy Defense Secretary, the position that he had before he was promoted to the acting spot but despite his best efforts this time around he wasn’t going to be able to hide the details from the Senate, particularly  those who couldn’t understand why it was taking so long to see the results of his FBI review.  Yesterday, immediately after Shanahan stepped aside, Trump who didn’t seem all that concerned about Shanahan’s past but wasn’t all that happy with him for other reasons, appointed Army Secretary Mark Esper to serve as his new Acting Defense Secretary.  Esper, who unlike Shanahan has a military pedigree, is a former lobbyist for Raytheon, a plus because who in Trump land isn’t a former lobbyist, is simpatico with Trump with regard to deploying troops on the Mexico border but is on record saying that there’s no problem with transgender troops in the military.  In any case, he’s known to be one of those guys who likes to please authority so he should get along well with Trump which is part of the problem because Trump really needs someone who pushes back, particularly someone who’d be willing to push back against national security advisor Bolton and Secretary of State Pompeo and their hawkish tendencies, particularly with regard to Iran.  As to Iran, yesterday Trump said that he isn’t all that concerned about their attacks on our allies oil carriers because as long as they don’t attack our ships that’s okay but if they start advancing their nuclear program then all bets are off, he’d be ready to start bombing.  That’s a bit of a problem first because expressing disregard for allies isn’t a good thing and second because Iran’s nuclear facilities are viewed as largely impenetrable by bombing raids and, to state the obvious,  we’ve had problems ending the other wars that we started. 

Other News:    Earlier this year Trump had the White House counsel’s office examine the legality of stripping Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell of his chairmanship, bumping him down to a plain old Fed governor after he realized that firing him altogether was pretty much a no go.  Trump has been pretty clear that he wants Powell to cut interest rates and views threatening his longevity as a good way to make him listen because what president doesn’t want to spur the stock market with an interest rate cut or two to what Trump believes would be a 10,000 point rise in the run up to an election? When asked about this and if he still wants to demote Powell, Trump told reporters: “Well, let’s see what he does.”  By that he means, if Powell doesn’t start cutting rates he would reconsider demoting him.  For his part the somewhat disingenuous Economic Advisor Larry Kudlow refused to comment beyond saying that “it’s not happening today so therefore I have nothing to say on it.” The Fed will have more to say about their next moves this afternoon.  Trump also weighed in once again on the Central Park Five, the young men who were wrongly convicted of attacking a Central Park jogger back in the 1980s.  When asked by a reporter whether he would apologize for the full page NY Times ad he took out at the time of the attack, the one that called for them to get the death penalty, in light of their exoneration, Trump said "You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt.” So no regrets even if the combination of DNA evidence and a guilty plea by the real assailant led to their exoneration.  Plus how could Trump resist another opportunity to apply his favorite “both sides” rule?

Days of Our Lives

Another World: Keeping it on the brief side today, or at least I am going to try.  Trump will be “officially” launching his 2020 campaign today in Florida, his home away from home and one of the key states that he needs to win to stay in office.  Since bashing migrant immigrants is the thing that energizes so many of his core supporters and is something he brings up whenever he wants to divert attention from other things like bad interviews, all of those investigations into his criminal behavior and obstruction, yesterday the State Department announced plans to cut humanitarian aid to  Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, the three Central American Northern Triangle countries that are the current source of the problem or at least the source of the kind of immigrants that he most despises.  Since dire circumstances drive migration in the first place, expect that strategy to backfire but not to worry because, borrowing a phrase from the Senator Elizabeth Warren playbook, Trump has a “plan for that.” Yesterday he announced that he’s directed ICE to start rounding up thousands of “illegal” men, women and children.  His plan is to go the mass arrest route to get millions of migrants out of the country as soon as possible.  Keeping with the mayhem theme, yesterday Trump’s acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who is still auditioning for an official nomination, announced plans to send 1000 more US troops to the Middle East for defense purposes, part of that buildup against Iran, the country that Trump or at the very least his hawkish advisors, national security advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Pompeo, want to punish for their bad deeds, including their violation of the JCPOA nuclear agreement. The Iranians are nefarious players, but going after them for violating the terms of the nuclear agreement that Trump pulled out of seems Orwellian, or should I say Trumpian?

Guiding Light:  Yesterday the Supreme Court handed down a few rulings and one punt.  First the punt, the justices sent another one of those “don’t let them eat my cake” cases back down to the lower courts with instructions to reconsider the case in light of their earlier Masterpiece Cake ruling, the one where SCOTUS said that decisions about the legitimacy of a baker refusing to bake a fancy cake for a same sex couple should not be influenced by animosity towards the baker’s religious beliefs.  In a 7-2 vote, the court reaffirmed its 100-year-old rule declaring that state governments and the federal government may each prosecute a person separately for the same crime, without violating the Constitution's double jeopardy clause; that case had gotten attention over concerns that changes in the precedent would have made it possible for Trump to give Paul Manafort and others in his orbit get out of jail free cards without any concern about state prosecutions.  On the gerrymandering front, an unusual coalition of justices, including liberals Ruth Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor and conservatives Gorsuch and Thomas joined together to let stand decisions by lower courts finding that eleven of  Virginia’s state house districts were racially gerrymandered in violation of the Constitution. SCOTUS didn’t really rule on the actual gerrymandering instead they said the Republican-dominated Virginia House of Delegates had no legal standing to appeal to the Supreme Court on its own when the state Senate and the state's attorney general had decided against appealing. More decisions related to gerrymandering are due shortly as is the decision on the constitutionality of including a citizenship question in the census questionnaire.  Going back to Paul Manafort, in a highly unusual move Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, not to be confused with Rod Rosenstein who he replaced, intervened to divert Trump’s one time campaign manager Manafort from being transferred to New York State’s Rikers Island prison facility, sending him instead to the Federally run Metropolitan Correctional Facility where he will stay while facing state charges.  Trump, that old softie, couldn’t bear the thought of Manafort at Rikers. Immigrant children in cages, no problemo; Manafort at Rikers, nunca, never.      

General Hospital:  More people, mostly Democrats, are warming up to impeachment or at least to the initiation of impeachment proceedings.  Speaker Pelosi’s strategy of letting her members get to the impeachment place on their own time while allowing her progressives to wine and stomp about getting there sooner may actually be working which shouldn’t be all that surprising since Pelosi’s strategies usually work.  Egypt’s ousted elected president and one time Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi dropped dead in court yesterday.  Morsi who suffered from a few health problems had not received much if any medical care since being arrested so his death while shocking, because most 67 year-olds don’t actually die in court, was probably not as surprising as it should have been. Trump is talking health care again, promising to have a really great plan to announce in a few weeks, that and a lot of change will get you a can of Diet Coke, his beverage/health elixir of choice.  The Democrats who really have a lot to say about health care are getting ready for their upcoming debates.  I’ll get into who’s on which night tomorrow, assuming something more compelling doesn’t pop up first.

