TWGB: This Bullshit All Over Again

The news cycle lately has me doing TrumpWorld Grab-bags every other day, which is a dump of like, twenty-something tabs each time I wade into the saga of the terrible little White House that should not have ever happened. I grow weary.* 

Anyways, Trump's cornpone Renfield, Lindsey Graham has offered the "incoherent defense that Trump's foreign policy was too incoherent to even cobble together a decent "quid pro quo".  If only "We weren't evil, we're just incompetent" was gong to suffice at this juncture! See, we already heard the "too incompetent to collude" defense regarding Russia, and I would still call that defense shaky at best. After all, the best part of collusion with Russia lay in staying still and not reporting anything to the FBI when weird people reached out and offered things. But ah, whatever. Let's concede the Trump Administration has an incoherent Ukraine policy. Let's just stipulate that the policy started to get weird when the Trump campaign backed down on aiding Ukraine against Russian aggression in the party platform for the RNC in 2016 for some damn unknown reason. And there is no good excuse, at all, for accepting a presidential candidate who has a basically incoherent approach to foreign policy. 

That much, right there, would be absurd. And yet, that is something Graham is trying to sell us about the Trump experience as if it were a feature, not a bug. (Of course, Graham himself has promised that he doesn't want to read any stinking transcripts, so the mindset there is basically "bugs all the way down.")

Now, this isn't by far the stupidest defense of Trump--you have the "attempted but failed" folks, who would tell you that even if Trump wanted to get an announcement of a Biden investigation from Ukrainian president Zelenskyy, for the low, low price of military aid that was already approved and promised by the US Congress, then it totally failed because he got his aid, thanks, and the Biden investigation never came off. (As if attempted manslaughter, attempted burglary, etc., were never charges people went to trial over.)

Not Too Jaded, This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

In a way, I feel a little trepidation stepping back into doing a TrumpWorld Grab-Bag blogpost, because they are pretty obsessive. It requires paying a lot of attention to little stories and trying to weave them together, which I don't necessarily have the time to do that I once did. I don't have any specialized knowledge (like, you know, legal stuff) or connections or insider tidbits. But I do read a shit-ton of news, and this is the internet, and I have one of those weird brains that likes sorting out details. Of course, I haven't done this for simply months.

And yet! One thing I have gained from my self-imposed vacation is that I have rested the little grey cells and am a bit less jaded than some Mueller/Russia investigation observers.  There were any number of Twitterati who were of the very strong opinion that surely, with the elections a fait accompli, Robert Mueller would now be handing out indictments like so much Halloween candy, certainly by Friday of this week.  Now that we are on the other side of midnight from Friday, the lack of a Don Jr. perp-walk (which seems like too much to ask of the times we live in, but people will dream!) might seem anticlimactic, but as for me, things continue to look pretty interesting.

For one thing, Trump basically fired his AG Jeff Sessions, largely because he never understood that by recusing from the Russia investigation, Session was doing him a solid. The President appears to suffer from the appalling idea that public servants are his servants, and doesn't entirely grasp that they give an oath to the Constitution, not to him, and clearly believed that Sessions' job was to be involved in limiting, ending, or waylaying the Comey investigation (at first) to help Trump. However, if Trump was ever to get any inkling that there are proprieties to be observed, the fallout from firing former FBI director Comey should have been a lesson in "what not to do". To wit: Trump fires Jim Comey for "reasons", partially because he claims the Clinton email investigation was handled badly, and had Sessions and Rosenstein fig leaf that justification with letters that sound serious enough, and then blows that reason up in a nationally-viewed interview with Lester Holt. (He also tells a few Russians, in a particularly stupid way.) And that is how he ended up with a Special Counsel. 

So how does he go about the firing of his AG this time out? Well, for one thing, he picks a very Trump-sympathetic hack (Bigfoots! Time travel hot-tubs! Massive hog toilets!) and then lets it be known he basically picked this person because he was a Trump-sympathetic hack. This might be construed, even to a layperson like myself, like even more obstruction of justice. (Like the Sally Yates, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, etc., things.) But then he has so little idea that what he is doing is abusive of justice, he just says what he did!

Meanwhile, the Mueller investigation does it's quiet and necessary work, despite obstacles. For one thing, an indictment made by Mueller's team against a Russian troll farm was upheld by a Trump-appointed judge. This is good news. (For another bit of good news this week, another Trump appointed judge ordered CNN reporter Jim Acosta's WH hard pass be restored, in a pretty refreshing victory for the 1st Amendment and reminder of judicial independence. )  Of note is that the indictment was about conspiring to defraud the US government. Free speech is one thing, but there are applications of speech that are by no means acceptable--for a recent example, the harassment of a Jewish woman by white supremacists was found not to be covered. 

Another interesting detail is the likely charges against Julian Assange of Wikileaks, which also carries potential First Amendment concerns. Nonetheless, the involvement of Wikileaks in disseminating Russian-obtained federal information specifically to act against the US government (specifically, the security of it's democratic elections) potentially at the direction of a foreign entity (Russia) seems like it supersedes straightforward First Amendment concerns. And that's something they kind of seem to have been doing. I don't know if, for example, Maria Butina's discussed plea deal will reveal information that enlightens us about that side of the operation, but on the "connections to GOP operatives" side of the equation, Roger Stone was apparently in the loop regarding what Wikileaks had and was dropping, and also, maybe, waste of protein Jerome Corsi (known for "Swiftboating" and "Birtherism"--two terms that never should have been entered into the American lexicon) both appear to have had relations with that man, Julian Assange (as had Dana Rohrabacher, with human hairy nevus Charles C. Johnson in his train--who also might be a yet another link to a potential Don Jr perp-walk fantasy, and Nigel Farage, who acted as if he always sometimes dropped by the Ecuadoran embassy for no particular reason).

