All Roads Lead to Moscow

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Late Friday, the New York Times reported that back in March Trump was told that the Russians, through the same GRU unit responsible for US election interference, has been paying the Taliban bounties for killing US and allied forces troops in Afghanistan.  At that time Trump was presented with several retaliatory options, none of which have been implemented.  Over the weekend,  the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post confirmed the NYT report while providing additional details, including that the information about the bounties was included in the PDB (the president’s daily briefing), that at least one, possibly more, soldiers had been killed and others injured by the Taliban as a result of the bounties and that British officials have been brought into the intelligence loop. The response from the White House apparatchiks was fast, furious and deceptive.  Press Secretary Kayleigh “Kay-lie” McEnany said that neither Trump nor Pence had ever been briefed about any of this, a denial  that notably didn’t actually deny the veracity of the report.  Newest Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe called the story false, saying that he knew nothing about it, not all that surprising since he was promoted to his post because he’s a Trump fan boy who denies anything that implicates the Russians. Similarly a number of other White House denizens claimed that Chief of Staff Meadows hadn’t sat in on any related briefing, which means little since Meadows wasn’t in place yet in March.  Late last night Trump, who spent a good part of the weekend doing important things like retweeting support for White Power chanting Floridians and golfing in Virginia even though he said he was staying in Washington to protect statues and promote law and order against all those thuggish demonstrators, moved his usual denial cycle forward a few steps by tweeting “intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible and therefore did not report it to me or the @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russian Hoax maybe by the  Fake News @nytimesbooks wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!”  He’s right in one respect, the story does make Republicans look bad, because despite his efforts to dissemble, it’s very likely that he was told about the Russian’s actions in March, that he either failed to pay attention when he was told, or that he didn’t care because keeping Vlad happy is more important than the lives of a few American soldiers.  The bounty story has hit a nerve across the aisle.  A number of Republicans including rising star Representative Liz Cheney, veterans Adam Kinzinger and Dan Crenshaw aren’t happy; they want to know what Trump knew and when he knew it. Senator Lindsey Graham who played golf with Trump wants us to know that he’s distressed too.  Similarly Speaker Pelosi is furious, neither she nor any other Democrats in the Gang of Eight who are supposed to briefed on this type of intel were ever brought into the loop, not surprising since the Trump machine no longer does that kind of thing.  Anyway, whatever Putin has on Trump, whether it’s something along the lines of the oft rumored but never proven pee tape or more likely something financially impactful it’s got to be bigger than bigly because instead of pushing back against or punishing Putin, since learning about the bounties Trump has continued to  push for Russia to be welcomed back into the G8 economic group, has announced that he’s withdrawing troops from Germany, two things that top Putin’s wish list, and has sent Russia ventilators. 

Viral Musings: As despicable as the Russia bounty story is, it pales in comparison to the deaths and disruptions associated with the Trump administration’s criminal mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic where the death count is 128,000 and growing. Virus tallies continue to implode especially in early to open Texas, Arizona and Florida and even in California, which for a short time looked like it was flattening the curve.  Nevertheless, on Friday the White House Virus Task force held a press conference where VP Pence reported that we’ve made “remarkable progress,” that all of the Trump administration’s actions have paid off and that masks while cute, weren’t all that necessary as along as people social distanced while toasting each other in jam packed bars and going to crowded churches.  Dr Debby Birx uttered some of her increasingly ridiculous gobbledy gook and Virus Guru Fauci looked like he was  exploding in frustration.  Almost immediately after Pence reassured us that there was no reason to be at all concerned about all those young’uns getting the virus because none of them would get sick and if any of them did they would probably survive even if hospitals were at capacity, the Governors of Texas, Florida and California pulled backed on their re-openings, somewhat, temporarily closing beaches and limiting the serving of alcohol in bars.  Though neither Texas Governor Abbot nor Florida Governor DeSantis mandated wearing facemasks they both said that people should kind of if they wanted to.  As to virus “expert” Pence, he cancelled some planned campaign events but then attended a huge indoor church service, huge as in thousands of people, in Texas where he sat by as a choir belted out prayerful songs along with zillions of teeny weeny COVID germs.  After that service, Pence finally recommended that people wear masks and notably the choir did put theirs on after they shared their germs with everyone else.  To round out the weekend HHS Secretary Azar warned that the “window was closing” for the US to get the virus under control, but did that while giving the contradictory message that the US is better positioned to handle the pandemic than before, citing increased testing, contact tracing, hospital capacity, reserves of personal protective equipment, and advancement toward therapeutics and potential vaccines for the virus.  That all sounds good except that we are still way behind in testing, so much so that Dr Fauci is now advocating pooled testing, the process where the samples of groups of people are lumped together, test waiting times remain prohibitive in hard hit areas and it’s not clear that we’ll have enough personal protective equipment in the fall nor that the promised treatments and or vaccines will be available when promised, or all that effective.     

Barr News: Attorney General Barr tried to have the campaign finance charges against Trump fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen’s removed, not out of any affection for Cohen, but because of the implication for Trump.  Though Barr didn’t succeed with Cohen, his interference is likely the reason that no one else from the Trump organization was ever charged.  Similarly it’s reported that its due to his efforts that Giuliani is still out and about and that his odd  partners in crime Lev and Igor’s cases won’t be heard until after the election.  Questions are also being raised about the possibility that Barr interfered in a case against Walmart, and that Joseph Brown, a lesser known US Attorney in Texas, who was pushed out in May was another victim of Barr’s efforts to protect a Trump friendly crowd.  Despite the administration’s efforts to keep the migrant children from an earlier episode of the Trump chronicles locked up forever, Federal Judge Dolly Gee ruled that 124 of them must be released ASAP to relatives and in some cases with their relatives due to the severity of the virus in their detention facilities and a Federal Appeals court ruled that Trump’s diversion of $2.5 billion of funds to wall construction from the Pentagon wasn’t Kosher.  Trump wants voters to believe that the reason that he had Barr’s DOJ join the case to overturn Obamacare is because he’s got a much better plan, one that will take care of pre-existing conditions.  Ignoring that his plan doesn’t exist and that the Republicans in Congress have had years to come up with one and haven’t, the DOJ lawsuit specifically attacks the coverage of pre-existing conditions.  Roger Stone’s judge Amy Berman Jackson has given him until July 14^th to turn himself in to start serving his sentence which is probably why Trump also tweeted again about pardoning him this weekend and lastly one more member of the White House team, or at least one more that we know of, has tested positive for COVID.  Though we don’t know who that person is we do know that he’s part of the economic team.  Curiously enough two members of that team announced they were leaving last week.