;)
The Commentariat -- April 6, 2018
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Julie Davis & Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: "John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, told President Trump last week that Scott Pruitt, his embattled administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, needed to go, according to two officials briefed about the conversation, following damaging allegations of ethical infractions and spending irregularities by the E.P.A. chief. But Mr. Trump, who is personally fond of Mr. Pruitt and sees him as a crucial ally in his effort to roll back environmental protections, has resisted firing him, disregarding warnings that the drumbeat of negative headlines has grown unsustainable, and that more embarrassing revelations could surface. White House officials said on Friday that Mr. Trump continues to believe that Mr. Pruitt has been effective in his role, and stressed that it was up to the president alone to decide his fate."
Ana Swanson & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump defended his pugnacious approach to trade policy on Friday, just hours after he doubled down on a White House plan to punish China by threatening to levy tariffs on an additional $100 billion in Chinese imports. Mr. Trump, in a tweet, criticized both China and the World Trade Organization, saying that the Chinese 'get tremendous perks and advantages, especially over the U.S. Does anybody think this is fair. We were badly represented. The WTO is unfair to U.S.'... That followed another early morning tweet, in which Mr. Trump boasted that the new metals tariffs he has put into effect on China and other nations had not hurt American consumers as his critics predicted.... The price of aluminum per pound has been falling since February, a decline that started before the tariffs were imposed. Mr. Trump's decision to exempt Canada, which supplied more than half of America's aluminum imports in 2016, has also helped to soften the blow from tariffs, companies say."
When Is a Timeline Not a Timeline? Matthew Lee & Josh Lederman of the AP: "... Donald Trump has spoken: He wants U.S. troops and civilians out of Syria by the fall. But don't call it a 'timeline.' Wary of charges of hypocrisy for publicly telegraphing military strategy after criticizing former President Barack Obama for the same thing, the White House has ordered Trump's national security team not to speak of a 'timeline' for withdrawal. That's even after Trump made it clear to his top aides this week that he wants the pullout completed within five or six months.... Trump's desire for a rapid withdrawal faced unanimous opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon, the State Department and the intelligence community, all of which argued that keeping the 2,000 U.S. soldiers currently in Syria is key to ensuring the Islamic State does not reconstitute itself.... Documents presented to the president included several pages of possibilities for staying in, but only a brief description of an option for full withdrawal that emphasized significant risks and downsides, including the likelihood that Iran and Russia would take advantage of a U.S. vacuum. Ultimately, Trump chose that option anyway. The president had opened the meeting with a tirade about U.S. intervention in Syria and the Middle East more broadly, repeating lines from public speeches...." Read on. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I suspect Vlad told Trump to get the hell out of Syria, or else. Otherwise, what would account for the sustained Trumpertantrum? Unless maybe he thinks he can convert Syria money to border-wall money. This is one dangerous imbecile. ...
... Margaret Hartmann: "The explanation for how we got to the point where the president is setting foreign policy deadlines on a whim may be even more troubling. The AP reports that the national security team has been giving Trump the illusion of power by presenting him with very limited choices (a tactic parents use with toddlers). But this time the game didn’t work[.]"
Where's Kelly? Jonathan Lemire & Catherine Lucey of the AP: John "Kelly, once empowered to bring order to a turbulent West Wing, has receded from view, his clout diminished, his word less trusted by staff and his guidance less tolerated by an increasingly go-it-alone president.... Trump has rebelled against Kelly's restrictions and mused about doing away with the chief of staff post entirely. It's all leading White House staffers and Trump allies to believe that Kelly is working on borrowed time.... Those close to the president say that Trump has increasingly expressed fatigue at Kelly's attempts to shackle him and that while Trump is not ready to fire Kelly, he has begun gradually freezing out his top aide. Trump recently told one confidant that he was 'tired of being told no' by Kelly and has instead chosen to simply not tell Kelly things at all.... Kelly was once a fixture at the president's side, but Trump has now cut him out of a number of important decisions."
Quint Forgey of Politico: "... Donald Trump will again skip the White House Correspondents' Dinner this year, and will send his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, instead." Great! Mrs. Huckleberry is a barrel of laughs with an unparalleled sense of humor. Maybe she can get Stephen Miller to write her "jokes." The list of winners of awards at this year's dinner -- which celebrates the First Amendment -- include CNN ("fake news"), Lester Holt ("this Russia thing"), & Maggie Haberman ("Hillary flunkie"). "Among the other reporting that earned journalists awards this year were stories on former White House press secretary Sean Spicer's resignation, former HHS Secretary Tom Price's use of taxpayer-funded private aircraft, and Trump's firing of all members of his AIDS advisory committee."
Andrew Kramer of the New York Times profiles Konstantin V. Kilimnik, who "has turned up in multiple court filings by the special prosecutor, Robert S. Mueller III, who identifies him as Person A." Kilimnik, who worked for Paul Manafort in Ukraine & is now skulking around Washington, D.C., says he's not a Russian spy; Mueller says he is.
*****
Gardiner Harris of the New York Times: "The Trump administration imposed new sanctions on seven of Russia's richest men and 17 top government officials on Friday in the latest effort to punish President Vladimir V. Putin's inner circle for interference in the 2016 election and other Russian aggressions. The sanctions are designed to penalize some of Russia's richest industrialists, who are seen in the West as enriching themselves from Mr. Putin's increasingly authoritarian administration. They grow out of an oddly disjointed policy toward Russia on the part of the Trump administration: While President Trump continues to call for good relations with Mr. Putin, Congress and much of the rest of the administration are pushing through increasingly punitive efforts that are sinking relations with Moscow to lows not seen in years.... Among those sanctioned are Oleg V. Deripaska, an oligarch who once had close ties to Mr. Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Just as "oddly disjointed": an Asian policy that expects to negotiate nuclear arms cooperation from North Korea while initiating & escalating a trade war with North Korea's "handler." ...
Ana Swanson of the New York Times: "President Trump said Thursday that he will consider hitting China with an additional $100 billion in tariffs, on top of the $50 billion the White House has already authorized, escalating threats of a trade war with the Chinese that his top advisers had tried to minimize a day earlier. In a statement late Thursday, Mr. Trump said that he was responding to China's 'unfair retaliation' against the United States, which this week outlined hundreds of Chinese products, like flat-screen TVs and medical devices, that could be subject to American tariffs. The Chinese, in response, detailed their own list of $50 billion worth of American products, like soybeans and pork, that would be hit with levies." ...
... Paul Krugman: "Trump himself might be O.K. with large-scale deglobalization. But as we've seen, his beloved stock market hates the idea, and with good reason: Businesses have invested heavily on the assumption that a closely integrated global economy is here to stay, and a trade war would leave many of those investments stranded. Oh, and a trade war would also devastate much of pro-Trump rural America, since a large share of our agricultural production -- including almost two-thirds of food grains -- is exported. And that's why things seem so incoherent. One day Trump talks tough on trade; then stocks fall, and his advisers scramble to say that the trade war won't really happen; then he worries that he's looking weak, and tweets out more threats; and so on. Call it the art of the flail."
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Trump ... traveled to West Virginia to promote his $1.5 trillion tax overhaul before a friendly audience. But the president grew tired of his prepared remarks after a few moments and returned to the bitter complaints about the United States' immigration laws that have dominated his attention this week and prompted him on Wednesday to ask governors to deploy the National Guard to the southern border.... He boasted that he had described immigrants as rapists when he announced his presidential candidacy, saying that he had recently learned that during the journey north made by a caravan of Honduran migrants, 'women are raped at levels they've never seen before.'... He also repeated his false claim that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.... The round table on taxes was a lovefest for the president, in which attendees took turns praising him and recounting the ways in which the tax measure and Mr. Trump's agenda had helped them and their families." Mrs. McC: Oh, crap; so sorry I missed it. ...
... Nidhi Prakash & Adolfo Flores of BuzzFeed: "President Trump on Thursday said that 'women are being raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before' during the caravan of asylum-seekers, mostly from Honduras, who are currently heading north in Mexico. A BuzzFeed News reporter who has been traveling with the caravan for 12 days says there's no evidence that's true." ...
... Eric Levitz: "Donald Trump attended a roundtable discussion on his tax law Thursday, where he was supposed to sell the public on the virtues of his signature legislative achievement. So, naturally, he delivered a rambling disquisition on the (nonexistent) epidemic of rape among Central American migrants and the (also, nonexistent) plague of mass voter fraud that allows Democrats to rig elections.... 'In many places, like California, the same person votes many times,' the president explained. 'You probably heard about that. They always like to say "Oh, that's a conspiracy theory." Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people. And it's very hard because the state guards their records. They don't want [you] to see it.'... And yet, it's possible that Trump's 'mass voter fraud is not a conspiracy theory' conspiracy theory is less of a lie than a willful self-delusion: Trump has reportedly persisted in making the claim in private, over and over again...."
... ¡Basta! Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post: "Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto delivered his most direct public rebuke of President Trump on Thursday afternoon, in a national address that characterized Mexico as willing to cooperate with the United States but not at the expense of its sovereignty or dignity.... Peña Nieto, speaking Thursday from the presidential palace in Mexico City, noted that the Mexican Senate and all four leading candidates in the July 1 presidential race had condemned Trump's comments, adding: 'As president of Mexico, I agree with those remarks.'... The address to the nation was remarkable because Peña Nieto has endured, with diplomatic courtesy and sometimes stony silence, about two years of insults and threats from Trump over Mexican immigrants, the trade relationship, border security and the fight against drug traffickers."
Frank Rich: "Trump is listening to no one except the morning hosts of Fox & Friends and any other Fox News talking heads, phone cronies, or Mar-a-Lago dining companions he recognizes as tribunes of his base. It doesn't matter if illegal border crossings have been at their lowest since 1971; he's going to send in the Marines (or whomever) because Fox is hyperventilating about a caravan of mainly women and children escaping from Honduras to Mexico.... Nor does it matter that DACA is inapplicable to any immigrant who might illegally cross the border today; Trump is going to redundantly kill the program a second time and blame the Democrats. Similarly, he flip-flopped on his threat to withdraw immediately from Syria only after Fox & Friends told him to. If he really does tamp down his trade war with China, it will be because he is instructed by Rupert Murdoch or Sean Hannity.... Even if Trump gives away the nuclear codes to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un in his proposed summits, it's hard to picture Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan doing anything more than hiding under their desks."