But of people who Mueller seems to have dead-to-rights from the Trump campaign as having been all up in some kind of skullduggery, it is interesting to me that sentencing is delayed for Rick Gates and there has been an extension in reporting on the status of Paul Manafort's plea agreement. One really cool interpretation of this is that they are both being so very helpful. So. Very. Helpful. To the investigation. Which seems truer when you consider both those things in tandem, but I would guess anything further might be delayed until after Thanksgiving--

And I don't even mind! Because I am not jaded, and am genuinely interested in how all of this shakes out!

Because Losing the House and Firing Sessions Wasn't Enough

Slowed down the @Acosta encounter to show the FOUR times the White House staffer touched HIM... not the other way around. Unclear if she's been suspended. pic.twitter.com/gBhlR2r5P1

— Sarah Burris (@SarahBurris) November 8, 2018

Trump, when he feels cornered, acts like a tantrum-y little baby and lashes out like one. Everybody should have recognized this by now. With subpoena-power in the hands of Democrats and the likelihood that some real shit could go down, now, Trump with huge obviousness had his flunky, General Kelly, go "You're fired!" at Sessions and made him sign his own "at the request of the President" resignation.

This is how he rewards Sessions' loyalty for being the first major endorsement, working on Trump's campaign, and actually taking a little heat off press inquiries about the Russia investigation by recusing. Now, that loyalty might have had everything to do with loving to be in charge of performing legal racisms, but to give Sessions his due, he didn't do anything specifically wrong to get on Trump's bad side except to acknowledge his legal limitations. But as everyone needs to know, and some indicted and pled-out people already have cause to suspect, loyalty with Trump is a one-way street. You can be as loyal to Trump as the law will allow and quite a few ways it won't, but in the end, if you ain't useful enough to His Nibs, you get the brush.

But that story, the furthering of the obstruction of justice that is the Sessions' firing and the ramifications thereof and the whole thing where Rod Rosenstein isn't in charge of the Mueller investigation and doesn't this mean Mueller's thing is all in danger, is a whole blog post for another time. This is about cheap-jack press trumpery--this thing where Trump keeps fucking with the press for no other reason than it makes them pay more attention to him.

Jim Acosta has been a Trump target for a while. So, I kind of tend to agree with Leah McElrath that this press stunt, where a WH aide tries to grab for Acosta's mic and it somehow gets turned into a story about Acosta being the aggressor, looks a lot like a set-up. The aide marched up to him with purpose while he was speaking, and reached at him several times. He protected his mic, but was not poking at her--it was the other way around!

And then the White House fuxxors with his press pass and Sarah Slanders has to use some Infowars version of what happened to make a case for why. You all know Infowars--they are the guys who think Obama has a weather machine and every school shooting is crisis actors. They are exactly who legit players would turn to for straight footage. (Eyeroll, please!)

So, what's going down here is, instead of talking about how the Democrats taking the House is bad for Trump, or how it's really damn suspicious that a white nationalist is visiting the White House (and isn't it racist of Yamiche Alcindor or April Ryan to even bring this up--well, no, isn't it racist of Trump to play the game where women of color are the real racists?) or how Trump is furthering his obstruction of justice behavior by firing the guy who is sort of permitting the investigation into his earlier obstruction of justice, or how all of this warrants more investigations which we will now get, we're going to talk about whether Jim Acosta got a bum rap, but only for about a minute, before the next big outrage, because this is how Trump plays news cycles, and his wee culty-brained folks let him.

But let the record of your own damn eyes stand--she, little and young and deliberately chosen I think to be the one to go up and do it, swiped for Acosta's mic and got in the way of his expressive hand, perhaps, and looked up at the podium at "Daddy Trump" to see if she was noticed doing a very good job.

But Acosta didn't touch her at all intentionally, he was just protecting his mic, because questioning the president is his job. End of story.

UPDATE: I don't think our young lady that Sarah Slanders calls an intern is that, at all.

UPDATE:  Westerhout debunks this:

There's a Little Show and a Lotta Tell In This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

I've been away so long I hardly know this place, but damn, it's good to be back home--

You know I hate taking a break from blogging, even if it is to catch up on much-needed shut-eye, especially when the TrumpWorld Grab-Bag is getting so extremely full. The last few days have been like a whirlwind of activity and revelations, and it's been difficult to sort the importance of things that should all entirely be BIG NEWS that get lost in the BIG FOREST OF NEWS that we always seem to be in the midst of. 

So--take a thing like AG Jeff Sessions, the head of the Department of Justice, taking questioning in the Mueller investigation regarding the Russian intervention into the 2016 presidential election, from which Sessions is recusing himself, because he not only was part of the campaign and the transition team, but met with Russians and lied about it in his confirmation hearing. That whole thing right there is a weird dynamic. Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, but didn't exactly have nothing to do with the firing of James Comey. James Comey, for his part, recounted it being strange that Trump wanted to talk with him about loyalty without Sessions being present. This was the kind of weird that made Comey start taking notes, because it did not feel kosher--

And it doesn't seem to have been, because Trump, in addition to loyalty, wanted reassurances about Mike Flynn, whom he should have known by then was looking like a very compromised thing. Did Sessions know what Trump was going to speak with Comey about? I'm sure Mueller would want to know.

