Chlorinated Chickens

Sharpie Gate:  This would be funny if Trump wasn’t the leader of the nation, but since he is, it isn’t; pathological maybe, but funny, not so much. Yesterday, during another one of his White House propaganda events, Trump staged a show and tell where he displayed a map of Hurricane Dorian’s cone of uncertainty. The map included a “curiously” hand drawn extra bold, black arc that extended Dorian’s reach to include Alabama.  It appears that, Trump, who had previously waxed on about how much he loved black Sharpies, had used one, or at the very least had an aide use one, to alter an official weather service map to “prove” that all that criticism he’d received for erroneously reporting that Alabama would be affected by the storm had been unwarranted.  For the record, the altering of an official national weather service map is a crime, not that anyone at Justice cares when Trump commits crimes. Trump also denied having anything to do with VP Pence’s decision to stay at the Trump Doonbeg Golf resort, the resort located 300 miles away from Dublin where all of Pence’s Ireland meetings took place, even though Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short had earlier confirmed that the “recommendation” to stay in Doonbeg came from Trump.  The ever cooperative Pence is now lying about that too, insisting that it was his decision, one he made so that he could visit the home of his ancestors and one that made his  Secret Service entourage’s job easier, something that also isn’t true.  Of course, Congressional Democrats have now added the decision process behind the Doonbeg stay to their list of emoluments violations, as if that matters. It also appears that Congress is planning to hold hearings on the porn star and playmate babe payoff campaign violation scheme, largely because the crime in question involves people who can’t be protected by Trump and Justice’s questionably but so far very effective executive privilege umbrella.  On the investigatory front, yesterday a Washington DC jury found Skadden Arps partner Greg Craig not guilty of charges that he had made false statements to the Justice Department about the nature of the work that he had done for the then Russia friendly regime running Ukraine. Craig, a former counsel for the Obama White House, was the one Democrat ensnarled in the investigation into former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s criminal activities.  The case against him had been considered a bit of a reach with some suggesting that it had been pursued in order to make the point that Mueller’s investigation wasn’t only targeting Republicans. The Craig outcome could also serve as a warning to Justice that pursuing charges against former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe won’t be a slam dunk with a skeptical  Washington, DC jury.

The Wall:  So it turns out that Trump has given up on the idea of Mexico paying for his vanity wall.  Instead he is raiding the military’s budget, redirecting $3.6 billion of funding that had been previously allocated to various military construction projects at home and overseas.  Last night the Defense Department released the list of 127 military construction projects that stand to lose funding, the list features projects in 23 states, three U.S. territories and 20 countries.  Schools for military personnel, projects in storm ravaged Puerto Rico and a $160 million project at the US military academy at West Point are on the targeted list as are projects intended to help our European allies bolster their defenses against Russian aggression.  The Defense Department claims that the moneys for all these projects will be “backfilled” in subsequent Congressional budgets, but given that Congress has already made it clear that they have no intention of funding Trump’s wall, it’s hard to believe that they, most notably Speaker Pelosi, will be all that interested in cooperating.  Litigation is of course expected, over the funding reallocation and over all of the local eminent domain suits that are likely to follow, but since Trump is doing all of this under the guise of his earlier emergency  declaration, the one intended to protect the country from the non-existent marauding gangs of drug traffickers and babies crossing through the southern border, it’s not clear that anything can be done to stop him.  Besides with the economic boom ending and recession fears growing, Trump needs to fulfil that promise to his base that he’s building them a wall to insure a  2020 victory so he’s prepared to fight this one to the end. That said, his concern seems limited to his own future, some of those cuts are in the states served by vulnerable Republican Senators including Arizona’s McSally, North Carolina’s Tillis,  and Colorado’s Gardner.  Even Moscow McConnell’s Kentucky will be impacted.  On the 2020 front, more than a dozen Republican Congressman have announced plans to retire.  All told, five of those retirees are from Texas, and though many come from “safe” Republican districts, their collective decision to jump ship is indicative of their belief that the House will remain in Democratic hands regardless of the outcome of the presidential election.  On the presidential front, the leading Democratic candidates participated in an extremely long CNN town hall on the climate crisis yesterday.  Though their approaches, the cost of their plans and their  support for things like carbon taxes differ they all agreed that we’re facing a crisis, a sign that, even though he’s no longer a candidate, Governor Jay Inslee has had a real impact on the campaign.  Trump responded with a series of tweets attacking #FakeNewsCNN.               

Across the Pond:  Things are going so badly for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson that yesterday, during a heated House of Commons debate about Brexit, he called Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn a “chlorinated chicken,” a reference to claims that the UK will have to lower its food safety standards to get the trade deal with the US that they will desperately need if they make a hard exit from the European trade pact.  Johnson also called Corbyn a “great big girl’s blouse,” which must be a really big insult across the pond but seems pale in comparison to the “this is  f-cked up” comment that Beto O’Rourke used last week to describe the recent spate of Texas murderous gun rampages. Though the odd British taunts are humorous, the tone of the debate was harsh, and Johnson’s base of support, small to begin with, appears to be shrinking so much so that this morning his own brother, who opposes Brexit, resigned the government tweeting “In recent weeks I’ve been torn between family loyalty and the national interest - it’s an unresolvable tension & time for others to take on my roles as MP & Minister.”  That said, for what it’s worth, chlorinated chickens and all, Johnson retains Trump’s full support because “Boris knows how to win. Don’t worry about him.”  But then again, Trump doesn’t like losers so even that support is likely to wane, when and if Boris loses, and at least for now, it’s looking like his days as Prime Minister might be numbered. Somewhere in Britain, former Prime Minister Teresa May, who took so much heat for her failure to implement Brexit, is smiling, or at the very least singing, “breaking up is hard to do!”