Dark Psychic Forces

Debate Two, Part One:  Well that was underwhelming.  My biggest takeaway of the evening was that the CNN format stunk.  In an effort to prevent anyone from hogging the night CNN enforced time limits and penalized interruptions so that candidates were frequently cut off by one of the three moderators, Jake Tapper, Dana Bash and Don Lemon, just as they were about to get into the substance of their remarks. Jake Tapper, who kicked things off took his monitor role too seriously, he was that tattle tale kid you hated in school, I wanted to see him voted off the stage.  I also thought that Dana Bash was off base when she highlighted self-made millionaire John Delaney’s wealth by pointing out that he was one of those super rich people who would be subjected to Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax, though he responded well saying that though he thought the wealth tax idea was an unrealistic, unenforceable pipedream he agreed that the very wealthy should pay more in taxes.  Of the three moderators, I though Don Lemon came off the best but the night wasn’t supposed to be about the moderators so here’s my take on the candidates.  Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren did well, although Bernie’s inability to modulate his voice continues to rankle.  Despite the best, or in this case the worst, efforts of the moderators, the two senators refused to go after each other, and instead came off as collegial, like minded colleagues. If you agree with their progressive views, particularly their position on providing universal health care without private insurers and the need to disrupt almost everything about the way that the government is currently working, than the choice between them is one of personal preference. Warren who questioned why anyone would run for president “just to talk about what we can’t do” is more into details, Sanders more into bombast but the substance is pretty much the same.  As to the rest of the candidates, though she got in a few zingers and applause from the Detroit crowd with her historical justification for slavery reparations, I’m sticking with the view that Marianne Williamson doesn’t belong on the stage, there’s too much at stake right now to give time to fringe candidates, even entertaining, shrewd ones.  That said, she was spot on when she said that there is a “dark psychic force” hanging over the country.  The rest of the crowd was split between left leaning moderates and centrist moderates.  Montana Governor Steve Bullock was sometimes a bit tongue tied particularly when he accidentally called for nuclear proliferation (he corrected himself quickly) while arguing with Warren that it was bad strategy to promise never to use nukes first, to be clear he didn’t say he would, but like some of the other moderates including Hickenlooper, Klobuchar, Ryan and Delaney, his point that a Democratic victory might hinge on picking a centrist candidate probably resonated with many watching from home. When Beto O’Rourke suggested that the Democrats could win Texas, Bullock reminded the crowd that unlike Beto, he’s the guy with a proven track record of winning in a red state.  Beto did a better job this time than during the first debate, but like Mayor Pete, he didn’t get his soundbite moment.  Neither did Senator Klobuchar, who despite or maybe because of her earnestness is beginning to look more like a possible vice presidential candidate than someone who’ll be able to get herself to the top of the presidential pile.  In addition to health care, the candidates were queried about their positions on the climate crisis, race relations, and immigration.  Their answers varied from realistic to aspirational but obviously they all agree that we are facing a climate crisis, a position that distinguishes all of them from the head in the sand/kowtow to the energy lobby until the earth reaches its boiling point position of the Republican party.  On immigration, at the end of the day they all want to stop the separation of families and fix the system, some would continue to criminalize illegal crossings others would limit criminalization to “bad” players, making the crossings a civil offense but none, contrary to Republican talking points were calling for totally open borders although Warren’s position comes close.  Notably yesterday the ACLU pointed out that despite court rulings prohibiting continued separation, the Trump administration is still separating children from their families for questionable reasons and has separated an additional 900 or more children since the issue first hit the headlines.  On race relations, although Trump’s actions and recent remarks were not the focus of the debate, everyone on the stage agreed that the current state of discourse is a bigly problem.  For his part, yesterday Trump continued to attack Baltimore and Congressman Elijah Cummings while asserting that he’s heard from countless Black people and that each and every one of them agree that his criticism is spot on and that he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.  The Democrats need to get their act together or we will have four more years of the “stable genius” Wonder Bread boy and his racially divisive policies as we spiral off into an increasingly hot mess.  Tonight during Debate Two, Part Two expect to see a lot of other candidates attacking former VP Biden in an effort to get their viral moment.

Human Resources:  Here’s a shocker, Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe, Trump’s candidate to replace the outgoing Dan Coats as Director of National Security, has misrepresented his credentials.  Ratcliffe’s claim that he prosecuted terrorists during his stint as a Federal Attorney isn’t true.  The bottom line is that aside from being a Trumpian conspiracy theorist, he has no relevant experience for the post, a problem because like it or not Trump, the intelligence agency skeptic, needs to know what’s really going on in the world and because the authorizing legislation that established the DNI position requires that candidates have relevant experience.  It’s unclear whether Ratcliffe’s lack of qualifications will kill his confirmation because we already know that Moscow Mitch mostly does what Trump tells him to do but at least one Republican, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr has told Trump that Ratcliffe is not qualified.  Another one of Trump’s candidates, General John Hyten who has been nominated to be the Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was grilled by the Senate yesterday, not over his lack of experience but because of a credible or incredible claim, depending on who you believe, that he sexually assaulted one of his underlings.  Curiously, Arizona Senator Martha McSally, who earlier disclosed that she had been raped while serving in the military, rose to his defense saying that while “sexual assault happens in the military, it just didn’t happen in this case,” while Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, who like McSally is up for a tough reelection in 2020, told Hyten that the facts of the investigation “left me with concerns regarding your judgment, leadership and fitness to serve as the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”  As to Republicans in general though Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy insist that they are poised to retake the House, some don’t appear convinced.  About eight Republicans representatives, including two of the party’s very few women have already  announced that they will not be seeking reelection in 2020.  Democrats are still running, and as of now 113 of them, several from purple districts, are also supporting impeachment. And lastly, another one of the more vulnerable Republicans, Maine Senator Susan Collins, became the first Republican to sign on to Democratic Senator Warner’s election interference FIRE Act which would “require presidential candidates” to immediately notify the Federal Elections Commission, who would then contact the FBI, if they are “contacted by a foreign power” that is trying to interfere in US elections. Neither Moscow Mitch nor Trump will be very pleased about that.

    

Unhinged

He Said What: Yesterday while signing the long overdue extension of the 9 11 health care fund, Trump expressed appreciation for the sacrifices made by the first responders and those who labored at the World Trade Center site but then since he was unable to leave well enough alone, he added that “I was down there also — but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.” No, bone spurs Trump did not spend time at the poison spewing pit though he did have some association with the terrorism: he managed to glom on to some of the funds allocated to businesses hurt by the disaster, he did falsely brag that as a result of the attack that his downtown building at 40 Wall Street had become the tallest one remaining in lower Manhattan though it wasn’t and he did claim that thousands of Muslim’s cheered the disaster on from the shores of New Jersey though they didn’t.  Notably, only a group of Republican legislators were there to celebrate Trump’s signing.  Despite her long term advocacy for the 9 11 first responders and her sponsorship of the bill, New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney wasn’t invited to attend, neither was New York’s Jerry Nadler, another long time supporter of the legislation.  Elsewhere in Washington, outraged that the sobriquet #MoscowMItch awarded to him by MSNBC Joe Scarborough was trending on twitter, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who earlier help lift sanctions against Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in exchange for the funding of a Kentucky plant, took to the floor to defend himself against the assertion that he was blocking election protection legislation from coming up for a vote to keep some combination of Russian oligarchs, Putin and Trump happy.  He called his critics modern day McCarthy’s, and attacked the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank for his “unhinged” assertion that he was a “Russian asset.”  Still, McConnell made it clear that he has no plans to allow any election protecting legislation to come up for a vote because as far as far as he’s concerned the purpose of such legislation would be to even the playing field, making the chances of a Democratic victory in 2020 more likely.  Though he enlisted his “good friend” Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings support earlier in the year when he was called a racist, Republican Congressman Mark Meadows slow walked his defense of his “good friend” Cummings, failing to speak up while Trump continued his tweet attack against him and the entire city of Baltimore, the city where son-in-law Kushner owns lots of slummy apartments.  Meadows finally came out of his hole, barely, he did that by sending a statement to CNN’s uber conservative contributor former Senator Rick Santorum in which he defended both Cummings and Trump saying that "neither is a racist,” a variation on the “good people on both sides” defense.  For his part Senator Mitt Romney who has no reason to fear Trump, he doesn’t need his job and won’t be up for reelection for another six years, refused to comment on Trump’s racist diatribe against the popular, well liked and respected Cummings, instead when asked he kept walking saying only “it was just the latest act of political theater.”  As to that theater even Trump may understand that he overreached by attacking Cummings, so yesterday he redirected his fury to an easier target, New York’s Al Sharpton.  The self-aware Sharpton who still hasn’t and will probably never fully recover from his Tawana Brawley days responded by first tweeting an old picture of himself with Trump and then adding that “Trump says I’m a troublemaker & con man. I do make trouble for bigots. If he really thought I was a con man he would want me in his cabinet.”  With all of the “racist” accusations flying it might have been easy to miss that at the end of last week Attorney General Barr announced plans to start executing people again, something that the federal government hasn’t done for sixteen years, and that yesterday he announced that he was overturning an earlier Immigration court ruling that allowed asylum for people whose claims and fears were based on being related to persecuted family members.  And at the end of the day an email written by Trump aide and all around immigrant hater Stephen Miller confirmed what everyone already knows, that the administration’s view and Miller’s “mantra has persistently been presenting aliens with multiple unsolvable dilemmas to impact their calculus for choosing to make the arduous journey to begin with."  In other words, the cruelty towards migrants is intentional.