It's damn interesting, and has echoes in the recent news that Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who has been the subject of Trumpian scorn, was asked how he voted in the 2016 election.  It doesn't seem like small talk to me, or like a "getting to know one's staff" sort of question, in light of many things we do know about Trump. It seems rather exactly like an attempt to again find an FBI senior official he could trust to soft pedal or even squash an investigation into any connection between Russia and the Trump Campaign. Loyalty is rewarded--the perception of something less? Is about being a target. In other news regarding McCabe, the Trump appointed FBI director, Christopher Wray, went to bat for McCabe, threatening to resign if McCabe was forced out. Trump relented--I guess.

It seems that Trump and his allies don't have a problem smearing the FBI to pretend that the investigation of the very real Russian involvement into the 2016 election and his very real (as in, he's in the White House) benefit from the same, is about some partisan motivation. A telephonic glitch that affected the text messages of thousands of DOJ personnel that was eventually restored, was treated like a ghoulish deep state cover-up.  A sarcastic joke between FBI associates about a "secret society" was treated as being quite sinister indeed. But these misleading stories bandied about by Trump fans are little compared to the dopey memo that Trump's Congressional Renfield, Devin Nunes, wants everyone to see, and no one to see.  Fox News' Last Honest Man, Shep Smith, breaks that thing down for us.

The distractions are obvious and can't entirely eclipse anything like the news that Trump actually did try to order the firing of Special Counsel Mueller, and had to be talked out of it by White House Counsel Don McGahn, doing the odd duty of protecting both the office of the White House and the ass of the person occupying it from actually obstructing of justice in the attempt to stop an obstruction of justice investigation.  Even though several folks told us Trump never had that on his mind at all. There's good reason to believe that Mueller knows very well what was going on, and has some opinion of it. He knows an awful lot about what has happened in the White House because he has talked to so many people. 

We don't have any reason to think that Trump learns from past mistakes. If the furor over Trump firing Comey didn't stop him from thinking he should be able to fire Mueller, he is liable to try again.  He just can't do it himself so he'll try it through Rod Rosenstein. Or fire that guy. Trump doesn't respect the process or the rule of law. He doesn't want to suffer close scrutiny. This should be a tell. He acts like there is, indeed, something to see here. 

* Why, yes, I did post this late last night and then pulled it until I could do a major edit. I think I am suffering from some kind of Trump fatigue where there are simply too many threads to weave together at once, defying my ability to grammatically and logically hold it all together, especially when way past my bedtime. Many apologies for my earlier, unclear and error-ridden writing. 

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag Has Been Out Drinking

The New York Times tale of how the FBI investigation into the Trump-Russia connection really began, not with the Steele dossier, but with an Australian diplomat being told interesting and alarming things by Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, is an absolute delight. It squares away some important details--for one thing, the Steele dossier (which is not, despite the best efforts of Trump and his supporters to pretend it is, actually discredited) did not spur the investigation, but the actual behavior of the Trump campaign folks did.

It also highlights a disturbing feature of the Trump campaign--when presented with various contacts alleging that illicitly gained "dirt" had been obtained by Russia, a hostile actor regarding US interests, and that said dirt was being peddled with the intent of fuxx0ring a US election, instead of bringing this to the attention of anyone involved in national security like responsible patriotic citizens would have done, the Trump boys rolled with it. It was up to Alexander Downer, an Australian, and Christopher Steele, a Briton, to do the necessary and give the US government a heads-up about what was going on. Which either means that the Trump folks never understood the intent or implications of what these various Russian contacts were for (undermining democracy and helping either sway an election, or effectively dirtying a nascent Clinton Administration so badly as to render it ineffective) or simply did not care.  Or both. Both is also a possibility, and a sickening and grave one.

The story moots the central claim from Trumpists that George Papadopoulos was low-level, and therefore, what he knew was not relevant. It also reinforces, to me, the idea that the Trump Campaign openness to this kind of attention from Russia was clearly visible, and not nearly so covert as the geniuses running it seemed to believe. (In rather the same way as the apparent coordination between Russia/WikiLeaks/Trump messaging would turn out.)

From the NYT:

Mr. Papadopoulos was trusted enough to edit the outline of Mr. Trump’s first major foreign policy speech on April 27, an address in which the candidate said it was possible to improve relations with Russia. Mr. Papadopoulos flagged the speech to his newfound Russia contacts, telling Mr. Timofeev that it should be taken as “the signal to meet.”

“That is a statesman speech,” Mr. Mifsud agreed. Ms. Polonskaya wrote that she was pleased that Mr. Trump’s “position toward Russia is much softer” than that of other candidates.

Stephen Miller, then a senior policy adviser to the campaign and now a top White House aide, was eager for Mr. Papadopoulos to serve as a surrogate, someone who could publicize Mr. Trump’s foreign policy views without officially speaking for the campaign. But Mr. Papadopoulos’s first public attempt to do so was a disaster.

That foreign policy speech was attended by the forgettable yet ever-present Sergei Kislyak. In it, Trump called for "an easing of tensions and improved relations".  It was quite the day.  Was it quite the day when the connection got real? I can't say--but the Russians sure were at it again when they contacted Trump, Jr. in June 2016. Because they had not been definitively told to fuck off. And I can't see where they ever were told to fuck off, because if they had been, the Trump folks could point to that "when".

And would have done ages ago. So I think they never told Russia to go away, and that's why they never did.

Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn Will Join Private Sector

Well, this is probably a completely ordinary move for a White House official, but campaign aide/transition team/Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn leaving in 2018 does make me wonder if anything else is going on. It's kind of hard to keep track of all the Trump/Russia connection stuff I have in my brain, and when I post my "grab-bag" stuff, I don't always call to mind all the details when a name pops up that has appeared therein.  I sort of recall Dearborn being part of Twitter scuttlebutt as being on the list of the potentially flipped from the Mueller investigation, but I wouldn't pay that any nevermind, since private sector jobs can pay pretty well if you apply yourself and have great references and the White House environment is probably stressful for anybody. It might not have anything to do with the investigation at all.

This is probably fine.

The TrumpWorld Grab-Bag That Wore It Well

Sometimes, I try too hard to pull off a cohesive TrumpWorld Grab-Bag, and the effect is somewhat like Carter Page in the above pic--suited up for serious business, but with a jaunty little red something or other, like that rolled-rim bucket hat, a signifier of being the Cardinal of Casual.  Sure, he can say he was warding off the sun from his otherwise unprotected pate on a sunny Washington, DC day--but that's boring. He was dropping off subpoenaed documents, and I feel like he was sending a little semaphore by haberdashery. "Red hat at morning, co-conspirators take warning," perhaps? 

We will just have to see. It looks like an investigation that involves the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and a Special Counsel certainly takes a lot of documents. The DOJ has been sent a request by Special Counsel Mueller to send over a broad array of docs, some centering on the firing of FBI Director Jim Comey, which wasn't really supposed to involve AG Jeff Sessions but kind of did, because he recused himself for reasons that are both obvious and really need to be explained.  It's probably a good idea to get a paper trail on Sessions' business, because as has been previously elaborated upon, his memory could be called "fickle".

But I guess when in the heat of getting campaign advisors together or sorting out a chaotic transition, things can often be forgotten--for example, would you believe Jared Kushner forgot to disclose that he had some other Russian contact and maybe a little Wikileaks contact too? That is such a weird thing to forget to mention on your security clearance application, like forgetting maybe a hundred or so other things?  

But stuff gets forgotten all the time. George Papadopoulous was practically forgotten, but apparently not everybody is willing to leave his arrested, plead, co-operating behind out in the cold. 

(Remember, in case this bizarre quality of folks like G-Papa and Page get you wondering "Who the hell even let these guys on this campaign?" the answer is probably Sam Clovis, who had very special feelings about Russia for some time. )

But in case the rogue's gallery of characters we know quite well haven't complicated things enough--there's probably a talk between Rob Goldstone and the Special Counsel's team coming up. Congressional investigators want to look more deeply into the Russian side of the Trump Tower meeting that happened last year. And there are still so many questions out there about what the hell Mike Flynn was doing.  It looks like these several avenues of investigation will wear well into the future. 

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag is Just a Box of Money

Now, you might think I was paying extra-special attention to Keebler Hate-Elf Jeff Sessions' testimony today regarding what he knows about stuff and whether he remembers any stuff, but he can basically get double-stuffed. (I still love the good people at Keebler and their products and approve in general of any cookie having Double Stuffing. But I am building on a metaphor about a certain bad cookie, and oh Gosh, I think Jeff has not been a good elf at all. I do not believe he would be allowed near a cookie-making facility in all truth.)  But I did not do that, because Sessions can't remember shit. 

Now, CRS (Can't Recall Shit) affects us all, and as I get older, I sometimes dotter into a room and realize I don't entirely know what I was looking for, or absently strike a few keys, and not realize why I'm looking at some computer conversation. But I think Jeff Sessions wants us to believe he can't remember entire meetings with people he knows, or forgets entire people he should very well remember. If he recalls them conveniently after he's been, well, "busted", I tend to think his selective amnesia is bogus. While I think this is obviously BS and some ass-covering self-lawyering, I think the pattern of what he prefers not to reveal until he bloody well has to says more than what he might independently reveal. 

I know this is a little controversial, but Jeff Sessions probably is useless and unable to do the AG thing, recused as he is from Trump-Russia and having in his confirmation hearing recused himself from any of the Clinton investigations Trump (because of course) has pressured the DOJ into.  I know this means an AG who might could fire Mueller, but having an AG this compromised (and kind of bigoted and all) is a bummer. I despise Trump for making me want this asshole to stay on. I just can't with these things. I hope federal prosecutors assigned to this conspiracy theory bullshit, like Uranium One (described ably here by the one missionary among the FOX savages, Shep Smith, who has been dodging the cookpot for I know not how long) just throw down a massive press conference and announce "Stop Believing Bullshit!" after the bare minimum debunking any of it should require.

But I have had it with Trump & Co's dumb retaliatory squid-inking nonsense distractions.  So let me just lower my dumb ass onto what has to be a journalistic claymore: electronic funds from Russia, marked "To Finance Election Campaign Of 2016” . 

No. Seriously. Like, a box of money just sitting out there of rubles that could have been paid for Facebook ads and all that providing a direct link from the Russian government to a disinformation campaign aimed at destabilizing various centers of shit worldwide? Like, what dumbfuck would mark this money for doing the thing it was supposed to be surreptitiously doing out loud where the people would find out? That kind of thing would be so stupid!

But I've been doing this TrumpWorld thing for a while, you see?  I don't necessarily think anything is too stupid to be all that credible anymore. 