Spinning Cotton

Hanging With George:  The two most remarkable things about the thirty hour interview that Trump’s gave ABC’s George Stephanopoulos are that he actually gave an anchor from a mainstream news outlet an interview and that he thought that he would be able to control the narrative so that he came out looking good.   All those ridiculous and revealing things he said were also remarkable but we only got to hear them because he sat, or in this case sat, drove, and walked with Stephanopoulos for so many hours.  In addition to the nugget that ABC released last week, that statement by Trump that taking “dirt” from foreign entities  had been fine by him in 2016 and would be fine in the run up to 2020, that only an idiot would contact the FBI when approached and that FBI Director Wray was wrong in saying otherwise, Trump also distorted the content and conclusions of the Mueller Report.  Specifically, he insisted to Stephanopoulos that Mueller had concluded that there had been no collusion and no obstruction and that he and his campaign had rebuffed all of Russian’s approaches and offers of dirt. As Trump snidely pointed out whenever he got tripped up, Stephanopoulos is small in physical stature but nothing about his size diminished his ability to beat back Trump’s false assertions, so he countered Trump’s efforts to twist the facts by repeatedly pointing out that though Mueller concluded that he couldn’t prove criminal conspiracy he saw lots of collusion and lots of receptivity from the Trump team. As to obstruction, Trump claimed he didn’t do any of that but that if he had it would have been okay because he’s an imperial president and as such had every right to fire Mueller.  He added that he didn’t because that Saturday Night Massacre thing hadn’t turned out well for Nixon.  Trump also went after former White House lawyer Don McGahn, asserting that he’d lied to Mueller’s team by saying he’d been told to fire Mueller because he was “confused” and “wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer. Or he believed it because I would constantly tell anybody that would listen -- including you, including the media -- that Robert Mueller was conflicted. Robert Mueller had a total conflict of interest." To state the obvious, McGahn’s no hero, he’s largely responsible for seating Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and countless uber conservative judges but he’s not one to commit perjury. Trump also insisted that he’d been incredibly cooperative, providing written answers to all of Mueller’s questions, growing increasingly frustrated with Stephanopoulos every time he pushed back by pointing out that Trump hadn’t answered any questions about obstruction, so frustrated that he questioned whether little George had actually read the report.  With the interview behind him, Trump is now playing clean up.  He’s tried several times to walk back, or at least partially walk back his assertion that taking foreign dirt is hunky-dory, he’s managed to get a number of his Republican abettors to try to change the focus to Hillary and her “acid washed” email server, and, my favorite, with Sarah Huckabee Sanders on the way out, his team is now blaming her for allowing the  Stephanopoulos interview to even take place. 

More Trumpisms:  Trump celebrated the Father’s Day holiday by tweeting “Happy Father’s Day to all, including my worst and most vicious critics….”  He then added “A poll should be done on which is the more dishonest and deceitful newspaper, the Failing New York Times or the Amazon (lobbyist) Washington Post! They are both a disgrace to our Country, the Enemy of the People, but I just can’t seem to figure out which is worse?” His usual disdain for the press was particularly wound up by a NY Times report that Pentagon and intelligence officials have been escalating cyber-attacks on Russia's electric power grid by placing potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system.  He wasn’t all that please about the part of the article that said that he had not been briefed in any detail about the implanted computer code because of a "broad hesitation" by Pentagon officials to tell him about the details of operations against Russia over concern over how he would react, and the possibility that he might reverse the operations or discuss it with foreign officials named Putin.  Trump responded to that article by tweeting “Do you believe that the Failing New York Times just did a story stating that the United States is substantially increasing Cyber Attacks on Russia. This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country." He then tweeted that the NY Times article was “NOT TRUE” even though a number of Pentagon sources report that it is, the NY Times stands by their story, and the practice of not telling Trump about actions to counter the Russians is consistent with what former Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen said during her term of office.  Trump is so out of the loop that he doesn’t even realize that he previously signed legislation that allows these types of activities to take place without his direct approval.  Trump is also particularly stressed out about his campaign’s internal polling especially the leaks of the polls showing him trailing Joe Biden by double digits in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan. Those polls also found Trump behind Biden in several other states that were key to his win including Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia while holding a narrow edge in Texas.  Trump’s first reaction was to deny that those polls even existed saying that they were “fabricated.” Then after his campaign manager/data guru Brad Parscale admitted that they were real but “out of date,” Trump killed the messengers, firing three of the five polling companies responsible for those polls including the company that was founded by White House advisor Kellyanne Conway.  It’s worth mentioning that Conway is known to be a prolific leaker, it’s quite possible that she was the source of those polling leaks, a strategy frequently employed by Trump’s staff when they are trying to get Trump to focus on things he’d rather ignore.             