2020:  It’s debate night again.  Tonight’s CNN hosted Democratic debate in Detroit includes spiritualist Marianne Williamson, Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke, former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, former Maryland Congressman John Delaney;  and first timer Montana Governor Steve Bullock.  Like last time the candidates will be positioned according to their poll rankings which places like minded Senators Sanders and Warren side by side on the center of the stage. Look for Sanders who is reportedly frustrated that Warren and her ”I have a plan for that” strategy is outpolling his gruff “I’m Bernie, the ideas were mine first” approach to try to do something to get back on top of the progressive pile.  As to the others, particularly the one-percenters, expect one or more to try to ignite a flame of some sort since tonight is likely to represent their last chance to gain the traction they’ll need to continue raising enough money to continue their campaigns.  Also, don your sunglasses, tonight’s crowd of candidates is glaringly white, if it wasn’t for the presence of the three women candidates,  they’d look like a gang of Republicans.     

Infestation

Rats:  In case you missed it Trump spent the weekend twitter raging against Congressman Elijah Cummings, the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee.  Trump’s fury was most likely motivated by Cumming’s decision to issue subpoenas for Ivanka and Jared’s emails as well as his impassioned questioning of Department of Homeland Secretary Kevin McAleenan over the horrible conditions at the border facilities and the treatment of migrants.  Trump finds the idea of the Oversight Committee actually conducting oversight offensive at best and of course it doesn’t help that Cummings is Black, because for Trump, Cumming’s race makes all the oversight that much more intolerable.  As to Trump’s tweets, he went into race baiting attack mode, calling out Cummings’ Baltimore district as, the worst in the country, a “disgusting rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human” would want to live,  going on to compare it to the facilities at the border which he actually described as clean, efficient and well run despite media and inspector general reports indicating otherwise.  Noting that Trump has a habit of attacking Congresspeople of color and of frequently citing vermin when he does, the slap back, well at least the slap back from those who find racism offensive, was fast and furious with the Baltimore Sun putting it best with their editorial that said that it's “better to have a few rats than to be one” and Charles Blow, the NY Times op-ed columnist saying that the “rot you smell is a racist potus.”  Trump’s response to all the criticism was to double down on hatred, so he then counter-called Cummings a racist and attacked the Democratic party as racists citing earlier comments from the Democratic “squad” who had earlier suggested that Nancy Pelosi, who not so coincidentally grew up in Baltimore, wasn’t respecting them because they were women of color.  A number of media outlets reported that Trump has been advised that his  racially divisive rhetoric helps him with his base, most notably all those white guys threatened by fears that their world is becoming increasingly diverse so this race baiting thing isn’t going anywhere.  That probably explains why Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney was so comfortable defending Trump’s speech when he was questioned by Chris Wallace of Fox News. Mulvaney told Wallace to stop reading between the lines, that Trump wasn’t making racist comments, he was just talking about conditions in Baltimore.  When Wallace told him that was a bunch of bunk, Mulvaney then threw in a gratuitous remark about House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, saying that if Trump criticized Schiff’s California district, no one would say he was doing so because Schiff is Jewish, a not so nice way of making sure that Fox viewers not already in the know were fully up to speed on Schiff’s ethnicity.  Remember when presidents did their best to call for inclusiveness over divisiveness.  Hold that memory because at the rate things are going, you won’t be seeing or hearing much of that anytime soon.  One more thing, it turns out that Baltimore isn’t the only place with a vermin problem, last February the Trump Tower Grille in Manhattan was reported for “live mice” and other health code violations. Additionally in July 2018 NYC health inspectors found “evidence of mice or live mice” in and around the kitchen, a violation of sanitary standards that was deemed to be “critical.” The inspectors also found the restaurant to be “not vermin-proof” and said it was “conducive to attracting vermin” and “allowing vermin to exist.” On the plus side for Trump, along party lines, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that $2.5 billion can be diverted from other military spending to the building of the Wall.  That said, don’t expect to see much building anytime soon, there are still a lot of eminent domain issues standing in the way of actual Wall construction.  

  

Human Resources:  As expected Dan Coats, the former Indiana Senator and Congressman who currently serves as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence is leaving the administration.  Coats who was respected on both sides of the aisle, is a known Russia hawk who had no problem speaking truth to power, a significant problem for Trump who doesn’t share Coats’ world view and has no interest in hearing anything that doesn’t fit his narrative particularly with regard to North Korea, Russia and Saudi Arabia.  Trump plans to nominate Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist and like minded conspiracist, who “has embraced” Trump’s “theories about the Russia investigation and was among the “sharpest” questioners of former Special Counsel Mueller at last week’s hearings.  Among other things Ratcliffe tore into Mueller for saying that Trump had not been exonerated of obstruction. Ratcliffe’s view is that by investigating Trump for obstruction Mueller had violated the rules governing his assignment.  Bottom line, Ratcliffe, is not at all disturbed about the convincing evidence that Trump obstructed, just that Mueller uncovered that obstruction and then refused to exonerate Trump for his actions. Ratcliffe had been in the running for the DNI position even before the hearing but his performance, which many viewed as his final audition, cemented him as Trump’s preferred candidate. Ratcliffe will still have to be confirmed by the Senate, but this Senate has a habit of confirming Trump’s candidates, even those who are woefully inappropriate for the job and tends to give deference to sitting and former members of Congress.  Reports are that Devon Nunes, that other Trump loyalist/wacko was offered the position, but turned it down because he’d prefer to be Trump’s next CIA Director and hopes to get that spot during Trump’s second term.      

Impeachment Update:  On Friday Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler announced that his committee is filing an application to obtain the grand jury material underlying the Mueller Report. Nadler said that the panel is seeking the material as part of an inquiry to decide whether to recommend articles of impeachment against Trump, a statement that helps with the argument that the Committee should be provided with the relevant information. Nadler’s statement represents the “most significant and public acknowledgement” that impeachment is now more than a possibility.  Notably over the weekend, despite concerns that proceeding with impeachment could hurt the party’s chances of retaking the White House and/or the Senate and even threaten their control of the House, the number of Congressional Democrats supporting impeachment continued to grow, passing one hundred. Some of those new supporters were probably influenced as much by Trump’s increasingly racial rhetoric as they were by the results of the Mueller investigation.  If and when Speaker Pelosi jumps on board that number will exceed critical mass. The House Judiciary Committee plans to continue working during the August recess.  

