Swim For It

Trump Speech:  A good portion of yesterday’s news focused on the back and forth between Trump and former VP Biden, with Trump  calling Biden the “weakest mentally,” a “loser” and then saying that he “looks different than he used to. He acts different than he used to. He’s even slower than he used to be,” an echo of those 2016 false assertions that Hillary, who is still very much alive, was on her death bed and particularly ironic since Trump is the one world leader who gets so winded walking that he insists on being ferried short distances via golf cart at group meetings.  For his part Biden avoided commenting on Trump’s physical shortcomings instead calling him a “threat to our core values,” a “threat to our standing in the world” and a “genuine threat to American democracy.” He declared that “this is really dangerous stuff” and that “four years of Donald Trump will be viewed as an aberration in American history and around the world.”  All of that back and forth pales in comparison to another remark that Trump made during the day when he responded to a question about a Wall Street Journal report that North Korean leader Kim Jung un’s late, as in assassinated, half brother was a CIA source by saying that "I saw the information about the CIA with respect to his brother or half-brother, and I would tell him that would not happen under my auspices. ... I would not let that happen under my auspices."  He said that while bragging that he’d just received another really nice love note from Kim.  Again, to be clear, Trump just promised that he wouldn’t let the CIA spy on the despotic, nuclear bomb waving leader of an enemy state because the two of them are besties and pen pals.  After that remark he moved on to more mundane absurdities by waving a page from what he said was the secret agreement that he had reached with Mexico in front of the TV cameras.  A few photographers managed to zoom in on that “secret” document revealing that though it did contain details about an agreement with Mexico, the details weren’t much of a secret except perhaps to the reading impaired Trump, they’d already been disclosed by Mexico.  As to Trump’s promise to North Korea’s dictator, CIA Director Gina Haspel probably spent a considerable amount of time on the phone last night trying to convince our already skeptical allies, especially the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the other members of the key Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance, none of whom could have been all that pleased with Trump’s pledge of a solidarity with Kim Jong un or his paper waving, that their secrets were safe with us or, at the very least, with her.  On the 2020 election front, though Trump continues to treat Biden as his most likely opponent and Biden continues to ignore the twenty plus other Democrats also running, Biden isn’t Trump’s only problem.  Yesterday a Quinnipiac University poll predicted that if the election were held today, Biden and five of the other Democratic contenders including Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg would beat Trump with leads ranging from Biden's 13 percentage points to smaller five-point leads by Mayor Pete and Senator Booker.  Those poll results are consistent with internal polling completed by Trump’s campaign team that found him lagging behind Biden in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.  The New York Times reports that Trump’s response when he was shown those “devastating” internal results was to tell his aides to deny them and instead insist that he was doing much better.  He has a point, its early, we’ve seen him down in the polls before and he’s got plenty of time to pull some trick out of his hat, and undoubtably he will.

Investigatory News:  Yesterday the House voted for a resolution allowing the Judiciary Committee and other panels investigating the administration to go to court to enforce their subpoenas. The resolution represents Democrats' “most aggressive step” yet against administration stonewalling of investigations and comes as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to wave away growing calls for impeachment from within her caucus allowing her to point to a “string of Democratic victories in court as vindication” of her oversight instead of immediate impeachment strategy.  The newly passed resolution authorizes Judiciary Chairman Nadler to "initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas and for other purposes." That includes a subpoena for Attorney General Bill Barr to turn over the full, unredacted Mueller report and its underlying materials; a subpoena for former White House counsel Don McGahn, who has been blocked by the White House from cooperating, to turn over documents related to Trump's potential obstruction of justice and a petition asking the court to release the grand jury material redacted in the Mueller report. The resolution also allows the chair of each "standing and permanent select committee" in the House to seek civil enforcement of their subpoenas in court, useful as the Democrats continue trying to get hold of Trump's financial records, documents related to the census citizenship question, White House security clearances and anything else.  In other investigatory news, Junior Donald Trump is due in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee today where he will be asked to explain the differences between his prior testimony about the Trump Moscow tower project and the actual facts about that project.  Unfortunately, his testimony will be behind closed doors and in all likelihood various and sundry Republican Senators will do their best to run interference for the wayward son.

Human Resources:  Trump may be second guessing his decision to formally nominate Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan as the permanent, or at least permanent by Trump standards, Secretary of Defense.  Apparently Trump has been asking some of his friends for some alternative names.  Trump may be a bit distressed that Shanahan has actually been showing some independent thought.  It probably doesn’t help that Shanahan is on record saying that he would prefer that the White House following normal process instead of constantly declaring emergencies to get around Congressional oversight for things like arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.   Despite pushback from both Republicans and Democrats Trump has appointed hard liner Ken Cuccinelli as acting direction of US Citizen and Immigration Services.  Cuccinelli, a former Virginia Attorney General with no relevant experience, has advocated for ending birthright citizenship and once suggested that undocumented migrants should be turned away at the border, pointed "back across the river" and allowed to "swim for it."  It’s unlikely that Cuccinelli, who is despised by Senate Majority Leader McConnell, could ever make it through a Senate confirmation but then again Trump who has several times said that he prefers acting heads because they are more responsive to his demands, probably doesn’t care all that much about that.  For the record, McConnell’s animosity towards Cuccinelli relates to Cuccinelli’s prior role a head of  the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee with a long track record of working against incumbent Republican senators, challenging them from the party’s far right.  Among other things Cuccinelli has spoken out against Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, and Shelly Moore Capito.  He also endorsed child molester Judge Roy Moore over the Republican’s more mainstream candidate former Senator Lucas Strange in the Alabama primary, something that didn’t end well for Republicans as it resulted in the unlikely victory of Alabama’s Democratic Senator Doug Jones.

A special shout out of appreciation to Jon Stewart, who once again went to Washington to shame Congress for failing to reauthorize and permanently fund the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund.