A Republic--If You Can Keep It

 

This is what the New York Times chose to publish on Independence Day just one week after the Supreme Court ruled that Republican presidents are above the law. pic.twitter.com/URoJg6ohru

— @StephenWolf.bsky.social (@PoliticsWolf) July 4, 2024

The New York Times, which has been going out of their way to promote "Biden is too old and must drop out" editorials this week, decided the way to follow up on that terrible trend was to platform some mook who wants to pretend voting is a bit of hogwash. Well...not just some mook. Matthew Walther is a Catholic conservative (although it's hard to say if he just sort of is a hater in general--he calls the Constitution a "231-year old piece of toilet paper" in this screed against the Tea Party libertarians) --just like Leonard Leo and Steve Bannon and the derpsticks who ruled Trump is kind of/sort of a monarch.

Encouraging people not to vote (especially if one does, in fact, vote--possibly for Tulsi Gabbard which feels like fuckery) is a kind of voter suppression. Which is weirdly in line with Russian active measures to undermine confidence in voting. 

Democracy depends upon an engaged, informed population. The press can be a valuable part of that process of informing and engaging citizens--or it can do whatever this is. The chattering classes who write about politics are, when not encouraging apathy, so stuck on horserace politics that in the discussion of possibly replacing President Biden on the ticket have invented a fantasy horserace to write about. 

Is there nothing else to write about? Maybe how often Trump was mentioned in Epstein court documents? His new Saudi project? What Ivanka and Jared are up to in Albania and with whom? Anything to do about Project 2025--but especially how it would permit foreign nasties to interfere in our elections? (I remember when Trump wanted to cooperate with Russia on "the cyber"--do you?)

Ivanka is Very Unsympathetic

 

Ivanka Trump asks to pause NY fraud trial, says testimony during ‘school week’ creates ‘undue hardship’ https://t.co/Zyt3MRa7ru

— CNBC Politics (@CNBCPolitics) November 2, 2023

She lost this bid, but just taking in the whole nonsense of it: this woman has worked outside of the home--why is testifying during a weekday any different? Her husband can take a day off to watch the kids. She can afford a governess. She can park the wee'uns with their step-granny at Mar-a-Lago. Regular working moms all over the country who leave for work every weekday have made some arrangement for their kids with little complaining.  

They have to do what they have to do. 

This reticence on Ivanka's part sure looks an awful lot like trying to be kept out of the conversation for reasons. Things aren't really going great with her brothers' testimonies. He dad is the kind of guy you wouldn't exempt from consideration of throwing his kids under the bus. 

"I'd love to testify but I have kids" is bound to be topped. I'm still trying to work out how "I sign everything without knowing any better because I just work here" Donny and Eric "I pour concrete and sometimes work on financial statements for no particular reason" are going to escape some heat. Ivanka--man. I wish this trial extended to her odd trademarks or that we'd hear about how Jared benefitted from his "foreign policy experience", business-wise. 

But as with her father's plan of constant delay, she already seems to be speaking volumes. Testifying will be bad for her in some way. For her father too, I suspect. 

She Was the Mother of His Children

 

They say if you want to know the measure of someone, see how they treat waitstaff and pets. Or take a look at how Donald Trump treats the gravesite of his first wife, the mother of his three oldest children. That little indent there is her flat little headstone. You can just about see it for the grass.

He owns that property. He pays groundskeepers. They keep up the greens that rich folks play on--but is Ivana Trump's grave kept nice? It's patchy. (Not unlike Trump's head.)

It's not because of affection or familial devotion, either. I know people who visit their dead loved ones regularly and get on their own knees to weed, because they care. They put flowers. They bring a weed whacker in the car. Sure. Regular people will do things like that. Cemetaries can only do so much.

But Trump is a wealthy man (so we hear) with exactly one grave with a more-or-less public view. He has to know the grave will be seen. He could have left standing orders to keep it nice just for the damn optics of not making look like he carted off her body to disrespectfully plant it at Bedminster for a tax break. 

But he doesn't really care, even about what it looks like. That's who he is. 

Ivana Trump ( 1949-2022)

 

I used to wonder where Don Jr. got his dark hair from until I saw this picture of his young, athletic built mother. She wasn't always blonde, but she was always striking. She passed at a strange time in the story of the Trump family--the post-White House period, a time of subpoenas and depositions (delayed) and occasional strife. 