  

And…:  Prior presidents would probably have commented on the unrest in Russia and Hong Kong, but Trump was far to busy slamming that “enemy” of the state Elijah Cummings, to even note that pro-Democracy demonstrators in Moscow were beaten down by Putin’s police, that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was rushed to the hospital, purportedly due to an allergic reaction but more likely the victim of another Putin authorized poisoning, and that police used tear gas and bullets against Hong Kong residents opposing China’s efforts to impose harsh extradition laws.  Just more crickets from the guy who really isn’t all that into democracy

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Election Interference:  Yesterday the Senate Intelligence Committee led by Senators Burr and Warner, which unlike it’s House counterpart appears to function on a largely bipartisan basis, released a report detailing how the election systems in all 50 states were targeted by the Russians during 2016. At the request of the intelligence agencies the report was so heavily redacted that large sections of it are unreadable but what was left unredacted reveals that among other things the Russians successfully penetrated the Illinois voter data base, accessing up to 200,000 voter registration records, a type of penetration that could easily impact the results of next election especially in one of those swing states where the outcome is likely to be determined by a relatively small amount of votes, a bigly problem given that earlier in the week Nate Cohn, the NY Times’ chief polling prognosticator, predicted that while Democrats could win the popular vote by more than Hillary’s 2016 three million vote margin just a small swing in Wisconsin could tip the electoral college to Trump in 2020.  The Russians even tried to send election observers to various states, a request that on its face just seemed like a counter to the US sending election observers into their neck of the woods but was more likely a front for getting it’s trained operatives close enough to engage in the physical tampering of voting machinery.  The committee report warns that the US remains vulnerable in the next election yet, just hours after former Special Counsel Mueller provided a similar warning, Republicans led by Senate Majority Leader McConnell blocked election security legislation that would help states improve their election security systems, particularly crucial since a number of states are still using out of date machines and/or don’t have any paper backups for electronic votes.  McConnell justified his objection to the legislation by saying that it “is a partisan bill from the same folks who spent two years hyping up a conspiracy theory about” Trump “and Russia and who continue to ignore this administration’s progress at correcting the Obama administrations’ failure on this subjection.”  McConnell is also on record saying that improving election security would benefit Democrats, and we know that he wouldn’t want to do that.  For his part Trump who also sees no need to bolster election apparatus continues to call reports of Russian interference a HOAX and a WITCH HUNT.

Mueller Fallout:  Trump was positively jubilant after Mueller’s testimony, saying “This was a devastating day for the Democrats,” adding: “The Democrats had nothing. And now they have less than nothing. And I think they are going to lose the 2020 election very big, including congressional elections.” Doubling down on that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is reported to be telling people that he also thinks there is a good chance that the Republicans can win the House back in 2020, realistic or not, their confidence is truly alarming. Many political pundits on both sides of the aisle reported that the Democrats have missed their impeachment window and though they might be correct, at least one member of Democratic leadership disagrees, Katherine Clark, the House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair, the sixth highest ranking Democrat in the House, announced that she now supports the opening of an impeachment inquiry, that number now hovers just under 100.  Additionally, the Elijah Cummings chaired House Oversight Committee keeps plugging along.  They’ve added to the avalanche of subpoenas for Trump team information by adding a few more, this time for Jared Kushner’s, Ivanka Trump’s and other White House officials’ emails and texts, the ones sent from their personal devices.  On the legislative front, yesterday the House voted to pass Trump and Pelosi’s budget deal largely because Pelosi delivered 219 votes for passage.  Only 65 of the 197 House Republicans voted for the plan despite Trump’s support.         

Swamp Denizens:   Early in the administration, Trump nominated Fox News contributor Monica Crowley to serve as deputy national security advisor but her nomination was derailed and withdrawn after it was revealed that she had plagiarized substantial portions of her PhD dissertation.  She’s back, this week she was appointed to serve as the chief spokesperson for Steve Mnuchin’s Treasury Department.  Apparently her history of advancing the Obama birther conspiracy as well as her repeated assertions that Obama was a secret Muslim who was “conforming US policy to Islam and Sharia” are qualifying attributes in this administration.  She joins Kelly Craft, the former US Ambassador to Canada who spent only a modest amount of her time as ambassador to our northern neighbor actually in Canada, who is likely to be confirmed as the US Ambassador to the UN very soon as well as new Defense Secretary Mike Esper, who formerly served as military equipment manufacturer Raytheon’s chief lobbyist but has said that he won’t recuse himself from things related to Raytheon.                

An Ordinary Day?

Mueller Hearing:  Reviews of yesterday’s hearings range from bad to catastrophic mostly because they focused on former Special Counsel Mueller’s congressional performance rather than the substance of what he revealed, or at least revealed to those who weren’t already aware that Trump’s team had more than 100 questionable meetings with Russians and that Trump had obstructed justice more than ten times.  It became clear fairly early into the morning session in front of the House Judiciary Committee, which focused on obstruction leaving collusion to the afternoon session in front of the House Intelligence Committee, that Mueller is no longer the Mueller of old.  During his prepared opening remarks Mueller made it clear that he would be sticking to the restrictive guidelines provided to him by the Justice Department and as a result he would not address anything not already included in his report, disappointing but not surprising and since most of the public, some of Congress and FBI Director Wray haven’t read the report, there was more than enough ground to cover. In response to Judiciary Chair Nadler’s questions Mueller said that, despite his endless claims, Trump had not been exonerated of committing obstruction and that the report didn’t rule that there had been no Trump team/Russian collusion but only that their wasn’t evidence to prove criminal conspiracy.  The problem was that Mueller’s delivery was halting at best, monotonic, and frequently limited to yes/no answers.  As the morning wore on It became evident that he was having difficulty hearing, forming his sentences, reading from the text of the report and even remembering some of its content. He became more animated and focused during the afternoon session when the subject moved from obstruction to Russian election interference and the various questionable activities of the Trump team but still a major takeaway from the day is that age has caught up with Mueller, that he may be even be suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s or some other ailment and though it would be unfair to say that he’s completely lost it, he clearly doesn’t have all of his faculties, or at the very least those he used to have.  That probably explains Mueller’s insistence on having Aaron Zebley, his deputy who reportedly directed most of the investigation and may well have been the chief author of the report, by his side.  It also explains why both Trump, who spent the day tweet slamming the Democrats, Mueller and the hearing, and Attorney General Barr were so against Zebley’s presence, it’s hard to believe that Barr, who has known Mueller for a long time wasn’t fully aware of his decline, particularly since last night the NY Times reported that Mueller’s decline had been a subject of discussion among the members of his team for some time.  The Republican members of the committees probably had been brought up to speed on Mueller’s limitations before hand  which likely explains why they made it clear that they only wanted to hear from Mueller even though Zebley was sworn in at the beginning of the afternoon session to facilitate his participation.  Mueller’s personal situation aside, the hearings covered a lot of ground. Among other things, the damning extent of  Trump’s various obstructive actions were detailed, that he could still be indicted after he leaves office, assuming he ever does, was pointed out and the extent of the Russians efforts to interfere in the election process, weighing in on behalf of Trump was made clear.  Mueller also revealed that he had given up on getting Trump to testify because of White House pushback, that he was concerned that forcing the issue would take too much time and that he had gotten much incriminating information anyway from others’ testimony.  Additionally, in response to a question he confirmed what we that the written answers that Trump provided were deceptive at best.  For a brief moment, after Mueller stumbled through an answer to a question asked by Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu, Mueller appeared to have said that Trump should be indicted, but he walked that back later in the second session after one alarmed Republican asked him if the generally noncommittal Mueller really meant to be so emphatic on that point.  As to the Republicans, with a few exceptions, they harped on the origins of the report, going after the Steele Dossier and Fusion GPS, the firm that had retained Steele, subjects that they knew Mueller had been directed not to discuss.  They also went after the make-up of Mueller’s team, taking a page from the Trump playbook and calling them all out as Democratic hacks something that woke Mueller from his fugue enough for him to push back hard.  Additionally a few of them, most notably  Devon Nunes, went with a conspiracy theory pushed by Fox pundit/Trump advisor Sean Hannity that Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese Professor whose communication with George Papadopolous about Hillary Clinton’s emails led to the opening of the Russia investigation, was a Western and/or US agent detailed to derail Trump’s candidacy and not a Russian agent as believed by the FBI.  In response to some final questions from Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff who overall did a better job than Judiciary Chair Nadler, Mueller reiterated his concerns about continued foreign interference in the US electoral process, the same concern that was expressed by FBI Director Wray earlier in the week.  After the hearings, Democratic Senator Warner tried to introduce election security legislation.  As usual Senate Majority Leader McConnell put the kibosh on his efforts, an indication that Republicans don’t mind interference as long as it helps them as well as reflective of McConnell’s concern that with a few members of his party, most specifically Trump, already accepting help in the run up to 2020, he doesn’t want any laws on the books that could get them into any more legal trouble. For her part, Speaker Pelosi tried to appear upbeat about the day, saying that Mueller’s testimony was just part of the Pelosi process and that Democrats will continue to hold hearings and do oversight.  Democrats are pressing their case to get former White House Counsel Don McGahn, who testified to Mueller about Trump’s efforts to fire Mueller,  to appear in front of Congress.  And though the NAACP unanimously voted to call for Trump’s impeachment, it is unlikely to happen any time soon, if at all.          