Mueller Monday 2

Ex-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleads guilty to making false statements to the FBI in Russia probe https://t.co/1073hRoR9g pic.twitter.com/jIoJeXHEsU

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) October 30, 2017

This one is possibly the bigger story--Papadapoulos is cooperating with the investigation and we can get a better sense of the timeline regarding when actors in the Trump campaign had Russian contacts.

This TrumpWorld Grab-bag has an Inconsistent Story

One of the things that really steams me about TrumpWorld is the lack of consistent stories. Take Trump making the claim that he, nope, no way, nyet, did not have any Russian business interests. Well, with some exceptions. But he did--there was correspondence about a Trump Tower in Moscow. There happen to be several documents that detail the interest Donald Trump had in Moscow.  The man had an international business interest in hotels and golfing resorts all over the world--why not Moscow (where he held the Miss Universe pageant)? Just copping to some business interests in the first place would not have looked as odd as saying there were not any. Being untruthful (because he couldn't be unaware of the connections) just doesn't seem like he forgot.

It looks like concealment. The problem here, though, isn't President Trump's veracity or recollection of events, alone, though. Donald Trump as a public figure has at best what could be described as an eccentric relationship with facts, and his inconsistency by itself might point to nothing more than his own tendency to say what he thinks other people might want to hear. But when this is added to the various omissions by AG Jeff Sessions, Paul Manafort, former NSA Mike Flynn, Senior WH Aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner--and also, current head of Donald Trump's business concerns, Donald Trump, Jr., a pattern of concealment seems to be taking place. The only thing is--what the hell are they concealing?

Trump Jr.'s story definitely seems to have evolved since the news of a meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign was first broken. The meeting was treated at first as being no big deal. But if it wasn't, why would the story change? Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE.) darkly suggested it was potentially a criminal level of untruth.  Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT.) indicated that the inconsistencies were such Trump Jr. would likely need to be called back. And Robert Mueller has produced the names of six current and former WH staffers he intends to question over the White House itself being involved in the crafting of one of Trump Jr's inconsistent statements (even though he is a grown man, not on staff at the White House, and the White House using it's pull directly to protect Trump Jr's bacon being pretty irregular)--and for other episodes related to the Trump/Russia connections. (WH Communications Director for the last minute, Hope Hicks, has lawyered up.)

Whatever Mueller may or may not have regarding the possibility of Trump/Russia collusion, the basic lack of ability to keep any kind of straight story starts making the obstruction of justice complaint look more and more like a thing. Why is everybody lying about stuff if it was for no reason at all?

In the meanwhile, more about how Russia helped the Trump campaign is becoming clearer. Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts used targeted information to spread disinfo regarding the campaign that was favorable to Trump, unfavorable to Clinton.  Also, something like $100K in ads directing to fake news sites on Facebook might have been seen by tens of millions of potential voters. That quite a lot of bang for the foreign campaign fuxxoring buck! (This story about what Russia is trying online has layers, folks--they messed with Texas!) And who even knows what else had been "cooked up"?

It's awkward as heck--when we find out from RT that President Trump had a very cordial meeting with the new Russian Ambassador, or learn that Russian influence has affected US strategy against ISIS, it doesn't not feel like a "spirit of cooperation"--but something else. The US relationship with Russia isn't, actually, cooperative.

It's inconsistent.

(If you have enjoyed this installment of TrumpWorld Grab-Bag, there is more where that came from! See The TrumpWorld Grab-Bag Collection for the rest of this on-going series.)

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag Could Be Titanic

Was it really just last Friday that former WH Press Secretary Sean Spicer announced he'd be walking away from the job to spend more time with various shrubbery? It sort of feels like it's been longer than that, but if it was true that he was walking because the Administration was bringing Anthony Scaramucci on as communications director, this is, in retrospect, looking like a great call. Because Anthony Scaramucci, this week, made a not-so-great call which is ammaaaazzzzing.

First, he dinged Reince Priebus as being a possible leaker:

“They’ll all be fired by me,” he said. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.” The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn’t been invited. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ” (Priebus did not respond to a request for comment.)

And then he gave us this unfortunately brutal mental image:

Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.” (Bannon declined to comment.)

Priebus and Bannon are to be commended for not responding, whilst probably having things they could think of saying, for sure. After all, they've already had this kind of story floated about being at odds with one another, so it's really great that someone got brought on who was at odds with both, and had to chat with the press on record about it, right? But at any rate, Scaramucci did make an accurate call about Priebus' job-status, and I'm pretty sure my mind's eye will recover from trying to literally interpret the Bannon comment which he assuredly meant in a metaphorical way. But I think he should be prepared to expect that his own personal motivations are liable to get dragged in public for what he was willing to give up to get close to Trump. Not venturing to auto-fellate, indeed.

JFC Another TrumpWorld Grab-Bag?

You know, I started doing these "TrumpWorld Grab-Bag" things because there would just be too many Trump stories, and they sort of held together, and they sort of didn't but there were just too many to do single blog-posts about. I couldn't just pick one and move on with my life. Not at all! I had to gather up the half dozen or dozen links or whatever I was presented with because it all seemed relevant in some way. And then I would do a couple a week or whatever. 

But this last 24 hours? It feels vaguely accelerated. So, let's say you know that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met with Trump, Jr. last year, was in the US as counsel on a money-laundering case that was settled after the US Attorney on that case, Preet Bharara, was fired.  (This itself might not even be all that dodgy--I am no judge of how solid the case was.) What is new though, is that she also represented the FSB in a property dispute. I guess this sticks out as relevant to me because it shows she's done work on the Russian government's behalf and I can see where doing something to relieve sanctions against Russia would be in the same vein. But going back to that thing where US Attorney's offices might be politically compromised, I do note there is a story about Trump breaking with custom (not that he necessarily knows from custom) and meeting with a US Attorney candidate for the District of Columbia before her selection.