I will admit--when I look back on when I got my first extremely negative impression of Donald Trump, it was because of the Big Divorce Story and Ivana's bid to get a little more than the prenup would allow after all she had been through. I took her side. I don't know what it was, but something about the whole deal told me that being married to Trump was absolutely a kind of work. And I didn't even know about the alleged abuse and rape, then, but felt like she had a story to tell that maybe we wouldn't ever know, fully, because she wasn't the type to tell, fully.  She struck me as a survivor. Not a person who tells tales. A person who lives through them.

I was a little proud of her "Living well is the best revenge" phase. She prepared for her landing.  She did not use her time after the dissolution of the marriage to disparage her ex, but to do her own thing. She raised the Trump kids until the age when they could choose to go follow in their father's path. 

Some people say she was Trump's twin, in that she also had an indefatigable will. Maybe.  I don't know what to make of the story that she fell down the stairs and received blunt force trauma to the chest a day before her ex and children were supposed to have a deposition in NY regarding their business dealings, but sometimes coincidences do happen.  It's only because of who Trump is and how naturally the question rises up in the mind that people are even thinking the thing that seems too shocking to say. 

But surely, that's only a delay and wouldn't be worth any person's actual life. Not anyone so near and dear to all concerned. Of course. We aren't so deranged by Trump's infamy to think the unthinkable. 

I do wonder what her residential security camera situation was, though. And whether she had any visitors that day. No reason at all. Just curious as any person might be. 

TWGB: Why I Don't Give A Frick About the Fricking Laptop

 

Six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince, a close ally during the Trump administration, despite objections from the fund’s advisers about the merits of the deal. https://t.co/FDlmrzvYdw pic.twitter.com/OHfyPVHsHN

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 10, 2022

For some damn dumb reason, Donald Trump needed to make his daughter and her husband part of his administration. Just the way his business has always been a family business, one might say. This gave them an extraordinary opportunity to enrich themselves, while carrying out "US policy", which could, given all we know, basically mean using the US as the means to facilitate very profitable and extremely unethical relationships for themselves without respect to actual US interests or even global reputation.

This is because Trump and family don't give a shit about those things.  I have nothing but hollow, mocking laughter for people who pretend otherwise, and I'll append the phrase "And they called it 'America First'!" in the same way comedians have delivered the punchline of the infamous dirty joke: the aristocrats.

Take Don, Jr (please!).  It appears that the boy determined to be too stupid to collude when he actually received an email offering dirt on the opposition that basically said: We are from the Russian government and we're here to help you, was actively passing on methods on how to subvert the lost election and overturn it in his father's favor.  Before the election was actually called, as if he knew (because eveyone did) that his dad would lose and didn't care whether it was "rigged" or not, because of course he didn't.

TWGB: Soon to be Deposed.

 

The decision today (to be appealed--hopefully unsuccessfully) that Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump should sit for deposition in the NY AG civil case regarding "copious financial fraud" sounds like the gentle rumble of the accountability train, coming at long last.  I think. I mean, I've had my head on this track listening for fucking ever. 

The case that was put on by Trump's lawyers to quash the subpoenas for his documents (is someone pouring ketchup on Trump Organization papers even as we speak?) and the deposition of Trump and family was absurd, but then again, TrumpWorld is a funhouse mirror universe where things always look bizarre. Is NY AG Tish James unduly biased against Trump? It would hardly matter given that the actual case against him based on copious available documents suggests justice would be served by giving him his day in court--why does Trump have a problem with that?  

And isn't Trump in a protected class? While obviously, former one-term twice-impeached presidents are rare, no, he isn't a protected class just because he used to have some vague kind of immunity (which should never have covered shit he did before assuming the office of POTUS, anyway). 

In a bit of weirdness, one of Trump's lawyers even pulled out "Why aren't you investigating Hillary Clinton for spying?" This is the sort of thing a badly-overmatched attorney might bring up if her briefcase were stuffed with notebook paper with unhelpful suggestion from the client scrawled in Sharpie marker. This is exactly how I imagine it, and how it will be portrayed in the screenplay. 