Madeline Albright in a New York Times op-ed: "... fascism -- and the tendencies that lead toward fascism -- pose a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II.... If freedom is to prevail over the many challenges to it, American leadership is urgently required. This was among the indelible lessons of the 20th century. But by what he has said, done and failed to do, Mr. Trump has steadily diminished America's positive clout in global councils."
Julie Davis: "President Trump denied on Thursday knowing of a $130,000 payment his lawyer made to a pornographic film actress who claims to have had a sexual encounter with him, referring questions about the transaction to his personal lawyer. Mr. Trump made his first public remarks about the matter on Air Force One as he returned to Washington from White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., where he had held a round table on tax cuts. Asked by a reporter whether he knew about the payment to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, known in her films as Stormy Daniels, he said, 'No.' Asked why Michael D. Cohen, his personal lawyer, had made the payment, Mr. Trump said, 'You'll have to ask Michael.' The president said he did not know where the money had come from." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Some teevee lawyer-pundits are having a field day with Trump's assertions as they imperil both Trump & Cohen. ...
... Kevin Hall, et al., of McClatchy News: "Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators this week questioned an associate of the Trump Organization who was involved in overseas deals with ... Donald Trump's company in recent years. Armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony, Mueller's team showed up unannounced at the home of the business associate, who was a party to multiple transactions connected to Trump's effort to expand his brand abroad, according to persons familiar with the proceedings. Investigators were particularly interested in interactions involving Michael D. Cohen, Trump's longtime personal attorney and a former Trump Organization employee. Among other things, Cohen was involved in business deals secured or sought by the Trump Organization in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia. The move to question business associates of the president adds a significant new element to the Mueller investigation, which began by probing whether the Trump campaign and Russia colluded in an effort to get Trump elected but has branched far beyond that." ...
... Josh Gerstein of Politico: "... Robert Mueller's office moved to seize bank accounts at three different financial institutions last year just one day before former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was indicted, prosecutors disclosed in a court filing Thursday. The previously unknown move against the bank accounts was revealed in a list of search and seizure warrants prosecutors submitted to a federal court in Washington after Manafort's defense team complained that the government was withholding too many details about how the warrants were obtained.... Prosecutors said some information about the various searches was withheld from Manafort because it relates to the identity of informants or to ongoing investigations that are not the subject of either of the current prosecutions involving Manafort.'"
Jeremy Herb & Manu Raju of CNN: "Corey Lewandowski had a blunt message for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee: He wasn't going to answer their 'fucking' questions. Lewandowski, President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, was the final witness in the yearlong House investigation that descended into vitriol and back-biting -- ultimately resulting in two separate partisan reports that will leave the American public no closer to learning how the Russians interfered in the 2016 elections.... Lewandowski ... agreed to come back to the committee a second time in March after initially refusing to answer questions about topics occurring once he left the campaign in June 2016.... And, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the situation, the Trump confidante repeatedly swore at Democratic lawmakers to make the point he wasn't going to talk further."
Kevin Collier of BuzzFeed: "Twitter DMs [direct messages] obtained by BuzzFeed News show that in the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks was working to obtain files from Guccifer 2.0, an online hacktivist persona linked to by Russian military intelligence, the clearest evidence to date of WikiLeaks admitting its pursuit of Guccifer 2.0. '[P]lease "leave," their conversation with them and us,' WikiLeaks asked journalist Emma Best, who was also negotiating with Guccifer 2.0 for access to what it had teased on its blog as 'exclusive access' to hacked Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee files.... But by the time of the DM conversation with Best, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had shifted the story of how WikiLeaks acquired those emails, giving repeated TV interviews that floated Seth Rich, a Democratic staffer who had been murdered in what police concluded was a botched robbery, as his real source. The messages between Assange and Best, a freelance national security journalist and online archivist, are the starkest proof yet that Assange knew a likely Russian government hacker had the Democrat leaks he wanted. And they reveal the deliberate bad faith with which Assange fed the groundless claims that Rich was his source, even as he knew the documents' origin."
Scott Pruitt's Rehabilitation Campaign Is Going Very Well. Timothy Cama of the Hill: "Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt said he wasn't aware that two close aides received pay raises after the White House refused to allow it. 'My staff and I found out about it yesterday and I changed it,' Pruitt told Fox News in an interview published Wednesday, adding that he wasn't sure who was responsible for the raises. 'You don't know? You run the agency. You don't know who did it?' Fox's Ed Henry asked the EPA head. 'I found out this yesterday and I corrected the action and we are in the process of finding out how it took place and correcting it,' Pruitt responded." Mrs. McC: Totally believable. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Since his $50-per-night, vacation-style rental agreement with the wife of an energy lobbyist was publicized, Pruitt's defenders have focused on two things: 1. That an ethics official at the EPA supposedly signed off on the deal, and ... 2. That the lobbyist, Steven J. Hart, didn't have business before the EPA and received no official actions in return. 'Mr. Hart has no clients that had business before this agency,' Pruitt told Fox News on Wednesday. Both of those have now been undermined. That same ethics official ... Kevin Minoli [now] notes that ... Pruitt apparently had access to other parts of the house, rather than just the room he was renting. Pruitt reportedly had his daughter stay at the condo.... Minoli's new memo also clarifies that his previous memo addressed only whether the lease was at fair market value; it did not, he emphasized, take into account whether renting from the wife of an energy lobbyist would violate ethics rules.... The lobbyist's name, Steven J. Hart, appears on the lease as the legal representative of the landlord, but it is crossed out and replaced with his wife's name, Vicki Hart. [Mrs. Hart made the change.]" ...
... Sam Stein & Lachlan Markay of the Daily Beast: "'[Steven] Hart,' Pruitt claimed in an recent interview with Fox News on Wednesday, 'has no clients who have business before this agency.' A review of lobbying disclosure forms and publicly-listed EPA records, however, suggests that Pruitt is either lying or is woefully unfamiliar with the operations of his own agency. Far from being removed from any EPA-related interests, Hart was personally representing a natural gas company, an airline giant, and a major manufacturer that had business before the agency at the time he was also renting out a room to Pruitt. One of his clients is currently battling the EPA in court over an order to pay more than $100 million in environmental cleanup costs.... Hart himself was part of a team of four Williams & Jensen lobbyists that has reported lobbying Pruitt's EPA. They did so on behalf of Owens-Illinois, a glass bottle manufacturer that paid $39 million in 2012 to settle EPA allegations of widespread Clean Air Act violations by a subsidiary." ...
... AND This Is Hilarious. Eliana Johnson & Andrew Restuccia of Politico: "... Scott Pruitt was at times slow to pay the rent on his $50-per-night lease in a Capitol Hill condo, according to two people with knowledge of the situation -- forcing his lobbyist landlord to pester him for payment." ...
... Pamela Brown & Kaitlin Collins of CNN: "... Donald Trump floated replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions with Scott Pruitt as recently as this week, even as the scandal-ridden head of the Environmental Protection Agency has faced a growing list of negative headlines, according to people close to the President. 'He was 100% still trying to protect Pruitt because Pruitt is his fill-in for Sessions,' one source familiar with Trump's thinking told CNN." ...
... Eric Levitz: "One of the (many, many) odd things about the Trump presidency is the fact that administration officials routinely lose their jobs for offenses that the president has unambiguously committed himself. For example, this week, a Defense Department staffer resigned after CNN revealed that he had once shared birther conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim sentiments over Facebook.... Trump doesn't mind corruption (let alone birtherism), but he could do without bad headlines. And Scott Pruitt has generated an awful lot of those those this week. And yet Trump apparently can't decide whether Pruitt is too corrupt to run the EPA -- or just corrupt enough to be his attorney general.... Since Pruitt has already been confirmed by the Senate, Trump could theoretically install him as attorney general -- without Senate confirmation -- for 210 days. Which is to say: For much more time than it would take for Pruitt to take out [Robert] Mueller." ...
... Eric Lipton, et al., of the New York Times: "At least five officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, four of them high-ranking, were reassigned or demoted, or requested new jobs in the past year after they raised concerns about the spending and management of the agency's administrator, Scott Pruitt. The concerns included unusually large spending on office furniture and first-class travel, as well as certain demands by Mr. Pruitt for security coverage, such as requests for a bulletproof vehicle and an expanded 20-person protective detail, according to people who worked for or with the E.P.A. and have direct knowledge of the situation. Mr. Pruitt bristled when the officials -- four career E.P.A. employees and one Trump administration political appointee -- confronted him, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly.... A sixth official, Mr. Pruitt's chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, also raised questions about Mr. Pruitt's spending, according to three E.P.A. officials. He remains in his job but is considering resigning, agency officials said.... In speaking to reporters on the plane, [President Trump] described Mr. Pruitt as 'very courageous,' while suggesting he was reviewing the complaints about him. 'I'll make that determination,' Mr. Trump said. 'But he's a good man, he's done a terrific job. But I'll take a look at it.'" ...
... Julianna Goldman of CBS News: "Several weeks after taking the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency, Administrator Scott Pruitt was running late and stuck in Washington, D.C., traffic. Sources tell CBS News that he wanted to use his vehicle's lights and sirens to get to his official appointment, but the lead agent in charge of his security detail advised him that sirens were to be used only in emergencies. Less than two weeks later that agent was removed from Pruitt's detail, reassigned to a new job within the EPA. Special Agent Eric Weese, a 16-year veteran of the EPA, was replaced by Pasquale 'Nino' Perotta.... Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Tom Carper ... want to know why Perrotta and one of his business partners received an EPA security contract. Perrotta, they noted..., runs a side business called the Sequoia Security Group. His business partner, Edwin Steinmetz, who runs another security company, was awarded a $3,000 contract to sweep Pruitt's office for bugs. 'Two other contracts,' both under the $3,500 threshold for public reporting, 'were given for the purchase of biometric locks.'" ...
