The Stuck Scab ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Zero Sum Game: The economy is doing well, interest rates and inflation are coming down, GDP growth is up, the stock market is humming along, and that much feared recession doesn’t appear to be in the cards. Even Fox’s reliably pro-Trump faux economist Lawrence Kudlow has been heard to admit, on air, that the gloom and doom scenario is behind us. President Biden’s challenge is getting that message out to Americans who still aren’t convinced and while messaging the economy’s improvement isn’t easy, it’s a far better challenge than having to explain a recession. Well, better for most people.  Trump is truly bummed because he’d much prefer a stock market crash, out of control inflation and skyrocketing interest rates because that scenario would have been easier to run on which isn’t to say that he isn’t still claiming things are awful, it’s just that some of his followers know better and by November more of them are likely to note that the economy is okay.  That takes us to the border “crisis.” With the economy on the upswing, Trump needs the border situation to continue festering which means more stories about smallpox infected terrorist hordes streaming in from Mexico which explains why he’s opposing the bipartisan immigration reform package that the Senate has been working on and a bunch of governors especially Texas’ Abbott are threatening a civil war.  The immigration package which until yesterday was fully supported by Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell includes border funding tied to concessions from the White House as well as money for Ukraine, something that McConnell has long supported but that is anathema to Trump and his BFF Putin.  Mitch, however, is now wavering on the immigration package that his team negotiated.  On Wednesday, behind closed doors, he told Republican Senators that “we don’t want to do anything to undermine Trump,” translated to mean that with Trump having a lock on the Republican candidacy, it’s time to fully kowtow to his wishes.  If Trump wants more mayhem at the border, let’s give him mayhem.  As Mitt Romney puts it, the border is a very important issue for Trump. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican Senators and Congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”  Yesterday, McConnell denied that he’d pulled his support from the border funding package, but that’s probably mostly because his remarks were made public rather than anything else.  He now has an optics problem, one that Biden’s team is already using against Republicans.  The bottom line, there is an immigration problem but it’s harder for Trump, Moscow Mitch, Houseboy Johnson, and the rest of his Republican toadies to run on it if they are vocally opposed to supporting any legislation to fix it, not that will stop them from trying.  

Bye Bye Birdbrain? Turning to Trump, to put it mildly he’s not happy with “birdbrain” Nikki Haley.  He wants her gone now so in addition to personally threatening her with “investigations” and insulting her intellect and sartorial choices, he’s making it clear to her big money contributors that he’s not happy with them either. He’s told them they better cut her off ASAP if they ever want to do any business with “his” administration.  He also says that he’ll refuse their money should they opt to throw some his way, but that part is pure BS, because Trump would never turn down money.  To hasten Haley’s departure, Trump and another one of his toadies, RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, are looking into cancelling the remaining Republican primaries and just declaring him the presumptive candidate.  That McDaniel is onboard for that goes far to explaining why she’s still RNC Chair because it’s not like she’s had a string of successes. When not campaigning, sweaty, resentful Trump is busy with other things like defending himself in court.  Yesterday he actually testified, or tried to testify, on his own behalf in the E Jean Caroll defamation case. He didn’t get to say much because the judge refused to let him deny that he knew or sexually assaulted Caroll because those facts aren’t in dispute anywhere except in Trump’s head and among his diehard acolytes especially those trying out for his VP slot.  The issue in front of the jury is only about the defamation, how much it will take to “fix” E Jean’s tarnished reputation and how much more Trump should be penalized for sliming and continuing to slime her, not that Trump plans to stop sliming her.  He was up for hours the night before his testimony slamming her with dozens of ugly Truth Social posts because that’s what Republican presumptive presidential candidates do these days. As to sexual assaults, remember those accusations about Matt Gaetz having sex with underaged girls, they haven’t gone away.  Apparently, though his archenemy Kevin McCarthy is gone, the House Ethics committee started on his watch is heating up, with the committee working on obtaining testimony from the young woman involved. Furious Gaetz is in full denial mode but doesn’t appear to be taking his ire out on Speaker for now Johnson whose majority may be on the verge of shrinking again since North Dakota’s one Congressman, Republican Kelly Armstrong has just announced that he’s running for Governor to replace Doug Burgum who is wants to be Trump’s Energy Secretary.     

And:  Biden won the coveted United Auto Workers endorsement.  Not surprising since he’s been demonstrably pro-labor and even appeared on a UAW picket line when the union was striking the major auto companies while Trump showed his “solidarity” by visiting a non-union shop.  UAW president Shawn Fain pulled no punches, calling Trump a scab during his Biden endorsement speech.  Trump may never see the inside of a prison cell, but his former advisor Peter Navarro may.  Yesterday he was sentenced to four months in the slammer for contempt of Congress, relating to his refusal to comply with a January 6 committee subpoena. Naturally, he like Steve Bannon who was also found guilty and sentenced for lack of compliance, is appealing hoping he can put off his jail time until after Trump is reelected (ugh) and grants him a pardon.  The clock is ticking on Trump’s immunity appeal.  Pundits predicted that the Appeals Court would have acted by now.  They haven’t, but it’s Friday so maybe by the end of the day we’ll hear something.  And, we still haven’t learned very much about the accusations against Fulton County DA Fani Willis.  It appears that she had a personal relationship with one of her prosecutors but it’s not clear that her canoodling will derail the RICO case because while salacious it has nothing to do with election interference.      

 

#BringThemAllHomeNow