I don't know what to make of that, or even if I have anything to make of it--it just strikes me as interesting.

In other news, I guess it's no surprise that some people in the White House have made statements about ending Russian sanctions, like, for example, giving back the two compounds that seem to have been used for spying. Seb Gorka is one.  It looks like newly-minted White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci is probably in the same boat--and probably for reasons.

That's pretty interesting, too. It keeps coming back to that sanctions issue.

Which brings me to the big breaking story--AG Jeff Sessions apparently had a meeting with Ambassador Kislyak at the Mayflower Hotel, and they discussed policy relating to the Trump Campaign. My guess, since Sessions ruled out discussion of campaign interference--sanctions! Where did the Trump campaign stand on sanctions, anyway? Would they help Russia out?  After all, it was costing folks money, right?

It's a weird revelation coming so fast on the heels of an interview where President Trump seemed unhappy with Sessions' recusal from matters related to the Russian investigation, and potentially wanted him out. It's sort of a dumb revelation if it came from the White House, because it only goes to show that there was substantive dialogue between the Trump campaign and Russia--which doesn't alleviate the appearance of collusion. It also is kind of dumb if it reveals anything about IC sources that lets other countries know how we're listening. But let's leave open the other possibility--Russia can leak. Hell, just a minute ago, Foreign Minister Lavrov joked about how often Trump and Putin met at G20.  They can pull that kind of shit, now, because this White House is compromised.

But it's possible that this info was already in reporters' hands for awhile, while they tried to vet it.  Again, since Sessions lied about the existence of any meetings at all, anything he says about the existence of meetings or what was said at them becomes suspect.

And just as an aside, since this doesn't fit in (or maybe just--yet) with the rest of this Grab-Bag--Jared Kushner has updated his financial disclosure forms again, having missed 77 assets totaling somewhere between $10 and $100 million. You know. Couch change. Just like his security clearance docs that had to be amended for dozens of foreign contacts--I'm just saying. I wonder if these things are more "advertant" than "inadvertent" when he "forgets" them. Not that I know why.

UPDATE: Aw hell, this last 24 hours was so busy I forgot the thing where Senator Burr confirmed what I was saying about Rep. Devin Nunes' unmasking stuff being an apparent waste.

Pardon Me for This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

There's something astounding about the speed with which Trump stories have recently progressed. At last glance, Trump was insinuating that Robert Mueller would have crossed a red line if he investigated the Trump Family/Company finances. But that is exactly what Mueller will do. Because of course he would. Because for one thing, I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense that Trump has been really protective of his tax returns the way he has and we still pretend there's nothing there, and also, that bankruptcy history. Those loans.  The way Eric Trump boasted about all that Russian cash and then suddenly Trump and them are pretending they have no Russian connections?

Following the money is the obvious thing to do in the first place--but this is exactly where Trump seems to feel most sensitive.  The Trump gambit of "investigating the investigators" is a little like his war on journalism--he wants to undermine voices that call him out, and call them "illegitimate" before they catch him in lies. It is, to be a little repetitive--obvious. To go to the Bard, he doth protest too much, which is most telling.

So I look at his recent reported inquiries into his presidential pardon power with a certain eye--of course he is looking into who he can pardon. This isn't what you do if you have a "nothingburger" that investigators are working on. It seems a bit like there's a "somethingburger" and he wants a little bicarbonate of "So don't lean on my family". Or that's what it looks like to me. It could be people closest to him are especially at risk, and this may very well be because he trusts them most--even to do things that aren't strictly ethical.

Right now, his defense seems to be that the appearance of collusion was totally correct because why wouldn't his campaign try to get whatever oppo they could? But the inkling that they knew of and were actively seeking out feloniously received information,  or were whoring off after poisoned fruit to win an election, is in itself troublesome and unethical. Especially if it held them open to blackmail. If it compromised the integrity of the attempts the Trump Administration makes at governing. It calls absolutely stupid ideas like the US/Russian collaborative effort at cybersecurity into question because of course a President who only won through Russian interference would think this is a great thing. But we might not even really know the extent of, for example, Trump Jr's Russian contacts, right now. Too many people, like Flynn, Manafort, Kushner, Sessions, etc., deliberately seem to have withheld information about their Russian contacts--that isn't normal, acceptable, or less than seriously questionable.

Sometimes, news just seems vaguely "not good" in the Trump orbit--the resignation of a legal spokesperson.  Marc Kasowitz is out on the Trump legal team.  The finding against Exxon for violating Russian sanctions while current SOS Rex Tillerson was CEO.

Other times, we get news that expands on our understanding of what went so askew with the 2016 election--take the investigation into the degree to which Russia influenced the left.  Jill Stein is a person who should be looked into. Not in Trump's orbit (but maybe Flynn's?) but someone who rode a propaganda train. (I have a hard place in my heart for folks who voted Stein or wrote in Sanders as if Trump and what he could represent held no threat to them. They wanted to believe Clinton was the devil. What the hell were they even looking at?)

But it seems like this was a lot of news breaking just now. And I don't think a lot of breaking news is in Trump's favor, at all.

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions Stonewalled.

