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.