... Moving Right Along. Coral Davenport & Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: "Samantha Dravis, Mr. Pruitt's top policy adviser, has recently told him she is resigning, according to two E.P.A. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the news has not been made public. And his chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, has grown frustrated enough with his boss that he has considered resigning, according to people in whom Mr. Jackson has confided.... Both Ms. Dravis and Mr. Jackson are seasoned Washington insiders who have worked for years among the capital's top conservative Republicans and industry lobbyists. Ms. Dravis' departure comes on the heels of questions raised by Senator Thomas Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, about her work history. According to a letter that Mr. Carper sent to the E.P.A. inspector general, Ms. Dravis did not attend work or perform her duties for most of November, December and January while continuing to draw a salary.... Thursday afternoon, though, Mr. Trump when asked aboard Air Force One if he had confidence in his E.P.A. chief, he responded: 'I do.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Rachel Maddow ties Pruitt to Carl Icahn. Long-winded but illuminating:
Ken Sweet of the AP: "Mick Mulvaney..., Donald Trump's appointee to oversee the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has given big pay raises to the deputies he has hired to help him run the bureau, according to salary records obtained by The Associated Press. Mulvaney has hired at least eight political appointees since he took over the bureau in late November. Four of them are making $259,500 a year and one is making $239,595. That is more than the salaries of members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and nearly all federal judges apart from those who sit on the Supreme Court.... Mulvaney, as Trump's budget director, has long railed against government spending. One of his first directives as acting CFPB director was to announce he needed zero dollars in funding to run the agency, pledging to spend down the bureau's surplus fund this quarter before requiring more money from the Fed -- the CFPB is funded by the Fed and not through the traditional congressional budget process."
They're All Corrupt, Ctd. Carolyn Kormann of the New Yorker provides a picture (literally) of how Energy Secretary Rick Perry fits right into Trump's Ring of Corruption. Perry's co-conspirator in the case Kormann cites is Bob Murray, the coal baron (who sued John Oliver after Oliver aptly described Murray as "a geriatric Dr. Evil"). Murray had given Perry $100K for his presidential bid, after which Perry welcomed him with a big hug to the DOE. Perry returned Murray's $100K bribe donation by urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to require "that all coal plants in certain areas, including many that do business with Murray Energy..., keep a ninety-day supply of coal onsite to provide 'fuel-secure' power.... The language in Perry's letter clearly echoed Murray's 'action plan'" which Murray delivered to Perry on Hug Day. After a DOE whistleblower -- Simon Edelman -- circulated a photo of the Big Hug, Doe seized his belongings (including a copy of the periodic table! because science), ushered him out of the building & later fired him. FERC, possibly as a result of Edelman's photo, rejected Perry/Murray's proposal.
Ed Kilgore: "Mitch McConnell has been a member of the U.S. Senate for a third of a century.... When he was asked by a Kentucky interviewer about the his biggest accomplishment as a senator..., McConnell says 'the decision I made not to fill the Supreme Court vacancy when Justice Scalia died was the most consequential decision I've made in my entire public career.'... The wily old wire-puller surely understands that his ability to deliver judicial confirmations, particularly for SCOTUS, may be the best reason members of his party's dominant conservative wing continue to put up with him.... Judges are the best bait to keep hard-core conservatives in the party harness. And for a broad swath of them, from anti-abortion activists to anti-regulatory warriors to gun nuts to advocates for unlimited money in politics, SCOTUS is the ball game." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: If you are worried about what would happen in a "Constitutional crisis," remember Mitch. The answer is "Democrats wail & Republicans prevail." In other words, not much.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Paul Farhi of the Washington Post: "The Atlantic magazine fired a controversial columnist on Thursday just a few days after hiring him, making him the latest journalist to take a quick trip through a revolving door after an outcry on social media. The venerable magazine pushed out Kevin Williamson, whose hiring last week sparked an appalled reaction after some influential Twitter users learned that Williamson had once commented that women who have abortions should be treated as murderers, subject to the death penalty. Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg initially stood by Williamson, a longtime columnist for the conservative National Review.... But Goldberg withdrew his support after the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America on Wednesday unearthed a 2014 National Review podcast [in which] Williamson said ... he was 'absolutely willing to see abortion treated like regular homicide under the criminal code,' and that what he 'had in mind was hanging' for women who were convicted of it. He repeated the statement later in the podcast." ...
... Ashley Feinberg of the Huffington Post: "Atlantic Fires Kevin Williamson After Suddenly Realizing He Believes The Things He Says." Mrs. McC: Funny headline & absolutely true. It is dismaying that relatively liberal editors like Jeff Goldberg & James Bennet of the New York Times think they're doing a service to their readers by incorporating so-called "conservative" shitstreams into their editorial pages. They should publish opposing views; they should not pay writers -- no matter how clever their writing -- to spout crap. A basic job requirement should be "has a soul & sense of decency." ...
... digby: "Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, hired a writer who actually believes that women who've had abortions should be hanged. And that begs the question: Why? 'I recognized the power, contrariness, wit, and smart construction of many of his pieces.' The mind boggles. Goldberg's saying he could overlook murderous misogyny in a guy if he can write good. (And I won't repeat what the same writer wrote about 9-year-old child who doesn't share his skin color.)"
Beyond the Beltway
Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "The Kentucky legislature passed a sweeping tax overhaul this week, and now lawmakers are asking Gov. Matt Bevin to sign a bill that would slash taxes for some corporations and wealthy individuals while raising them on 95 percent of state residents, according to a new analysis.... Bevin's position on the tax overhaul, Kentucky's biggest in more than a decade, remains unknown.... The state's nonpartisan legislative staff estimated the plan will, on net, raise money, although other experts are skeptical." (Also linked yesterday.)