Other News:  Puerto Rico’s Governor has resigned.  Accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, whose future testimony probably concerns lots of very important people, was found in a fetal position in his jail cell with marks around his neck; he either tried to commit suicide, tried to make it look like he tried to commit suicide or was the victim of an attack. Bernie Madoff, remember him, has applied to Trump for clemency. The North Koreans launched two more missiles.  The Chinese have been cooperating in war games with Russia.  So just another ordinary day? 

Mueller Reset

Mueller On Tap:  Mueller’s much anticipated testimony starts this morning at 8:30.  Everybody who’s anybody has weighed in on what he’ll actually say and what, if any, impact his testimony will have on the general public.  It’s unlikely that there will be any Perry Mason moments since the odds are that Mueller won’t stray at all from the contents of his report, but we will know soon enough.  Trump who earlier in the week claimed he wouldn’t even watch the testimony most certainly will.  There’s very little else on his schedule today and contrary to early  inaccurate reports, Fox News will be broadcasting the testimony.  Yesterday it was announced that Mueller is bringing along Aaron Zebley, his former Chief of Staff and long time aide.  Zebley will be sworn in as a witness for the afternoon session before the House Intelligence Committee but will serve only as an adviser to Mueller during the morning portion of his testimony to the Judiciary Committee testimony. As evidenced by his late night tweet stream, Trump is bent out of shape, or at the least pretending to be, about Zebley’s involvement. We know that he’s agitated because he tweeted “So Robert Mueller has now asked for his long time Never Trumper lawyer to sit beside him and help with answers. What’s this all about? His lawyer represented the ‘basement server guy’ who got off free in the Crooked Hillary case. This should NOT be allowed. Rigged Witch Hunt!” Trump’s night time diatribe aside, Zebley is a respected former FBI agent and Federal Attorney whose career included tracking down the bombers who attacked the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and working on key components of the 9 11 investigation. Trump of course, gives him no credit for that but is focused on the fact that during one of his stints in private legal practice he represented the guy who set up Hillary Clinton’s email server.  Whatever, that’s just another Trumpian excuse for going on the attack, possibly an indication that Trump is concerned that some of the people who watch Mueller today might actually end the day understanding just how much criminal activity and obstruction took and is continuing to take place.  On the obstruction front, just yesterday Trump sued New York State and the House Ways and Means Committee to prevent them from sharing, and in the case of the Ways and Means committee, getting his tax returns.  As to that criminal behavior, another member of Trump’s transition team,  Bijan Rafiekian, a former business partner of Michael Flynn, was found guilty yesterday on a pair of foreign-agent felony charges related to work the two men did for Turkish interests during the final months of the Trump presidential campaign in 2016.  Notably, Flynn who was supposed to testify against Rafiekian as part of his plea deal with Mueller didn’t on the advise of his new lawyer, the one who sells Trump t-shirts as a sideline. As to the Mueller report, yesterday during his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted to Senator Diane Feinstein that he hadn’t read the whole report, maybe he should tune in today.  For added entertainment he could join Trump in the White House.  During the same testimony, Wray reported that the FBI has made around 100 “domestic terrorism-related arrests since October” and that the “majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.” Sadly, given the example set from the White House that’s not all that surprising.  Flynn also said that despite all of the sanctions the Russians remain intent on interfering in our elections.  Again, not all that surprising given how effective they’ve been so far and Trump’s refusal to firmly tell his good friend Vlad to keep his paws off our electoral system.

Legislative News:  The Senate finally voted to extend the 9 11 fund for first responders.   Only Kentucky’s Senator Rand Paul and Utah’s Senator Mike Lee voted against the compensation program because while voting for a tax cut plan that has ballooned the deficit into the stratosphere was okay by them, voting to ensure health care coverage for those suffering because of their work on or near the 9 11 pit violates their principles, or lack thereof.  To be fair, not that they deserve it, both Senators said that they would have voted for the legislation if certain limitations that they proposed had been passed but when neither of their amendments got anywhere near the needed votes, both voted against the continued funding of the program.  Separately, the House overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan resolution condemning the boycott-Israel movement, part of the Democrats efforts to counter Trump’s assertion that the party is completely anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. Three of the four members of the so-called Democratic “squad” voted against the resolution, but proving that despite Trump’s assertions, the squad isn’t monolithic in its views, the fourth member, Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley voted with the majority. Congresswomen Tlaib and Omar plan to travel to Israel and the West Bank soon.  Despite Israel’s law prohibiting boycott supporters from visiting, Israel’s Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer avoiding feeding further controversy, at least for now, by saying that the two will be allowed in “out of respect for the US Congress and the great alliance between Israel and America, we would not deny entry to any member of Congress into Israel." And lastly, though Congress has previously rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to cut back on who qualifies for the SNAP food stamp program, the Trump administration is now proposing an administrative rule change that would cut around 3 million people from the program, because really why do we need to help the working poor feed their families and why do all those disadvantaged school children need food anyway?  The saved money will help defer some of the billions of dollars in payments that Trump is making to farmers to cushion their losses from the tariffs that he’s imposed on the Chinese. That all makes sense, doesn’t it?      

