Pierre Delecto

Pride and Prejudice:  After a period of self-reflection, Trump cancelled plans to hold the upcoming G7 meeting at his Doral Golf Resort.  Okay, I am only kidding, no one as psychologically demented as Kellyanne's husband George Conway writes that Trump is, would ever be capable of self-reflection, so there was no reflection, just plenty of pushback from Republican allies who told him that while they could deal with him caging kids, throwing Kurds to the curb and lots of obstruction, profiting from the G7 was too much to bear.  Of course, Trump announced his decision through his favorite medium, making sure to include another Doral commercial alongside a swipe at the media and the Democrats, tweeting “I thought I was doing something very good for our country by using Trump National Doral, in Miami, for hosting the G-7 leaders, but, as usual, the Hostile Media & their Democrat Partners went CRAZY!”

Trump wasn’t the only one engaging in clean up, Acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney, whose days in the White House may be nearing an end as Trump has been reaching out to new candidates/victims to assume his role, continued to try to take back that “quid pro quo” admission the one he made during the press briefing that had been scheduled to announce the Doral G7 summit that now isn’t.  It turns out that unwinding G7 plans is a whole lot easier than taking back admissions of impeachable offenses.  Mulvaney made his most recent attempt during an interview on Fox News Sunday but unfortunately for him host Chris Wallace, aided by ample video evidence, kept calling out his lies so when Mulvaney denied that he acknowledged a link between aid to Ukraine and an investigation into fictional Democratic-Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, Wallace played back Mulvaney tying the two together.  Likewise when Mulvaney insisted that he had only given two reasons for holding up aid, Wallace played back his statement that there were three reasons, with the third being, what else, the investigation into Democratic-Ukrainian interference.  It’s not clear why anyone in the White House thinks that sending Mulvaney out in public is a good thing but then again little coming out of this White House makes sense.

Secretary of State Pompeo also failed to impress when he appeared on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Just back from his Middle East, where he and VP Pence conceded everything and more to Turkey and then tried to reassure Israel that they were still safe, he sounded more like the highly partisan Congressman he used to be than a Secretary of State.  He unsuccessfully tried to defend Trump’s “very wonderful” Syria policy. Unfortunately for him, he looked like he was being held hostage, his answers was peppered with long, awkward periods of silence because even he had to know that he was lying through his teeth.  Pompeo did however manage to throw most of the current and former members of the State Department’s career staff under the bus, particularly targeting former Ambassador Bill Burns, who served both Republican and Democratic administrations, for his piece in Foreign Affairs, the one that was titled “The Demolition of US Diplomacy” where he argued that not since Joe McCarthy has the State Department suffered such a devastating blow.  Pompeo also attacked House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff for conducting a Kangaroo Court and for prohibiting State Department lawyers from accompanying State Department staff while they testified.  Notably, none of those testifiers seem all that anxious to have Pompeo approved lawyers by their side.  Pompeo has got to be very freaked out that so many current and former members of his staff continue to show up over his objections.  For his part, in addition to reporting that the White House is conducting a new review of sites for the G7 summit, including the very wonderful Camp David that Mulvaney trashed as woefully unsatisfactory last week, Trump again bragged about his brilliant Syria policy, denied that the Turks had violated the ceasefire, then misnamed his own Defense Secretary Mark Esper, instead renaming him Mark Esperanto.  As to Esper/Esperanto he reported that the US soldiers being withdrawn from Syria are being reassigned to Iraq to fight against ISIS, contradicting Trump’s assertion that they are all coming home because the fight against ISIS was either over or no longer a US responsibility.  Trump also claimed that we now had all the oil fields in the region under control, a head scratching, baffling assertion as no one at State or Defense knows what he’s talking about.    

Persuasion:  Reports are that Attorney General Barr is spending his time wisely too.  At tax payer expense he is expanding his investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, interviewing/interrogating FBI and CIA agents, in an effort to uncover how their bias against Trump impacted their inquiry.  If Pompeo and Mulvaney are to be believed he is also searching for the DNC server, the “holy grail” hidden away in a Kiev basement.  That said, the NY Times reports that the Justice Department is now distancing itself from Trump lawyer/fixer Rudy Giuliani, saying that the head of the department’s Criminal Division and lawyers from the division’s Fraud Section wouldn’t have met with Giuliani to discuss a bribery case in which he was representing the defendants if only they had known that attorneys in the Southern District of NY were investigating him and his cronies.  For the record, Attorney General Barr knew all of this but apparently failed to share.

As to that other investigation, the one that helped torpedo Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, the State Department reports that there was no “systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information” by Clinton or her associates although they did say that 38 former and current State Department employees were culpable of violating security rules by communicating with her, though they found no malintent.  It’s not clear whether that finding will be used to purge any of those 38, particularly any who’ve managed to offend Pompeo’s and/or Trump’s sensibilities.  

Sense and Sensibility:  Regarding sensibility for some reason Hillary Clinton has decided it’s her job to alert us to the dangers of Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s candidacy.  Clinton is not alone in pointing a finger at the suspiciously odd support that Gabbard receives from Russian bots, far right conspiracy theorists and the neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, among others, but her criticism is counter-productive.  Gabbard, hardly an innocent, is raising money on Clinton’s criticism and may well earn herself a few more poll points and to the extent that she decides that threatening to boycott any of those future debates that she’s qualified for doesn’t suit her purposes, more air time to be disruptive.  Though she says she won’t run as a third party candidate, who knows, she might decide to follow the Jill Stein model. 

More sensibly, former Governor/presidential candidate John Kasich announced on Friday that he now supports the impeachment inquiry as did Florida Republican Congressman Francis Rooney, unfortunately he did that shortly before saying that he will not be seeking reelection.  Nancy Pelosi and a bipartisan Congressional delegation spent the weekend in Jordan and Afghanistan, comforting allies and trying to figure out what’s up with Taliban negotiations.  And Senator Mitt Romney, who appears to be enjoying his position as Trump’s biggest irritant admitted that the Pierre Delecto Twitter account belongs to him, because why shouldn’t he be able to tweet under an assumed name when he wants to, after all Devon Nune’s Cow and former FBI Director James Comey have both done the same.  

Lots more testimony on tap this week beginning today with Acting US Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, the writer of the “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign” text.