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Reader Comments (19)
I bet someone could win some pretty neat journalism awards by muckraking Wilbert Ross's finances and those of his buddies while this trade war balloons.
With his Scrooge McDuck-style love of money, you can bet he's insider trading with his fellow corrupt capitalists, whistling to the bank while international trade accumulates sand in its tracks.
With the invasive corruption of this administration, I would be shocked if this cabal wasn't making illicit gains from this.
There is a big yellow bus that has been parked in the back of the White House's back portico; since this new administration took over the running of this country bodies have been thrown under this bus, one by one, week by week so that by now there is a foul stink emanating from said bus that is permeating the surroundings and slowly finding its way into the interior of that tippy top place where the King sits on his throne and drones on and on about nothing that resembles coherent anythings. Yesterday another poor slob was tossed under that bus––the King's own lawyer of long standing, name of Roger Cohen––a mob like dude who does clean-up jobs when his boss gets into messy meanderings. So yesterday when that boss said only one word–-"No"––in regards to a question relating to Stormy, poor Roger was put under dat bus.
The next victim–-although victim is much too kind a word for this scoundrel––is the paranoid prick currently "ruining" the EPA while scamming tax payers for his bells, whistles, phones, and excess everythings. Some say the King will keep him on––likes the job he's doing and I say, please, someone! sit the King down and make him spell out exactly what it is that he likes about the job or as I said yesterday––Congress––pretty please? Do your fucking job here!
and I'm thinking––why haven't we had an interview with Trump since Lester Holt's revealing little sit down. I suppose his handlers say, nix to any interview for fear he'll shoot his mouth off about whatever––but wouldn't it be great if when Trumpy lies–-like he did yesterday about all those rapes and whatnot––that a Lester would say, Whoa Nelly, Mr. President*, that simply is NOT true.
"If wishes were horse
beggers might ride;
If turnips were watches.
I would wear one by my side.
@PD: It's Michael not Roger! Yeah! I know there are so many unsavory characters in the Trump circle of complicity it does get confusing.
The Teachers' Strikes have exposed the GOP's Achilles Heel: (Atlantic)
The red-state rebellion has revealed that the Gop's "starve the beast" agenda is deeply unpopular with the party's own voters.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/the-teachers-strikes-have-exposed-the-gops-achilles-heel.html
P.S. the picture of the torn, disheveled, very old history book (Poppy Bush was last president cited) makes me sick! It's amazing to me that parents as well as teachers stood for this kind of neglect for as long as they did.
A draft of of the next LTTE, parts of which were sketched here. And thanks to RC for its yeowoman (my MacBook didn't like that one) news aggregation.
"I learned something yesterday. Some walk-behind gas mowers don’t have an oil drain plug.
I learned it the hard way by hefting the mower onto two chairs, crawling under it, brushing away last year’s accumulated grass from the deck and looking, and then looking some more. No plug. So how, I wondered, do I change the oil?
It would have been a wasted half hour but as for the thought that hit me as I rubbed the grass flakes out of my eyes: All that swamp draining Mr. Trump promised. Whatever happened to it?
When I could see again, I consulted Mr. Google.
If hiring seventy-five lawyers who represented clients in the industries they now regulate (thehill.com); if more than half of Trump’s nominees to federal agencies have ties to the industries and business they are supposed to oversee (dailybeast.com); if the egregious ethical lapses the EPA head, Scott Pruitt, has managed to squeeze into his busy days of environment wrecking (huffingtonpost.com); if paying recent Consumer Financial Protection hires more than cabinet secretaries make (NYtimes.com); if….all this and so much more is draining the swamp, then black is white and hot is cold.
Previous administrations have been rocked by the gift of a vicuna coat (Eisenhower); sweet deals with railroads (Grant); and playing fast and loose with the nation’s national resources (Harding), but nothing in our history begins to equal the Trump presidency’s scandal a day parade of corruption (washingtonpost.com).
What to do with a mower without a drain plug? Again, Mr. Google had the answer: Remove the oil filler cap; then lift and tip the mower upside down to pour the old oil out.
Inelegant maybe, but direct and effective. I did it and it worked.
Tip and pour.
Sounds like the November election to me."
There are actually two 'Trumps'. A human being and a commercial title. The people trying to make the money part know that the human part is totally incompetent. So a large part of their job is to hide the human. Turns out that is much more difficult when the human has a public side job called POTUS. So now I believe the human when he says he didn't know that his porn girl got some Trump' money. The payout was the commercial team trying to hide the reality of the human.
P.S. And until the stories came out, I had no idea that some 'Trump' hotels were owned by others.
@Ken Winkes: Yeah, the Googles may be tracking my every move (expect to be inundated with online ads for lawnmowers, Ken), but when I couldn't get any sensible advice from the locals at the hardware store (capture it in a towel! hit it with a baseball bat!) on how to remove a bat from my belfry (okay, loft), I turned to the Googles & they didn't let me down.