Other Tidbits:  Former national security advisor Michael Flynn’s new lawyer is a former federal prosecutor named Sidney Powell who is one of the “earliest and fiercest” critics of the Justice Department and the FBI’s investigation into all things Russia. Trump responded to Flynn’s hire by tweeting “General Michael Flynn, the 33 year war hero who has served with distinction, has not retained a good lawyer, he has retained a GREAT LAWYER, Sidney Powell. Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!” It wouldn’t be a leap of faith to believe that Flynn who hasn’t been sentenced yet, is cooperating on an open case and has been subpoenaed to appear before Congress still hopes to get a pardon and that Trump is dangling the idea possibly to get him to “tone” down his upcoming Congressional testimony.  A few weeks ago Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said that due to “unforseen” technical issues he was pushing off Obama era plans to put Harriet Tubman’s picture on the twenty dollar bill for at least six years.  It turns out that there are no technical issues, that the real issue is that Mnuchin doesn’t want to offend Trump who sees replacing Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman as a particularly offensive example of excessive political correctness.  Mnuchin picked the six year time period under the assumption that Trump will be out of office by then. Apparently he keeps missing Trump’s horrifying comments, including one he made this weekend, that his “supporters might demand” that he stick around longer, something he is more than open to doing. 

Iran:  In summary, the situation with Iran is not good.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the US is "considering a full range of options" regarding rising tensions with Iran, including military options, although he emphasized Trump has said that he does not want to go to war.  Japan and Germany aren’t buying into our “proof” that the Iranians are responsible for the recent attacks on ships near the Straits of Hormuz maybe because Trump isn’t known to be a truth teller and to be fair he isn’t the first American president to create stories about non-existent dire threats to justify war.  The Iranians, who, to say the least, are hardly trustworthy actors, probably are responsible for the attacks, their way of responding to the extreme strains imposed on their economy due to the effects of sanctions that they hoped would be lifted as part of the JCPOA nuclear agreement, the one we’ve pulled out of and that they are beginning to violate. And just to spin things a little more, and by spin think the combination of centrifuges and hawks, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton insists it will take no more than two strikes to win a war against Iran. Really?           

Blah, Blah, Blah

Slapback:  Not surprisingly, virtually every Democrat responded to Trump’s stated willingness to accept political dirt from foreign players, hostile or otherwise, with alarm and condemnation.  Republicans, not so much, although Trump did try to walk back his comments a bit, claiming that they’d been taken out of contest, something that ABC News effectively refuted by releasing more of his interview.  The most forceful Republican criticism came from Utah Senator Mitt Romney who said "Let's distinguish between a foreign official making an off-hand comment at a dinner about the campaign versus a foreign government trying to influence an election. In the latter case, that would be unthinkable. It would be totally inappropriate, and it would strike at the heart of our democracy,”  He added "I’ve run for Senate twice, I’ve run for governor once, I’ve run for president twice, so far as I know we never received any information from any foreign government. … We would have immediately informed the FBI." North Carolina’s vulnerable Senator Thom Tillis, who always appears to be walking on eggshells, said he’d call the FBI but would also evaluate and use any “dirt” offered.  South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham weighed in saying "If a foreign government comes to you as a public official and offers to help your campaign, giving you anything of value -- whether it be money or information on your opponent -- the right answer is no," but then pivoted to the Democrats and slapped the Clinton campaign’s funding of the US company that commissioned the Steele Dossier.  That theme was picked up by various other Republicans, most notably House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy who refused to criticize Trump at all instead nonsensically spouting that the Democrats "Drove this country into a special counsel lasting more than 22 months. Using this false information, sending it to the FBI that went and got a FISA court. Then to spy upon Americans and took us through something we should never have to live again.”  Then of course there were the comments from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader who together with his wife Transportation Secretary Chao has been criticized for flouting various ethics rules, “they (the Democrats) just can’t let it go, case closed.” Then intentionally obfuscating the point that Trump said he would accept “dirt” going forward, McConnell added Trump “gets picked at everyday about every different aspect of it, but the fundamental point is that they are trying to keep the 2016 election alive.”  He made those remarks to Fox’s Laura Ingraham after he blocked legislation proposed by the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner that would have forced campaigns to notify the Federal Election Commission and the FBI about attempts by foreign nationals to influence an election. McConnell has also refused to let any election system protecting legislation to come up for a vote. As to the Federal Election Commission, saying that she “never would have thought that I needed to say this, Chairman Ellen Weintraub released a statement saying “Let me make something 100% clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election. This is not a novel concept.“  Fox’s legal analyst Judge Napolitano appears to be solidly in Weintraub’s court, he told Fox Anchor Shepard Smith that there’s no “wiggle room” if Trump takes dirt from a foreign player, he’d be “committing a felony.”  There were no comments on the subject from Attorney General Barr who was probably off in a corner somewhere chuckling or FBI Director Wray who was likely somewhere howling in pain.

