Robotic Flatulence

Pond Politics:  It was just another day across the pond.  Trump weighed in on Brexit, promising the Brits a really good bilateral trade deal when and if they pull out of the European Union.  Then in response to a question he glibly suggested that the UK’s National Health System would be one of those things “on the table” during the negotiation of that trade deal, the kind of statement that sends most Brits into a frenzy since imperfect or not  they prize their healthcare system and one of the allures of Brexit was the promise that the NHS would get some of that money that now flows to the rest of Europe.  Trump made his statements while sitting next to Prime Minister “for a minute or two more” Theresa May who more than anyone knows that resolving the Brexit mess is near impossible, or at least has been impossible for her.  He also went into crowd commentary mode claiming there were thousands of people on the street cheering for him adding  “I heard that there were protests.  I said: ‘Where are the protests” I don’t see any protests.’ I did see a small protest today when I came, very small so a lot of it is fake news.”  Actually, there were very few Trump supporters but the crowd of anti-Trump protesters was large and loud and included the famed giant Trump baby balloon as well as “Dump Trump,” a robotic likeness of Trump sitting on a golden toilet, cellphone in hand; the robot made flatulent sounds and recited familiar Trump phrases like “no collusion” and quite fittingly “you are fake news.”  Then, late last night, Trump got into a twitter battle with iconic actress Bette Midler who had apparently retweeted a statement falsely attributed to him.  Despite a follow-up tweet apology from her the thin skinned Trump attacked MIdler by tweeting “Washed up psycho @BetteMidler was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make “your great president” look really bad. She got caught, just like the Fake News Media gets caught. A sick scammer!”   Kellyanne’s husband George, or at least her husband for now, had the best response for that one, he tweeted  “cuckoo for cocoa puffs in any time zone #DerangedDonald.”  Today, Trump will be meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar at a VIP lounge in Shannon Airport, the only location that the two could agree upon after Varadkar refused to give Trump the free commercial he wanted, a meeting at a Trump golf course.   

The Mainland:  Yesterday Trump assured everyone that his planned Mexico tariffs, the ones he’s imposing to “force” the Mexicans to do a better job stopping the migrant flows from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador from crossing into the US, will go into effect as planned.  He may really believe that or he may just be using them as a threat and/or a diversion from the various investigations into his behavior, policies and finances.  In any case, a growing number of Republican Senators are up in arms about the tariff plans.  After a contentious lunch meeting with a White House team who’d been sent to advocate for Trump’s position, Senate Majority Leader McConnell  snidely reported that “there is not much support in my conference for tariffs, that's for sure,” and Oklahoma Republican Senator Lankford summed things up by saying the administration "is trying to use tariffs to solve every problem but HIV and climate change,” a notable comment because in Oklahoma climate change is like one of those four letter words never used in polite company.  In an effort to get Republicans back on board, VP Pence is due to hold one of his persuade and pray meetings today but everyone knows he has no clout so no one expects much in the way of a resolution.  The Senate is threatening to vote against the tariffs, that is if McConnell lets them schedule a vote, and this time around the opposition vote could be large enough to withstand a Trump veto. The Democratic House proved that they can investigate Trump and legislate at the same time by passing a bill which would provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers brought to the United States as children.  The Dream and Promise Act was approved, 237-187, along largely partisan lines. Nearly all Democrats voted for the legislation, with five not voting. The Democratic majority was joined by seven Republicans.  Sadly, the bill will go nowhere in Mitch McConnell’s Senate as he has promised to snuff out all attempts by those radical Democrats in the House to do anything involving legislation.

Investigatory Front:  As part of the Trump team’s continuing effort to impede Congressional oversight and investigations, yesterday, the White House directed one time gal Friday Hope Hicks and former White House counsel Don McGahn’s assistant Annie Donaldson not to comply with the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoenas for documents and at least for now, it appears that both women plan to follow White House direction. Hicks’s lawyer told Judiciary Chair Nadler that based on White House “advice” documents from Hope’s tenure in the administration “are potentially protected by White House confidentiality interests or subject to a claim of executive privilege.” He also reported that the transition team had also directed him not to disclose any documents from the transition.  Although Hicks has provided a few documents, those are documents that the House already had since she previously provided them to the House Intelligence Committee.  Separately it appears that though Attorney General Barr is all in on obstruction he really, really doesn’t want to be held in contempt.  Last week he had the Justice Department start to deliver some of the material that the House Intelligence committee requested in order to get Chairman Schiff’s contempt threats off the table.  Yesterday he tried to negotiate a similar partial release deal with Nadler who responded by making it clear that he’s not interested in playing games or stalling tactics.  As of now Nadler plans to proceed towards holding Barr in contempt unless he gets the full Mueller report ASAP.  Lastly, things have taken another turn for the worse for Trump’s former campaign manager, convicted crook Paul Manafort.  He is about to be transferred from a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania to New York’s scary Riker’s Island facility to face state fraud charges, a far cry from those days when he traveled the globe wearing ostrich jackets.