@Ken,
I hope you drained the fuel first. Next time you might want to try another method - suck it out. Attach a piece of tubing to a turkey baster and stick down the filler opening. Or, if you don't mind spending a few bucks check at your auto parts store or McMaster-care for a hand-operated vacuum pump. Mityvac makes kits complete with hoses and an inline reservoir to capture the collected fluid. Quick, easy, and safe.
Damn autocorrect. McMaster-Carr, a nationwide supply house.
@Ken Winkes: Or get a battery-operated mower. Quiet (so neighbor-friendly), maybe less polluting (depending on the power sources your electric company uses), no messy oil, & very little maintenance at all.
Marie,
If you could hit a flittering fledermaus with a baseball bat, I can point you to several major league clubs who would offer you a contract before the thing was dead on your attic floor. The Red Sox are winning, but doing it without hitting. You'd probably like Fenway Park.
The towel trick apparently works. I was just a wee thing when it happened, but my dad once caught a bat that had flown in through an open window in our house using this method, at least according to my mom and my aunt, who was deathly afraid that bat would get caught in her hair and she'd have to be shorn, a reasonable concern back in the 50's when the Sinéad O'Connor look was not much of a thing.
You could probably drag a big boombox up into the attic and put on a Ted Nugent CD as loud as it will go. The thing would ram its head into the nearest beam at full speed, committing batty-kari.
@MAG: Again you come to my rescue: my sincerest apology to Roger. And this mother neglected to put an "s" at the end of horse on that other mother's goose ditty––although given the current lack of wishes coming true, one horse is probably as good as many.
And Ken––so very glad you finally solved your draining problem. One wishes that swamp promise would have been as successful.
So much advice.
@unwashed. Yes, did drain the gas first. It's a small mower, so lifting and tipping worked for that too. Google also taught me about shaker siphons. Didn't know about them either. And chose not to use the turkey baster. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, right after the November elections, and my wife said we might need it then.
More seriously, thanks.
@Bea. What if I don't like my neighbors?
@forrestmorris. Thanks for yesterday's emoluments article link. Skimmed it and sent it to my lawyer son, who agrees the lines are blurry, more so for constitutional than criminal matters. Unfortunately the emoluments issue seems to fall into the constitutional category....
With a real Congress, tho', the vagaries of Constitutional interpretation aside, I don't think it would be hard to nail the Pretender. He ain't exactly sneaky or subtle.
Emptying out the Friday junk drawer...
So Trump really, really, cross his tiny heart with his tiny hands and hope to die a horrible death in a caravan crossing hundreds of miles to get to safety, believes that "millions and millions" of people vote many times in elections?
If that's the case, then it's his boundless, toxic ego, and his childlike ID that are controlling his thought processes. A scary concept, but one that seems entirely plausible given the list of "greatest evers" that Trump awards himself.
Which brings us to the "not a" trade war. Trump says TARIFFS. The Chinese say TARIFFS. Trump says MORE TARIFFS. The Chinese say TARIFFS ON EVERY FUCKING THING YOU GOT, CHARLIE. But that's not a trade war. And what does President* Childlike ID do now? Why, he can't let those dirty Chinese get away with that! No sirree Bob. That no-good Obama let these guys get away with murder for, like, 50 years, but not me....not me....I....where are those STRAWBERRIES, dammit!
Anyway, the little dictator's newest, latest, greatest something guy, Larry Kudlow (not a real economist, he used to play one on TV, now he plays one at the White House), sez NO TRADE WAR! Hey, dudes, we're only kidding. It's um,.....It's....ahhh...um...a strategy. Yeah. That's it! A strategy.
Not for nothin', but is it usually the best negotiating ploy to come right out and say that you're bluffing? I mean, usually in order for a bluff (if that's what this is, as Kudlow is suggesting) to work, it has to seem real. If I'm sitting at a poker table and staring down the guy across from me, and I'm thinking he just filled his outside straight and I'm holding an Oklahoma, it's not a winning strategy for me to say, "Well, I'll see ya, but I'm just bluffing. I don't have shit."
And someone else who's holding a losing hand right about now? Soybean farmers. Those people who all voted for the Orange Headed Baboon. They are, in the vernacular, fucked.
So maybe it's a bluff, but markets don't think like that. They take this shit seriously. So overnight, soybean markets lost billions. How you like them apples, er, soybeans? "U.S. crop futures were badly hit after the [sic] Beijing announced the tariffs, with corn for May delivery tumbling 2.25% to $3.80 per bushel, according to Factset data. Soybean futures dropped 3.88% to $9.98 a bushel and wheat futures lost 0.77% to $4.54 a bushel."
Yikes.
Or as one Soybean farmer puts it "'Today we’re off about 33 so we’re looking at about a 60 to 70 cent drop in the market,' says local soybean farmer Tim Seifert. 'We lost $40 to $50,000 just in today's move.'" And that's just a small farmer. Word is that states like Kentucky and Ohio have already lost billions. That must be part of the Trumpy "strat-A-gee", though.
Trump wants to hurt the Chinese. But the Chinese only want to hurt Trump. So they go after his base. But hey, maybe this is just another example of his Art of the Deal chops. Or should that be "Art of the Dunce"? Vanity Fair suggests that Donaldo couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag. Talk about putting up or shutting up.
