Tik Tok

Another Weird Weekend:  It turns out that scheduling a political rally during a pandemic on Juneteenth weekend in a city closing in on the 100^th anniversary of a racial pogrom during a time of racial discord was not such a good idea. Though Trump’s team, most notably current and possibly soon to be ex-campaign manager Brad Parscale and Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany spent last week bragging about the humongous demand for rally tickets, asserting that a million tickets had been requested and that at least 100,000 people would turn up in Tulsa, only 6,200 people showed up to the 19,000 seat arena leaving rows of bright Democratic blue seats empty and exposed to the cameras. The turnout was so small that an outdoor stage built so that Trump and VP Pence could say a few words to the overflow crowd that wasn’t remained unused, quickly torn down while the not so festive, festivities were taking place inside what was likely, given the lack of masking and social distancing, a virus invested arena.  As to COVID, the death toll is above 120,000 and six members of Trump’s advance team, including two Secret Service agents are now among the 2.2 million in the US who have or have had the virus. They were moved into quarantine before the rally even began.  Apparently, Trump, who grew increasingly furious and judging by pictures of him after the rally, despondent, as Saturday went on wasn’t all that concerned about the health of his infected staff but was livid that their test results had been made public which does make you wonder how many others on team Trump are super spreaders.  That might explain why he attacked the value of virus testing saying it is a “double-edged sword,” because when you do lots of testing “you're going to find more people; you're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down please.”  Later, his spokespeople claimed he was just kidding, but really, he was just saying the quiet stuff out loud.  The rest of Trump’s rally diatribe went as expected, it was chock full of references to those demonstrating thugs and radicals, the need for law and order, the dangers of electing any Democrat especially Joe Biden, and sadly, he made no attempt to sooth the country or to appeal to anyone outside of his base.  He even called the coronavirus the Kung flu, a smear that Kellyanne “cupcake” Conway once denied that anyone in the Trump administration would ever use.  Still smarting from the snarky press about his inability to drink water with one hand and his stumbling walk down the ramp at last week’s West Point graduation, Trump spent an inordinate amount of time defending himself, going so far as to prove his drinking prowess by lifting a glass to his lips with one hand to prove that he could leaving some to wonder how many  physical therapy sessions it took for him to achieve that feat.  And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Tik Tok army, the teenagers who punked team Trump by ordering thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of free Tulsa rally tickets.  Though Parscale denied that their “orders” had at all influenced his rally attendance predictions, we know they did, a lot. 

Friday Night Massacre Redux:  Southern District of New York (SDNY) US Attorney Geoffrey Berman is now gone, but he didn’t leave without causing a ruckus.  Late on Friday, Attorney General Barr announced that Berman was departing, an announcement that caught everyone, including Berman by surprise.  Details of Berman’s forced departure sputtered out over the weekend and the story was messy even by Trump standards. In his original announcement AG Barr said that Berman would be temporarily replaced by Craig Carpenito, the US Attorney for New Jersey rather than Audrey Strauss, the second in command in the SDNY, pending the confirmation of his permanent replacement, Jay Clayton the current head of the SEC, whose only qualification for the position is that he’s a regular golfing buddy of Trump.  Berman responded that Barr’s announcement was news to him and that he didn’t intend to step down, adding that given that he had been appointed to his position by a judge, rather than through the usual Senate confirmation only Trump could firm him.  On Saturday, Barr announced that Trump was firing him, but then Trump distanced himself, saying that he had nothing to do with Berman’s dismissal, that the whole thing was Barr’s doing.  By the end of the day, Berman had stepped down but not before he backed Barr into agreeing that his second, the respected Audrey Strauss, rather than the NJ US Attorney would step into the acting role pending the confirmation of Clayton, that all ongoing “controversial” prosecutions, as in cases involving individuals named Trump and/or Giuliani would continue and that the Justice Department Inspector General would make sure that nothing untoward happened to disrupt any of those ongoing cases.  To further muddy the waters, the Trump team then claimed that the decision to replace Berman, who by the way is a Republican who contributed to Trump in 2016 but who has “failed” by doing his job instead of kowtowing to Trump, had nothing to do with any pending indictments, that it was just Trump awarding Clayton, his golfing buddy, a position that he wanted to “burnish” his resume and that they had offered Berman two other slots, the head of the SEC position being vacated by Clayton and the head of the Justice Department Civil Division, another about to be vacated spot.  It’s fair to assume that’s just smoke and mirrors, that something is up at the SDNY and that Trump and Barr thought that they could pull a fast one while all eyes were on Tulsa.  As to Clayton’s confirmation, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.  Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham, who is doing the usual post primary shuffle back towards reasonable to help him win his upcoming election, announced that he will only put Clayton up for a confirmation vote if he receives “blue slips” from NY’s two Senators Gillibrand and Schumer.  The “blue slip” convention which allows Senators to put the kibosh on nominees in their region has mostly been ignored by the Republicans of late so Graham’s announcement is a bit surprising, it also wouldn’t be surprising if he changed his mind as nothing about this tale is normal.  In any case, NY’s twosome will oppose Clayton’s nomination. And of course, House Judiciary Chair Nadler has invited Berman to testify.  As to Barr, this weekend Nadler agreed with Senator Elizabeth Warren’s call for his impeachment but added that given the complicity of the Republican controlled Senate there’s no point in trying.

Et Cetera:  Over the weekend a Judge refused to block the publication of former national security advisor John Bolton’s book, largely because everyone already knows what’s in the book, that Trump’s done lots of bad things and isn’t fit for office.  That said, he didn’t rule out the possibility that Bolton might have to hand over his profits, nor did he rule out that he could be further punished for telling state secrets.  As to those secrets, Trump claims that Bolton is mostly lying and lies aren’t secrets, something that complicates some of those punishments ever happening.  Bolton’s book goes on sale tomorrow but pirated copies are already available on the internet.  On the DACA front, Trump is now saying that he owes the Supreme Court a favor as they’ve said he can unwind the program as long as he does it the right way.  He now plans to try to do it the right way.  We may hear more from the Supremes today, a decision related to abortion rights is thought to be coming shortly.  Lastly, someone left a noose hanging in NASCAR’s sole Black driver Bubba Smith’s racing stall yesterday, payback for him weighing in against the Confederate flag. If only we had a president who would speak out against that kind of thing.