I don't know what I was supposed to take away from today's hearing. I'm thinking that if Sessions already established he wasn't going to say anything that might jam up his boss, he was still going to do that--so, that happened.   I'm not persuaded that he backed up Comey in the FBI probe into the Russian hacking, or that he agrees with any future FBI Director having a really free hand. There's a curious lack of interest Sessions and Trump have with an attack by a foreign power on our elections. I don't see how he can consider himself as "recused" when he had to have known Trump was really was unhappy over the Russia probe, and intended to fire Comey because of it. Trump said so himself in the Lester Holt interview, and I sincerely doubt the Clinton reason was anything more than a fig leaf. I don't think he made that timeline seem any more plausible.

Long story short--I don't think Sessions acquitted himself very well, and if Trump was looking for a reason to accept the resignation he allegedly offered, maybe he's got one.

Lordy Jim Comey

The amusement that gripped this hearing centered around how President Trump would respond to the testimony of elongated Boy Scout, former FBI Director Jim Comey. There was a threat made that he might live-Tweet this thing, which he mercifully did not, thus sparing the livers of pub-going politics-watchers who might have been fixing to make drinking games of Trump's assorted "go-to" defenses: "fake news", "Lying Jim Comey", "failing Senate Democrats" or whatever his busy thumbs wanted to brand on our eyeballs.  Somehow, POTUS' minders managed to  jingle keys or whatever they do to pacify his easily offended amour-propre and kept him above flinging his shit ex post Twitto.

Which is not to say Comey never landed a glove--he did.  He stopped short of saying there definitely was a case for obstruction of justice with Trump, but he laid it out nice and neat and implied that if there wasn't such a case when he was Director of the FBI, there sure was one now. He presented a view of his interactions with President-elect and President Trump that was suspicious of his motives based on multiple factors (Trump is not a truthful person and apparently had a pressing interest) which motivated him to keep notes. He understood that AG Sessions was potentially a compromised official, so he used his wherewithal to engineer a leak of his fully understandable note-taking (which is not classified, sensitive, or otherwise embargoed against being revealed by him as a private citizen to the best of my knowledge) to the press to prompt the appointment of a special counsel.

That is some adept stuff on his part, coming from a great understanding of the stakes and leverage of the various parties. And as a Clinton supporter, there is a part of me that wants to roar:

"Which would have been so blindingly great if you did all that before the election you long-ass galoot!"

And he didn't. Because despite putting his biggie-ole thumb on the scales prompted by Bill Clinton's tarmac escapade with Loretta Lynch(or, for all we know, attempt to just say howdy like folks do), Comey never said boo about the Russian hack into the DNC or the inquiry into whether the Trump Campaign was aware of it--even though this seemed obvious.

But that's Our Jim, isn't it? He is trying not to be partial. Emphasis on trying. I think he's trying to do the right thing, bless his heart. He isn't going to hang Trump by himself. But he very carefully lets on how it could be done.

I don't know where his "between opportunities" self goes from here. But based on his carefulness, he could go anywhere. And I surely hope his careful rigor hasn't somehow screwed himself. ("Hope", we learned just now, has a plethora of meanings. I don't think that plethora means what Trump supporters think it means.) Failing to be heroic at the first opportunity can backfire. But Comey deferred throwing himself on a grenade to deliver receipts. I respect his corner. It may prove more effective and more in line with our Constitution in the long run.

For me, the moment of truth was when he replied to idea of tapes of his interactions with Trump with something to the effect of "Lordy I hope there are". Which is as near to "Wish a mofo would" as a Boy Scout gets. I sensed that Trump's lying and weirdness made Comey mad, because Comey takes this seriously, and Trump doesn't. Comey seemed choked up talking about his FBI folks, like love was there. Trump doesn't have that.

I believe Comey. He doesn't have any reason to lie. Trump doesn't even need reasons, but likely has them.

Really? Another Trumpworld Grab-bag?

You know, it was just a couple days ago I did a Trumpworld Grab-bag, and only yesterday-ish that Trump fired Comey, so it seems like it's a little soon to have all this WTF on my plate regarding the Little Fine-Tuned Engine that Could, but apparently, this is the new reality now. And as the above picture barely suggests--it's a mess you guys.

The above picture certainly looks jocular enough, President Trump and the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak (who I've mentioned talking to so many of Trump's associates before) enjoying pleasantries in a photo from the Russian news service TASS because they were the only folks allowed to cover the meeting. Aw--that was kind of fucked up. Usually, these guys would be meeting with, say, the Secretary of State and not in the Oval Office, and a press pool of American journalists would probably be there instead of just guys who work for Putin. These are the kind of optics you might think of avoiding if there was some kind of investigation into whether your Presidential campaign colluded with Russia (or if you just care about security, just sayin')...

But what the hell, if this was an administration that cared about such things, they probably would not have had Henry Kissinger show up in a weird walk-on role at precisely the minute they're being called "Nixonian".  That's...kind of a middle-finger move, I think?

In other news, the whole rationale the Trump folks tried to lay out about being very disappointed over Comey's handling of the Clinton investigation? That was bullshit, as basically any sentient being would have figured. Turns out this "lack of confidence" mostly started when Comey testified  before the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was an investigation into Trump without giving Trump a heads-up about what he was saying and then had the nerve to request resources for it. (The investigation, that is.)  There's several sources for this one, and it just makes a hell of a lot more sense than what Trump and Friends were laying out.  Also, the claim made by Trump et als that Comey lost the trust of the FBI is a little bit belied by talking with folks in the FBI. (The Deputy AG, Rod Rosenstein, not happy that the responsibility to Comey's firing as falling on him, threatened to resign. Because AG Sessions, who recused himself from anything to do with the Russian hacking investigation, except, apparently, recommending the firing of the Director of the FBI and interviewing his replacement, can't, Rosenstein would be the bloke to recommend an independent counsel, if that was going to happen.)