Elvis and Olives

Another Day, More Insults:  Trump is still going after the members of the “squad” now tweeting that they’re “a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart. They are pulling the once great Democrat Party far left, and were against humanitarian aid at the Border...And are now against ICE and Homeland Security. So bad for our Country!" Trump has a habit of questioning the intellect of people of color, so sadly this slam isn’t that surprising, but it would be naïve to think that his tweet was just more race baiting babble, it was thought out, he also advanced the narrative that the Democratic party is made up of radical leftists who are against any border security.  Speaking at an NAACP conference Congresswoman Tlaib’s took the bait, responding, that she “wasn’t going nowhere, not until I impeach this president,” again not surprising, she’s all-in on the battle of words and has been an early advocate of impeachment.  She might also have made some important comments on policy about such subjects as improving health care and providing access to better education but to the extent she did none of that made it into evening news flow because why cover policy issues when insults are flying.   Unfortunately and, sadly, not surprisingly the war of words is having an effect, and not a good one, Trump’s base is loving it, more voters appear to be gravitating to his side and  a police officer, as in a guy with a gun, in Louisiana posted on Facebook that one of the four “squad” members, Ocasio-Cortez, is a “vile idiot” who “needs a round…. and,  I don’t meant the kind she used to serve,” a reference to bullets rather than her days tending bar.  The officer and another, who “liked” his post were fired for their threat but given all the gun wavers out there it’s only a matter of time before this whole political charade turns violent. Trump has also ratcheted up his war of words against former Special Counsel Mueller who is scheduled to testify before Congress tomorrow. First he tweeted that the “Highly conflicted Robert Mueller should not be given another bite at the apple. In the end it will be bad for him and the phony Democrats in Congress who have done nothing but waste time on this ridiculous Witch Hunt. Result of the Mueller Report, NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION!”  Then he followed with “The questions should be asked, why were all of Clinton’s people given immunity, and why were the text messages of Peter S and his lover, Lisa Page, deleted and destroyed right after they left Mueller, and after we requested them(this is Illegal)?” Needless to say, Mueller wasn’t and isn’t conflicted and those texts were not illegally destroyed, nor were the so-called lovers “Clinton people,” but that’s the view that Trump is pushing and it’s widely expected that the Republicans on the two Congressional Committees hearing Mueller’s testimony will stick with Trump’s theme, by focusing their questions to Mueller on the “questionable” origins of the investigation and the “bias” of his staff rather than asking much if anything about all of the weird interactions between Trump’s team and the Russians or any of Trump’s ten attempts at obstruction.  Although countless pundits and journalists have weighed in with a broad range of suggestions about what they should ask, Democrats are expected to stick to questions about the substance of the report, getting Mueller to deliver the “movie” version of the lengthy, detailed “crime novel” that few in the public have actually read, largely because Mueller is already on record saying that he plans to stick to the substance of his report and that he isn’t inclined to weigh in on things not included in the body of his report.  Though former Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who wrote the rules governing the appointment of special counsels say that those rules specify that Justice Department attorneys aren’t supposed to get involved in the process of reporting to Congress, Attorney General Barr has also weighed in, his Justice Department wrote a letter to Mueller telling him that his testimony "must remain within the boundaries of your public report because matters within the scope of your investigation were covered by executive privilege." Similar warning letters were sent to former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former FBI Director Comey before they testified before Congress, both of them went off script anyway, however, it’s not clear what Mueller will do.  He tends to be a “by the books” kind of guy, but the times are extraordinary so he might decide to deviate from his usual practice.  Tune in tomorrow!

Other News:  Trump and Nancy reached a two-year budget deal yesterday that would raise spending limits by $320 billion and suspend the federal debt ceiling until after the 2020 presidential election. Essentially they’ve agreed to raise military spending but by less than Trump wanted and have agreed to raise other spending by a bit more, but probably less than some Democrats in Congress want.  The deficit will continue to balloon but apparently that’s only a problem for most Republicans when Democrats are in power.  On the international front, Boris Johnson, the former Mayor of London has been elected to serve as the next British Prime Minister.  Johnson, Trump’s preferred candidate, is a supporter of Brexit, a number of British MPs have already resigned from the government over fears that he will go the no deal Brexit route.  Johnson, who was actually born on the Upper East Side of NYC, is another one of those disruptive politicians who are so in vogue these days.  He once said that his “chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.”  It looks like it’s now raining olives in the UK.  As to Elvis, who knows?  In other international news, yesterday Trump said that if he wanted to he could end the Afghanistan war in a minute, suggesting that nuking the country was one of the options he’d consider if all else fails.  He said that during a meeting with Imran Khan, the one-time very successful cricket player who is now Pakistan’s Prime Minister.  For some reason, known only to him, Trump also told Prime Minister Khan that he would be happy to help resolve the long simmering Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, representing that he had Narendra Modi’s,  India’s Prime Minister’s, blessing to get involved.  He doesn’t.  Moments after Trump’s offer went viral India rejected both the offer and the claim that it was ever discussed.  One more thing, rumors that Trump is seriously considering replacing Dan Coats, the well respected Director of National Intelligence continue to percolate. Yesterday Politico reported that Trump met with Devon Nunes, yes the malevolent Devon Nunes who used to be the chair of the House Intelligence Committee until the Democrats took over the House, to get his input on possible replacements and that Trump may actually be considering Nunes for the job.  That brings to mind what Coats said last year during an Andrea Mitchell interview right after she told him that she had just received a note that Trump had invited Vladimir Putin to the White House, “Say that again.”   

HOT

Whiplash:  It’s not like anyone really believed that Trump was really at all upset about those “send her back” chants at last week’s North Carolina political rally but still the rapidity with which he returned to attacking the four members of the so-called progressive “squad” was whiplash inducing.  All weekend, he tweeted and shouted that the four women, Representatives Ocasio-Ortiz, Tlaib, Pressley and Omar, who not so coincidentally are women of color, were incapable of loving “our” country, calling their criticism of the US and, more specifically him, unpatriotic.  Then he went for the jugular, calling all of them out as anti-Semitic, anti-Israel socialists.  It’s hard to believe that Trump really cares all that much about Israel or Jews.  However, the “good people on both sides guy” who over the weekend retweeted another message from Katie Hopkins, a right wing former Apprentice contestant who, in addition to calling for the final solution for Muslims, blames the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue bombing on its Jewish victims because of their sympathy for refugees, is well aware that his fundamentalist Christian supporters and some of his biggest donors do and that there may be just enough Jews in places like Florida, where every swing vote counts bigly, who won’t be able to figure out which is worse, anti-immigrant hate mongering reminiscent of 1930s Germany or all those “anti-Israel, anti-Semitic Democrats.”  And to be sure, Omar who, together with Tlaib, introduced a resolution last week supportive of the anti-Israel Boycott, Disinvestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, makes it easy for Trump, his supporters and others in the Republican party who are looking for reasons to paint all members of the Democratic party as anti-Israel, anti-Semites that much easier.  Though the anti-BDS resolution doesn’t have broad Democratic support and will be dead on arrival, the Omar and Tlaib sponsored resolution provided an endless source of talking points for Trump and his supporters this weekend, including the blindly loyal religious only when it matters to him VP Pence; the always snide Stephen Miller; the increasingly frightening and powerful Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, daughter of that other Cheney;  Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump, the wife of Eric who warmed up the North Carolina crowd for Trump;  and a number of indistinguishable pasty Republicans spokespeople who each spent much of the weekend pushing back against suggestions that Trump’s targeting of the “squad” members and his calls for immigrants to go back to where they belong was in any way racist because to paraphrase Miller just because you are only criticizing people of color doesn’t mean that you are racist. Fox’s Chris Wallace did a particularly good job of tearing each of Miller’s assertions apart, notably pointing out that attacking Ocasio-Cortez as unpatriotic for calling Trump’s policies garbage when Trump used to regularly say that everything Obama touched turned to garbage was particularly ironic.  For his part, CBS’s Major Garrett so befuddled Pence that the best the VP could do was say that Trump may, not would, just maybe may, speak out against crowds saying “send her back” in the future.  Sadly, Trump’s strategy of pitting white people against black people while using Jews and Israel as his heat shield, is frightening, divisive and effective. Expect to hear a lot more about socialism going forward too, Trump and Republican leadership will call any expansion of health care coverage, whether it involves just an improvement of Obamacare or the full Medicare for all plan just the tip of a huge socialist iceberg, because fear of socialism is a great motivator for those Republicans who find race baiting offensive but who can justify voting for Trump to protect the country from that “socialist” Democratic party.