Human Resources:  Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders who hasn’t held a daily press conference in almost 100 days is out, she’ll be leaving by the end of the month.  Trump tweeted an announcement of her departure saying that “She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas - she would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!”  As crazy as that governor thing sounds, don’t scoff at it, her father, Mike Huckabee, is one of the state’s former governors, proof that the Huckabee mystique goes over well in the state.  Others have even suggested that the charming Sarah would be a suitable replacement for Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton if Trump ever convinces him to assume a cabinet role. Kellyanne Conway, another Trump favorite is in some hot water, not with Trump, but with the US Office of Special Counsel, a separate entity not to be confused with Robert Mueller and his investigation.  Special Counsel Henry Kerner, a Trump appointee, told Trump that his office had determined that Conway was a "repeat offender" of the Hatch Act who had “shown disregard for the laws” and recommended that she be “removed from federal service.”  The Hatch Act is an anti-corruption statute that prevents tax payer funded government employees from misusing government resources for partisan purposes.  Among other things Kerner cited Kellyanne’s television interviews advocating for and against candidates in the 2017 Alabama special election for US Senate as a Hatch Act violation. To be clear, if she was working for Trump’s campaign instead of the White House she’d be allowed to do that but since we’re all paying her salary she’s not. Although other administrations occasionally ran afoul of the Hatch Act, they took the special counsel’s office’s admonitions seriously and went out of their way to avoid repeated violations.  Trump not so much so his press office slapped back calling the special counsel's actions against Conway "deeply flawed," claiming they "violate her constitutional rights to free speech and due process." At least for now Conway’s biggest problem remains her wayward husband and his increasingly Trump critical tweets because violating laws not so much of a problem in Trumpland.  For her part Conway appears to be shrugging the whole thing off, a while back when she was asked about her Hatch Act violations she had responded “Blah, Blah, Blah” adding “let me know when the jail sentence starts.”  In other criminal news, California Congressman Duncan Hunter’s wife Margaret pleaded guilty to conspiring with her husband to "knowingly and willingly" convert campaign funds for personal use. She has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Back before he was reelected the Congressman had defended himself against those allegations that he had spent campaign money for things like trips to Italy by throwing his wife under the bus, saying that he’d been too busy to know how she was spending their campaign money.  It looks like she is now getting even with him.  Although he hasn’t done anything illegal, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is considering doing something that could make it that much more difficult for Democrats to retake the Senate in 2020.  The West Virginia Senator is seriously considering stepping down to run for Governor.  Though Manchin frequently votes with the Republican majority, he usually steps up to vote with the Democrats when his vote is really needed, his vote helped save Obamacare,  so as annoying as he can be he would be missed, especially since it’s more than likely that his replacement would be a Republican.

Persian Problem:  The war drums continue to beat in the Middle East.  Secretary of State Pompeo blamed Iran for being behind this week’s attacks on Japanese and Norwegian tankers passing through the vital Gulf of Oman shipping lane something that Iran, for what it’s worth, immediately denied.  The attacks took place while Japan’s Prime Minister was visiting Iran, reportedly carrying a message of some kind from Trump.  Moreover they occurred just a month after four oil tankers were damaged in an attack off the coast of the United Arab Emirates. The US blamed Iran for that attack too, but did not produce evidence. Iran also denied those accusations.  Whatever is happening in the region and whoever is responsible, and whatever their intent, the situation is bad, tensions and oil prices, an indication of increasing concerns, are rising.  Trump, despite his bombastic rhetoric,  does not appear to be interested in going to war but his advisors most notably Pompeo and John Bolton are far more hawkish.  This situation could deteriorate rapidly.