And as I said yesterday, this sort of thing has made people more interested in pursuing the investigation, because Trump is certainly acting like there is a there, there. And it's important to keep the subject of the investigation distanced from the direction the investigation is taking to prevent a cover-up, which is most likely why Comey didn't give Trump a heads-up (and that is called "independence", not "insubordination"--which ideally would be needed for any investigation to be effective).

This dynamic, where the President feels like he should be able to stall or close an investigation because he says so is particularly disturbing because the congressional GOP seems to be closing ranks instead of acting as a check on executive power. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected calls for an independent prosecutor, and it looks questionable to me that we're going to see them take this seriously.

But what I do think we'll be hearing in the near-future, is an increase of leaks--because the Trump Administration has definitely not gone about stopping them the right way (by being actually transparent, instead of transparently lying). And maybe that will bring the political pressure needed to bear. One can hope.

Two Hints for US AG Sessions

Sessions questions travel ban ruling from Hawaii judge because he is "sitting on an island in the Pacific" https://t.co/M9wj1G9kdo pic.twitter.com/Gyv9RDvDEq

— The Hill (@thehill) April 20, 2017

1) Judicial review.


2) Hawaiian statehood.


These may be on later exams.

A Good Friday for a Trumpworld Grab-Bag

It's amazing to think that there were signs that the Trump campaign had unusual connections to Russia, as discovered by, well, everybody in the IC, as early as 2015, and yet, the Obama Administration was pretty much politically hamstrung from doing much to point it out--or at least felt they were. I mean, it happened, but it is amazing. It's not that there is one big thing that makes a person go "Hmm, I think there could be a connection here". It's...all the connections.

Speaking of connections--the screenshot of a Tweet from Corey Lewandowski above turned out to be correct--it's been verified that Paul Manafort's company did receive black ledger payments. This makes it about time that he finally got around to registering as a foreign agent--although I feel like everyone already knew that he had worked for the pro-Putin party in Ukraine? It's just weird that it got overlooked, but then again, since Michael Flynn did rather the same sort of thing...maybe it's the sort of tedious paperwork everyone forgets until people find out they got paid? (I'm still mulling over what to make about all the money Manafort's shell company borrowed from Trump-related businesses.) Manafort, like Roger Stone and Flynn, probably has an interesting story in him. Or several.

You know who has interesting stories and doesn't shut up? Carter Page. For a person who either was or wasn't close to the Trump campaign, and almost certainly was close to Russia, he talks a lot. One thing that he's staying mum on, though, is whether talks about sanctions ever came up when he was talking to, oh, anyone. He thinks it might but you'd really have to consult the FISA transcripts, which I think translates to, "Well, if it's on tape, I'm busted, and if it's not, I'm not".  That's an interesting way of looking at it, but he has a very interesting way of looking at things.

Anyway, there has been a bit of a mystery about Page--who brought him onto the Trump campaign as an adviser in the first place? A lot of people thought it was Jeff Sessions, because he was the one who helped Trump put together his list of five(!) foreign policy advisers when it became kind of alarming last spring that he hadn't any. But Chuck Ross at The Daily Caller says, not so. His sources say it was...Corey Lewandowski. The same who approved Page's odd trip to Moscow? The same.

It's just all interesting, is all I'm saying.

Another US Attorneys' Thing?

So, the Trump Administration just gave 46 US Attorneys their walking papers the other day, and I'm kind like "been here before". This is a thing incoming Administrations do--they get resignations from the former appointees and appoint a whole new slate. The job entails "serving at the pleasure of the President".  It's kind of why I felt sort of "meh" regarding the Bush-era "US Attorney scandal" thing about how certain attorneys were forced out in the middle of 43's second term.  Weird, yes, but how do you prove it's not just weird but wrong?

The funny old thing being, US Attorney (I guess that would be "former") Preet Bharara does make an interesting case as being an attorney who might have been told he was staying. Which probably does make this seem more abrupt for him, but with a twist: he was contacted by President Trump just before this firing occurred, and this contact might not have been actually appropriate because Bharara might have been following up on a request that had been made of him with respects to Trump's own business dealings.  But this isn't much different from when all the diplomatic folks got their pink slips: yeah, it's sudden and heavy-handed and questionable--but this seems to be this White House's...style?

I'm pretty sure this is fascinating in part because Bharara was going after Fox Mushroom Farm, and had prosecuted a Russian spy case and also Dinesh D'Souza. But I don't think this thing has scandal-candle-power. Even if it could conceivably look like shenanigans.

Cabinet-Making isn't Easy

Trump complains "pathetic" Dems are holding up his Cabinet, but all available nominations are confirmed: https://t.co/UgpBJFlQX4 pic.twitter.com/iB5UkBkCPM

— The Hill (@thehill) March 3, 2017

The thing I was saying about how President Trump's biggest staffing problem is Trump? The problem is still Trump. Also, the people he picks aren't the best (or most honest).

Does he not know this? Sounds like more of a personal problem than a personnel problem.

(This, too, looks like a personal problem. I take it the calm after the favorable speech reviews is over, and we are back to the Twitter storm.)