International Front:  Things continue to percolate in the Persian Gulf where the Iranians have seized a British tanker.  While saying that we don’t have to, Trump pledged that the US will stand firm with our British allies.  He’s also decided to take Senator Rand Paul up on his offer to help negotiate a reduction in tensions with Iran, the same Rand Paul who opposes passing the 9 11 health care bill.  Neither national security advisor John Bolton nor Secretary of State Pompeo, both Iran hawks, are all that happy that Trump is letting Paul onto their turf and they may have a point, Paul, who so irritated his own Kentucky neighbor that the poor guy lost it and beat the crap out of him, is hardly a trained diplomat but at least he tends to shy away from armed conflict with other countries. Late last week Trump met with a number of survivors of religious persecution including a Nobel prize winning Iraqi Yazidi, a Uyghur from China and a Rohingya from Burma all of whom talked about their horrible experiences within their own countries and the importance of providing aid to refugees.  Unfortunately for them and somewhat embarrassing for the rest of us, the unprepared and disinterested Trump had no idea who any of them were, where they were from or even where their regions were located.  He did however, look very much like he was about to fire whomever it was who let them into his office in the first place.  On the Hong Kong front, demonstrators were back at it this weekend, clashing with riot police while protesting the Chinese government’s plans to extradite those accused of committing crimes in Hong Kong mainland China where they would face harsher treatment. 

Domestic News:  George Nader, another one of those Trump associates with, surprise, surprise criminal predilections has been indicted for child pornography and the trafficking of minors. Nader who had meetings with Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon during the transition period and who helped organize the questionable meeting between Education Secretary Betsy Devos’s brother Eric Prince and some Russians in the Seychelle Islands has served as a witness for the Mueller investigation.   As to Mueller, his testimony is still on for this week though Jerry Nadler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, admitted this weekend that he remains concerned that Attorney General Barr is still trying to impede Mueller’s appearance.  And lastly, things aren’t well in Puerto Rico.  As if  suffering from the impact of Hurricane Maria, Trump’s disdain, years of financial mismanagement and the recent arrest of a few local politicians hasn’t been enough, the island’s Governor, Ricardo Rossello is now involved in a huge scandal of his own making related to pages of vulgar texts between him and his aides that somehow or other made it into the public domain.   In response to days of demonstrations from protesters who want him to step down immediately he has announced that though he plans to stay in place, he will not be seeking reelection.  Trump of course seems to be enjoying the spectacle.

Spontaneous Combustion

Rinse and Repeat:  Trump’s “send her back” routine got a little more pushback from his usual crowd of enablers than he expected. A number of Republican members of Congress expressed their concern to VP Pence who passed their agitation to Trump.  Additionally, Ivanka, who has remained largely silent about the disgusting conditions in the border holding tanks, and Melania, who’s on record caring about nothing, spoke out within the confines of the White House or at the very least had their PR people say that they did.  Trump responded to the pushback by insisting that the crowd’s “send her back” chant was just one of those spontaneous things that was outside of his control.  He claimed in that tone he uses when he’s obviously lying that he wasn’t happy about it and  insisted that he tried to drown them out by immediately speaking over the cacophony.  Of course none of that is true, the videotape shows him smirking and waiting a bit, at least thirteen seconds, before returning to his speech. Almost everyone expects that the chant and his smirk will reappear at his next rally with a vengeance, kind of one of those Charlottesville rinse and repeat things.  A number of Republicans actually went public with their disapproval, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois called the chant "ugly" and "wrong" and said it "would send chills down the spines of our Founding Fathers" but Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy defended Trump asserting that only a small group were chanting, that Trump didn’t egg them on and that he never actually mentioned the names of any of the four “radical squad” members targeted.  All of McCarthy’s assertions was provably false, again because everything was on videotape.  The most bizarre defense came from Senator Lindsey Graham who said he did not believe Trump was being racist with his comments, comparing them to the 1960s refrain of "love it or leave it" that was frequently leveled against Vietnam war protesters, adding a Somali refugee embracing Trump, one wearing a MAGA hat, would not have been asked to go back, because “if you're a racist you want everybody from Somalia to go back because they're black or they're Muslim."  As to Somali refugees, Representative Ilhan Omar was treated like a hero when she arrived back in Minneapolis, it’s not clear if that is a bigger problem for Trump or for the Democrats.

Investigatory Front:  Substantially unredacted versions of the Michael Cohen warrants were released yesterday.  They reveal that in the run up to the 2016 presidential election the Trump team, most notably Trump, Michael Cohen and Hope Hicks were consumed with covering up Trump’s affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, particularly concerned that revealing more evidence of Trump’s cheating and womanizing following the release of the Access Hollywood “grab them by the whatever” tape would doom his chances of winning the election, the one he won in part by silencing the two women.  The documents confirm that Trump, who was previously referred to only as “Individual 1” was involved in all aspects of the hush money cover up scheme that helped land Michael Cohen in jail.  Despite his involvement, at least for now and possibly forever, Trump gets a pass because he’s the sitting president and the Justice Department, sticking with policy, doesn’t indict sitting presidents.  Additionally, though Trump’s involvement is detailed, there is no direct evidence that he knew that the hush payments to the two women violated any campaign finance laws even though he probably did know. Although, it doesn’t appear that anyone else in the Trump organization will face any charges related to the hush payment scheme, Hope Hicks might not get off scot free.  Apparently she “misrepresented” as in lied about her involvement when she testified before Congress and has now been formally asked to reappear to “clarify” her statements, the statements where she denied any involvement or any knowledge about the payments made to Stormy Daniels.  Lying before Congress is one of those bigly no no’s that can land you in jail, but then again Hopey is one of Trump’s favorites so she’s probably more concerned about what to wear for her next appearance than actual jail time.  Things didn’t work out all that well for Trump’s “sometime” friend Jeffrey Epstein yesterday.  As expected he was not granted bail, instead he gets to spend lots of quality time in a cell where he is no doubt thinking about who to rat on first.  Though he isn’t likely to see the inside of a prison cell any time soon, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan is very familiar with camps and cages.  Yesterday he testified before the House Oversight Committee where he was questioned about things like child separation,  conditions in the migrant camps, and the Customs and Border Patrol hate filled Facebook group. One of Trump’s favorite targets Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked him what he was doing about the death threats and rape images of her that are posted on the Facebook site and Chairman Elijah Cummings tore into him, reading from a court document in which a federal judge found that Homeland Security “did a better job of tracking immigrants’ personal property than their children,” adding “I’m talking about human beings. I’m not talking about people that come from, as the president said, sh--holes. These are human beings. Human beings. Just trying to live a better life.” He then went on to say that you wouldn’t treat a dog the way that DHS is treating people.

2020:  Earlier this week VP Joe Biden provided details of his health plan, one that involves improving rather than replacing the Affordable Care Act, an approach that is dramatically different from Bernie Sanders rip the whole thing up and start over with a Medicare for All.   Though the two won’t be appearing during the same night during round two of the Democratic debates, expect that heath care policy will be front and center.  The line-up and placement for July 30, the first night, is as follows: Marianne Williamson, Tim Ryan, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, John Hickenlooper, John Delaney and first time debater Montana Governor Steve Bullock.  The July 31, second night, line-up and placement is a follows:  Michael Bennet, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julian Castro, Corey Booker, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee and Bill de Blasio. Since a number of these candidates are expected to drop out before or miss the poll/fundraising qualification targets for the third debates, scheduled to take place in September, this could be our last chance to see such a crowded stage.

Other News:  Yesterday, Trump reported that a US warship shot down an Iranian drone over the Gulf of Hormuz; this morning the Iranians who assert that none of their drones were destroyed  claimed instead that the referenced drone was one of ours, not theirs.  In all likelihood, it was their drone, but regardless the bottom line is that things continue to heat up in the region. On the domestic front, yesterday evening Trump tweeted his intention to nominate Eugene Scalia, son of former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, to become the next Secretary of Labor. Scalia, who was recommended by arch conservative Arkansas Senator Cotton, is of course as conservative as you would expect a Scalia to be and is also a member of the Federalist Society. Democrats may find themselves missing former Secretary Acosta, the guy who got canned for letting Jeff Epstein off easy.     

