Men Behaving Badly

What Me Worry?  Last night Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, the Trump fanboy who isn’t qualified for his position, and FBI Director Chris Wray, who is qualified but remains under assault by Trump, took to the cameras to announce that Iran and Russia are doing that “meddling” thing in our elections.  Though the two didn’t provide much in the way of details, it appears that one of those things involves the threatening emails sent to thousands of voters mostly, but not exclusively,  in Florida.  Those emails told Democratic voters that they’d better switch to the Republican Party and vote for Trump or else.  The emails looked like they came from Trump’s preferred White supremacist group the Proud Boys but apparently really came from Iranian operatives who though they haven’t gotten into actual voting systems have hacked into voter data bases. According to Ratcliffe, who grudgingly admitted that the Russians are doing some nasty stuff too, the Iranian effort was being done to hurt Trump. Wray did not appear to concur with that assessment. The bottom line, is that foreign players are up to no good, our DNI is a political hack and were it not for the FBI and Chris Wray we’d be in even biglier trouble right now which isn’t to say that we aren’t in trouble.  To state the obvious, Ratcliffe’s comment about the Iranians trying to hurt Trump is the kind of thing that Trump will point to in order to justify refusing to recognize election results if he loses by anything less than a landslide.  Getting back to FBI guy Wray,  the Washington Post reports that Trump wants to kick him to the curb and is seriously considering doing so after the election.  Moreover Trump is also increasingly frustrated with his former bestie Attorney General Barr.  A lot of that frustration has to do with both of their refusals to announce an investigation into that “criminal” Joe Biden and his wayward son Hunter. Trump who at one time asserted that he fired former FBI Director James Comey not for his investigation into things Russian but for violating the FBI/Justice Department prohibition against making election influencing announcements in the run up to an election really wants his current FBI Director and AG to assert that they have the goods on the Bidens just days before this election.  On that front, it’s also been reported that the Giuliani discovered “Hunter” laptop has finally made its way to the FBI but that this time, adhering to the practice that Comey violated, the FBI has no plans to say anything on the subject now or maybe ever. Barr may be out of favor but he’s still doing some of Trump’s dirty work;  yesterday one of his minions showed up in NYC to tell the judge overseeing the E Jean Carroll case that Trump should not be sued personally for having denied her rape allegation because he made the statement while acting in his official capacity as president. Imagine being the US attorney who gets to assert that denying rape is kosher when you’re the president.  On that sexual misdeed front, Laptop Rudy is also in a bit of trouble right now, he is featured in a scene in the new Sacha Baron Cohen Borat movie that is due out shortly.  That scene involves an actress playing the role of an underage young lady and Rudy with his hands in inappropriate places.  Just when you think that Rudy can’t go any lower, he does, and no, he wasn’t just tucking in his shirt. 

Politics Unusual:  Trump was on the road again yesterday, hosting another super spreader rally and delivering his usual roid rage spiel.  He’s even back to insisting that Mexico is paying for the wall and that’s the least of his lies.  He also participated in a townhall style interview with the generally friendly Eric Bolling of Sinclair News.  When asked if given hindsight, might he have done anything differently about the coronavirus, Trump said not much adding “Look, it’s all over the world. You have a lot of great leaders, a lot of smart people — it’s all over the world. It came out of China. China should’ve stopped it … No, not much." Still seething over his 60 minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, Trump showed up late for his Sinclair sit down but at least it doesn’t appear that he handed Bolling a huge bound book of all his health care accomplishments, maybe because he wasn’t happy with the reports that the one he handed Lesley Stahl was full of blank pages. Trump was probably also relatively unhappy, as in steaming mad, about Barack Obama’s day in Philadelphia.  The former president delivered a forceful  speech chock full of trash talk and knock out punches, pointing out among other things that Trump inherited “the longest streak of job growth in history but just like everything else he inherited, he messed it up.” Referencing the non-existent Republican/Trump health care plan, Obama said “it’s been coming for two weeks for ten years. Where is it? Where’s the great plan to replace Obamacare?”  Tonight Biden and Trump are due to debate again.  While it would be a stretch to assume that Biden will be anywhere near as eloquent as Obama, it’s not a stretch to assume that Trump, despite advice from his handlers to rein it in, will be bombastic and nasty.  Word is he’ll press Biden about his family’s criminal behavior with the intention of forcing some defensive stutters and misstatements and because irony is still not dead. 

Et Cetera:  Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin are still working up a stimulus plan, one that Mitch McConnell won’t want to pass because he doesn’t really want to provide aid, especially to any blue states and because he’s way too busy pushing Judge Amy’s confirmation through the Senate.  That’s the Judge Amy who served on the board of three affiliated private Christian schools that barred admission for children of same-sex parents and, “made it plain that openly gay and lesbian teachers weren’t welcome in the classroom.”  Wonder how Amy feels about Pope Francis voicing support for same-sex unions or if that’s another thing that she’d have to consult with her clerks and fellow conservative judges about before weighing in against.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced yesterday that no Democrats will participate in today’s Judiciary committee meeting, depriving Republicans of the quorum they need to vote Judge Amy’s nomination on to the Senate floor, a probably futile attempt to stall her confirmation for much more than an hour or two.       

Twelve Days (or longer)