"...Trump has always been a bad negotiator. The consensus among observers in the early 1990s—when Trump’s business was insolvent and he was at risk of losing everything—was that Trump had overpaid for countless acquisitions. The Plaza Hotel, and many other buildings and businesses, had failed to generate anything close to the revenues required to cover their costs. If he was making negotiating mistakes like that in a field he knew something about, why wouldn’t he make even bigger negotiating mistakes in a field he knows nothing about?"
We've seen exactly this so far.
So trade war, real war, it's all the same to this imbecile. But his ego continues to allow him to see himself as the greatest president in history (except MAYBE for Lincoln). Add to that his ID and the rampant ignorance at play, and you have a debacle of world historic proportions.
Even better, as someone mentioned, Trump's detonation of the US's standing in the world means our position as a force in international affairs is tanking, which is a great thing if you're Putin or Xi Jinping. Trump leaves a vacuum, and dictators step in. Not to mention really bad actors.
But in places like West Virginia, it's all great.
Until their crops become un-sellable in the gigantic Chinese market. And even if the trade war, like so many Trump blowhard threats and promises, never comes to pass, even a hint of it can be seriously damaging to American agri-business and small farmers just as we're getting into the spring season where plans (and money) are already at stake.
Good job, Donnie! So much winning!
Weirdos R Us
Aside from the astonishing corruption and lies, so many of these Trump dudes are just plain fucking weird.
Ben (Are They Really Pyramids?) Carson is in a category by himself. And Betsy DeVos...teachers need guns to hold off grizzly bears? What in the holy hell?
But let's just look at Smilin' Scotty Pruitt for a minute. Is this guy a piece of work, or what?
Let's just get past the corruption. First he's renting a room from a big-time lobbyist who has business up the ying yang in front of Pruitt's agency. So said lobbyist curries favor with Pruitt by renting him a room at a pittance. But then he has to chase him down for his money. Who does that? It's not like Pruitt's making teacher money (in which case he'd need several other jobs). Pay your bills, you fucking mooch.
Then there's this weird-ass shit with his round the clock security detail. What's up with that? Is he afraid, like Scott Walker, that little old ladies will accost him on a US Air flight for pissing in their drinking water? And paying guys thousands to come in and sweep his office for bugs. Is he George Smiley? Probably more like Inspector Clouseau. He looked into leasing a private jet to ferry him from one lobbyist meeting to another. This is beyond the sort of personal oddities we all have. This is downright weird.
Remember Mobil-Ex Rex's diktat that no one at State should look him in the eye? Weird? Check.
And what about this White House personnel office? What the hell is up with that? Weird and double weird.
Trump himself has enough eyebrow raising weird-ass habits to keep a psychology post-doc busy for decades.
Plenty of Trumpado's cabinet and those around him are just ignorant and incompetent, but a frightening number are weirder than the characters in Cuckoo's Nest. If Ronny Jackson (when he gets the boot) is replaced by Nurse Ratched, you'll know why.
PS to @Ken Winkes & @PD Pepe: That little siren up there next to a story about our beleaguered Environmental Pollution Agency administrator Scott Pruitt is a gif.
@ Bea. Thanks. Got it. Learning all the time.
Besides weirdos, Trump World is over populated with just plain assholes.
"...according to four sources with direct knowledge of the situation, the Trump confidante [Corey Lewandowski] repeatedly swore at Democratic lawmakers".
Stay classy, Trumpies.
The fact is that this sort of vulgar incivility is not new among Confederates. You may recall a certain snarling Bush era weasel whining that a senator, Pat Leahy, of Vermont, should go fuck himself.
Cheney later declared that that moment of outstanding political discourse was the shining moment of his time in public service.
Wow.
So a cut-rate, off-brand hooligan and part-time woman beater, takes his cues on proper decorum during a congressional hearing from his betters. Hmm...is "worsers" a word?
How long before Confederates retreat to beating opponents on the floor of the Senate, as one of their number did prior to the "unpleasantness" of the "States' Rights War"? Hey, with a sniveling, treasonous turtle in charge, anything is possible.
According to the piece on Digby's site about the release of yet another Confederate asshole (Kevin Williamson, who had a cup of coffee at The Atlantic before getting a very well deserved boot), The Party of Traitors is a magnet for other types of miscreants. This one is a doozy.
"Ted Bundy served on the Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979) presidential campaign in 1968 and the successful reelection campaign of Washington governor Dan Evans. Bundy was appointed to the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Committee, and later became an assistant to Ross Davis, the chairman of the Washington State Republican Party."
Holy Character Counts, Batman!
Ted freakin' Bundy! Republican operative. A new one on me, but not entirely a surprise. His appointment to that crime prevention thingy in Seattle is the best. "Oh, no. More attacks on young women in the area. Let's ask our newest committee member, TED BUNDY, what he thinks..."
Reminds me a bit of Nixon making Elvis, who died of an overdose of about a hundred drugs, an honorary DEA agent. Those Republicans, ya gotta hand it to them. They are sterling judges of....something. No wonder they elected Trump.
So, looks like the Party of Traitors is also the Party of Serial Killers.
I knew Corey Lewandowski had some other motive for joining that bunch of jabronis.