Contemptibles

Send Him Back:  Racism continues to be the theme of the week and the week keeps getting longer.  Trump traveled to Greenville, North Carolina for a political rally that had been scheduled to coincide with former Special Counsel Mueller’s testimony.  With Mueller’s testimony postponed to next week, Trump quickly adapted, going with unadulterated racial hatred instead, making the four members of the Democratic newbie “squad” his primary target of vitriol.  To be sure he also hammered the Mueller “witch hunt” but this rally was even more of a celebration of white supremacism than usual, so much so that the token Black guys usually positioned behind his podium to make it appear as though he has many African American supporters were missing.  The crowd was all in, they gleefully chanted “Send Her Back” every time Ilhan Omar, AOC, Ayanna Pressley or Rashida Tlaib’s names were mentioned and even when they weren’t. Someone ought to be making sure that the four have really good bodyguards as this might not end well. Trump intentionally mispronounced all their names, his way of making them seem like particularly noxious alien invaders, reserving extra disdain for Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, questioning the legitimacy of her citizenship by dredging up old rumors that she had at one point married her brother to help get him into the country and calling her out for her anti-Semitic remarks.  There’s something very special about Trump, whose current wife’s journey to citizenship is questionable at best and whose Slovenian in-laws benefited from the chain migration he detests, calling out another immigrant about her family’s pathway to citizenship.  As to Omar’s anti-Semitism, she’s no innocent, but Trump attacking someone for hating Jews in front of a crowd that probably shares the sentiment, really, has he or they looked in the mirror lately?   In any case, Trump has found his foils, and sadly, painting the whole Democratic party as socialist, anti-Semitic outsiders, appears to work for him.  Though a majority of the country finds his remarks racist, many who do, don’t care and as a result of his recent diatribes his popularity has climbed a few points, especially among Republicans.  Trump also poked fun at the Democrats’ failure to vote to pass a resolution to open up impeachment proceedings saying "I just heard that the US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly voted to kill the most ridiculous project I have ever been involved in. The resolution -- how stupid is that -- on impeachment," adding “impeachment of your president is now over.” That resolution had been forced to the floor by Texas Democrat Congressman Al Green who has been calling for Trump’s impeachment for some time.  It wasn’t expected to pass, it didn’t have Speaker Pelosi’s backing and only received supportive votes from 95 Democrats but that count is up and doesn’t reflect the true interest in proceeding with impeachment as a number of Democrats, including Pelosi, are still waiting to assess the impact of Mueller’s testimony on public sentiment before moving forward. Trump may still discover that the whole impeachment thing isn’t over.

The Epstein Affair:  Although Trump continues to discount his one-time friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, an effort made more difficult by yesterday’s video tape of the two ogling, and in Trump’s case manhandling, a bevy of NFL cheerleaders,  he’s got to be more than a little bit concerned.  Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman calls the Epstein case an “asteroid poised to strike the elite world in which he lived,” a world that largely intersected the Trump universe.   Sherman says that the number of people impacted will be “staggering, and that people, and by people think people like Trump, in Washington and NYC are “bracing for impact.”  Later this morning, the judge overseeing the Epstein case is due to announce his decision on whether to grant bail to the pedophilic financier.  Given Epstein’s growing list of accusers and additional information provided by prosecutors, most notably that he lied when he said that he’d never used the expired Austrian passport with the false name that was found in a safe in his NYC mansion, it’s highly likely that the judge will rule against bail, even one secured by more than $100 million of Epstein’s assets.  Facing an interminable amount of time in jail, Epstein might well conclude that implicating Trump and/or a number of other politicos and titans of industry and finance will be the only way for him to minimize time spent behind bars.  Of course, Trump still has one very big ace in his pocket, those Southern District of NY prosecutors all report to “his” Attorney General, that very willing enabler William Barr, who appears more than willing to do whatever it takes to protect his interests.  As to Trump’s interests, yesterday’s Federal prosecutors from the SDNY indicated that they have concluded their investigation into campaign finance crimes committed by Trump's former lawyer/fixer, Michael Cohen, leading some including Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow to conclude that they have decided not to bring criminal charges against anyone besides Cohen in that scheme to use hush-money payments to protect Trump's reputation during the 2016 presidential campaign.  Sekulow may be right, it’s possible that he is privy to some inside scoop from Barr, or he might just be making an educated guess.  In any case, we are likely to learn more about the hush money/campaign violations case from materials that are due to be released later this morning as a result of an order from the presiding Judge who said yesterday that “The campaign finance violations discussed in the materials are a matter of national importance. Now that the Government's investigation into those violations has concluded, it is time that every American has an opportunity to scrutinize the materials.”  This could well be another one of those things that’s on Trump’s mind because it may be that his presidential status is the only thing protecting him from being indicted, or it could be that Barr managed to put the kibosh on indictments of his family members and company officials, at least while he’s in office.  We might know more later.  As to Barr, yesterday the House voted to hold him and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt of Congress for their refusal to turn over key documents related to the Trump administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.  Neither of them seem to be losing any sleep about it, especially Ross, who has a habit of going into siesta mode during key meetings.  

Dancing Machine

Out of Order: Yesterday the House voted to condemn Trump’s language as racist but not before a major delay, the result of Nancy Pelosi calling Trump a racist on the House floor, a statement that so offended Republican leadership that one of them, Congressman Doug Collins, called her out of order for violating protocol. To be clear, Trump making racist statements and calling for women of color to go back to where they came from, not a problem for Trump enabler Collins but Pelosi pointing out those statements as racist, a bigly problem.  Four Republican Representatives, including Will Hurd, Fred Upton, Brian Fitzpatrick and Susan Brooks together with the newly Independent Justin Amash voted alongside all of the Democrats in support of the resolution.  Hurd, the Republican party’s only Black congressman had already gone on record calling Trump’s language racist.  He, Upton and Fitzpatrick are all from swing districts where blindly supporting Trump puts their seats in as much jeopardy as going against him, Brooks has already announced plans to retire and Amash, already in the Trump doghouse has nothing further to lose. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made it clear that he does not believe that Trump is a racist, adding gratuitously that he also doesn’t believe that Pelosi is one saying that the whole dispute was about philosophy, a matter of socialism versus freedom. Going forward, every time Trump says something inappropriate it will be justified as part of his fight against those “socialist Dems.”  For his part when asked whether it would bother him if someone told his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who came to the US from Taiwan as a child to go back home, he ignored the question, instead launching into a soliloquy about his wife’s success and the contribution of legal immigrants.  Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway managed to grab some limelight too, but not in a good way.  When a reporter asked her about Trump’s “racist” statement, she responded by asking him about his heritage. The stunned reporter, who happened to be Jewish, responded “why is that relevant.”  Conway snarled back “because I’m asking a question.”  The visibly angry Conway then babbled "a lot of us are sick and tired of this country, of America coming last to people who swore an oath of office," but not before revealing that she was of Irish and Italian ancestry, not that anyone asked.  Later in the day, once she realized that the optics of asking a Jewish reporter about his ethnicity conjured up memories of WW II era Germany, she feebly justified her question as fair, just her way of pointing out that most Americans had immigrant roots.  Anyway, one thing was clear, not only does she disagree with her husband’s op-ed, the one where he called Trump out as a racist, but she probably missed his point about the challenges of growing up “different” in her lily white world.  Kind of makes you wonder how they ever connected and what their children think about her defensive position. While the “is he or is he not a racist” battle was being waged on the House floor and on the White House lawn, Trump was inside holding one of his cabinet meetings, or a cabinet meeting full of acting members.  Keeping to form, everyone told him he was great ignoring that his speech of the day was full of his usual lies and exaggerations, including some of those old time favorites about migrant caravans full of criminals, gang members and trafficked women.  As to trafficked women, a lawyer representing one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims asserted that Epstein was frequently visited by one or more of those possibly too young “masseuse girlfriends” while serving his absurdly lenient sentence in Florida, the one that allowed him to spend his days in his office “working” only returning to his cell during the evening hours.  Though Epstein is richer than most people, financial forms filed with the Southern District of New York reveal that he’s only a half billionaire, and that expired passport found among his loose diamonds, his lawyers say that it had been intended to provide him with protection in case he was ever on a plane hijacked by Arab terrorists.  Though there’s no evidence that Epstein was ever hijacked, this morning MSNBC’s Morning Joe show played an old tape of him chatting it up with his old friend Donald J Trump as the two of them watched and, at least in Trump’s case, joined a group of very blonde NFL cheerleaders dancing at Mar a Lago back in the 1990s.  Young Trump was such a dancing machine.  

