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?