Etcetera:  As expected the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to circumvent asylum law protections by requiring refugees to make their asylum requests to the first country they step into after fleeing their homes.  Planned Parenthood fired Dr. Leanna Wan, their newish president who had succeeded the very dynamic Cecile Richards and had  been on the job for less than a year, saying that in tough times with reproductive rights under constant assault the organization needs someone more adept at focusing on both health care and politics, something that they say she wasn’t very good at.  Apparently her management style and changes that she’d imposed had led to an outflow of experienced professionals.  Yesterday Planned Parenthood also said that they plan to defy a newly imposed Trump Administration gag rule banning clinics that obtain any federal funding from referring women for abortions, because that amounts to keeping patients in the dark about legitimate health care options. Lastly, retired Justice John Paul Stevens who over the course of his 35 year term became the leader of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing, died last night.  Notably, the 99 year old Stevens was appointed by a Republican, Gerald Ford, back in the day when Judges didn’t need the Federalist Society stamp of approval to be nominated by Republicans.     

Spelling Trouble

Quadrupling Down:  Yesterday during one of his more memorable White House lawn pressers, Trump reupped his Sunday racist tirade, the one in which he said that those four Congresswomen of color should go back to their “broken infested countries” if they “hate it here,” because while it was more than okay for Trump to have run an entire campaign hammering that Black guy Obama’s management of the country, it’s not okay for anyone, especially a group of “foreign” women of color to criticize him or his policies.  In response to one reporter’s comment that his remarks were being interpreted as racist he said “it doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me.  A lot of people love it by the way.”  Sadly he may be right about that, or at the very least he’s calculating that making racist, xenophobic comments is a good campaign strategy because as evidenced by the typed notes clutched in those little hands of his, his remarks weren’t the impromptu rantings of a crazy mind, they were  planned down to his comment that at least one of those four Congresswomen is an al Qaida supporter, or as he spelled it in a handwritten addendum to his notes  “alcaide” but then again the stable genius who claims to be a really good speller  also spelled people as “peopel.”  He’s also calculated that calling the four out as anti-Semitic, Israel haters will earn him a few more votes, mostly from the religious right but also from some Jews, so he managed to throw that into his racist rant as well. Hawaii’s Senator Brian Schatz wasn’t amused, he quickly  tweeted “I have been pretty polite about this and so have other American Jews. But you really have to leave us out of your racist talking points. You are not helping us, you are not helping society, you are not helping Israel. Your racism is your thing and we are not your shield.”  Quite a few other Democrats quickly went on record condemning Trump’s remarks and though it took a bit longer a number of Republicans finally stepped up though for the most parts their comments also included a few critical zingers about the four targeted Congresswoman. Texas’ Will Hurd, the sole Black Republican Congressman, was one of the first to condemn Trump, he called Trump’s remarks racist, xenophobic, unbecoming of the leader of the free world and inaccurate, a reference to the fact that three of the four Congresswoman are native Americans who have no countries to go back to.  Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, who is up for reelection in 2020 also agreed that the remarks were racist, adding “uh yeah, they’re all Americans” and though neither he nor Susan Collins actually used the “R” word, they too called out Trump’s comments, with Collins saying “they were over the line” and Romney saying they were “destructive” and “demeaning” and fell short of “unifying rhetoric befitting of the nation’s highest office.”  As usual, Senate Leader McConnell remained silent but Montana Senator Steve Daines expressed his unqualified support tweeting “Montanans are sick and tired of listening to anti-American, anti-Semite, radical Democrats trash our country and our ideals. This is America. We’re the greatest country in the world” and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, who’s been otherwise occupied actually talking to Speaker Pelosi about what it will take to raise the debt limit to avert a cataclysmic financial crisis simply said that Trump’s tweets weren’t racist.  VP Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short weighed in too, saying that since Trump had an “Asian woman of color” in his cabinet he obviously wasn’t a racist, for the record that Asian woman is Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Mitch McConnell’s wife.  For their part, the four Congresswoman held a joint news conference late in the day where they strategically stayed away from saying much that was controversial, trying very hard to take the high road, although Ayanna Pressley notably refused to refer to Trump as president instead referring to him as the “occupant of the White House” and both Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar called for the immediate initiation of impeachment proceedings, something that Tlaib has been doing for a while now but that Omar had been more reticent about.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who spoke last added “"I am not surprised" by the president's actions, given the actions  he's taken against immigrants and to hurt the average American. She called Trump's comments a "distraction," saying that Trump “does not know how to defend his policies, so instead he attacks us personally. That’s what this is all about.”  She also pointed out that she and her colleagues weren’t going anywhere because "we don't leave the things we love and we love all people in this country."  Like them or not, the four Congresswoman won the day, well at least they one the day with people who think that advocating xenophobia and racism is so yesterday.  As to hatred, coincidentally or not Trump’s ever dutiful Attorney General William Barr hosted an event targeting anti-Semitism yesterday, he cited an uptick in violence against Jews and Jewish institutions,  and Education secretary Betsy DeVos called out the growth of the “pernicious” anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement on college campus and the ostracizing of Jewish students. A noble effort but they do know that they work for Trump, who repeatedly says that there are good people on both sides, don’t they? And proving that her marriage, like her boss Trump’s administration remains highly dysfunction, Kellyanne Conway who doesn’t believe that Trump is a racist defied a congressional subpoena from the Oversight Committee about her Hatch Act violations while her husband, whose mother is from the Philippines, published another opinion piece in the Washington Post, this one relaying his experience growing up in a mixed race family.  In his piece he called Trump out as a racist and a bigot. 

Immigration Politics:  While Trump’s racist rantings dominated the news cycle, his administration announced plans to proceed with a new rule that will severely impact the ability of Central American migrants crossing the Mexico border to obtain refugee status in the US.  The rule requires that asylum-seeking immigrants who pass through a third country en route to the US first apply for refugee status in that country rather than at the US border.  Since most immigrants fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras by necessity cross through Mexico the new would effectively make it impossible for any of them to obtain US refugee status. The restriction will likely face court challenges.  And those raids that were supposed to have scooped up either 2000 or one million undocumented immigrants, for the most part though they stoked a lot of panic, they didn’t happen last weekend, which isn’t to say that they aren’t still planned.

Epstein Update:  Jeffrey Epstein is still hanging out in the Manhattan Correctional Facility awaiting a Judge’s ruling on whether or not to allow him back into his Fifth Avenue mansion, the location where he’d prefer to spend his time while awaiting trial.  Yesterday, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York argued that Epstein was both dangerous to the community, or at the very least the community of young upper east side girls, and a flight risk who should be denied bail.  They told the Judge that they had found piles of diamonds and an “extra,” albeit expired, passport with Epstein’s picture but someone else’s name in his town house safe.  In addition they reported that they believe Epstein tried to influence witnesses by paying out a total of $350,000 in what they implied was hush money to two individuals, including a former employee, in the last year.  A number of Epstein’s accusers also testified. Could this be just another one of those things that Trump, who one of Epstein’s accusers alleges raped her at one of Epstein’s homes while another one says she was recruited by Epstein while working at Mar a Lago, would like to distract us from?