Another argument--won't it look bad? Was knocked down by the obvious answer: well, what if it is bad? If Trump pleads the Fifth Amendment, yes, it does work against him in the civil trial, and he should obviously consider whether telling the truth might be one way of avoiding that disaster. But if he obviously would incriminate himself if he told the truth and that information is shared in a criminal context--

Why are we doing this? Look, Trump has history. He had to settle Trump University cases and his Trump Foundation was scattered to the winds. It isn't that he isn't known to be crooked, it's that his fan club doesn't admit it to themselves because they are enjoying the ride he's taking them on and the system hasn't figured out how to shut him all the way down yet. NY AG Tish James is doing something very important here: the hard work of bringing a lawless business to account. Trump having been president should not exculpate him or his dumb kids. If anything, that and his potential for running again makes inspecting his morality and concern for the law more important, not less. 

Especially because there is every reason to expect that he ran the office of the presidency, from the very first day, with the same lawless attitude he engaged in his business practices. Especially because even his exit from that office is marred by lawlessness and involves the complicity of his family.  

Should Trump continue to benefit from the same luck he's experienced all his gifted, grifting, and corrupt life after all we know now? (Shouldn't his lease to his Washington DC hotel be voided because of fraud before he can sell it and get an ill-gained cash infusion for his suffering business?) 

Trump's party always likes to talk about being in favor of the rule of law, against crime, and for personal responsibility. Well, Trump is being made responsible. You gotta love it. 

I mean, unless for some stupid reason you put all your eggs in a deplorable handbasket, or something. But who is that dumb? 

Think of the Poor Trump Children!

 

"They'll go after children!" conjures up an image of malicious beasts randomly attacking minor family members for the sins of the fathers, but when Donald Trump says it, he means the January 6th Committee has questions for his middle-aged daughter, Ivanka Trump, a former White House Senior Adviser. If he really wanted to keep his children of-limits regarding investigations into his wrong-doing, he could have kept his daughter and son-in-law out of the White House by not offering them jobs (that came along with, let's never forget, security clearances they would not have otherwise been able to obtain and truly interesting business opportunities). 

No doubt, she follows in her old man's footsteps, but he apparently wonders where a line of questioning into her point of view might lead.  And what a shame--he always did like her best!

UPDATE: I mean, they are his kids, and it shows. 

TWGB: It Really Ties the Room Together

 

Breaking News: Thomas Barrack, a friend of Donald Trump and one of his top 2016 campaign fund-raisers, was indicted on federal charges of violating a law requiring lobbyists for foreign interests to disclose their work.https://t.co/G8FNAZWqGs

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 20, 2021

I couldn't help but chuckle to myself when I read about Barrack's arrest for working on behalf of UAE to influence Trump, because, goddamn it, didn't everyone? Well, maybe not UEA (although, I mean, Elliott Broidy) but you know. Barrack influenced Trump's campaign speech in a way favorable to UAE the same way Manafort influenced Ukraine policy during the 2016 campaign. He wrote an op-ed just like Mike Flynn did his oped for Turkey. (You know when Giuliani wasn't palling around with Russian-affiliated Ukrainians he was also doing his bit for Turkey, right? It's hard to keep things like this straight, but I do try.) And everyone knows Trump for whatever reason was always trying to have good relations with Russia. So what was the stated Trump foreign policy? 

Right: America First.  It's a punchline like "The Aristocrats" is a punchline, and the joke is pretty scandalous if not outright foul.

I was a little surprised that it didn't have anything to do with the Presidential Inaugural Committee stuff (I guess that was top of mind for me, thinking about how Allen Weisselberg was looped into that mess and yet they weren't going after him for that right now, either), but then I started thinking about Thomas Barrack the way one does.  Because he ties the room together. The little story that kind of never got to be the scandal it should be about what for all the world looked like the US was supporting SA and UAE blockading Qatar--and how Jared Kushner ended up getting his big old steaming 666 Fifth Ave debt taken care of (well, if the Chinese won't help...what can one do?) Barrack was right there.

Oh yeah, and then there was that madcap scheme he had with Flynn to sell nuclear tech in the Middle East because you know what? Why not? (You might wonder why Flynn, a paranoid Islamophobe, would think this idea was great, and the answer I have for you is, uh, well money, right? Because whenever I see that bantam rooster crowing about his patriotism, I feel like like I just ate a whole tinfoil sandwich.)

There's probably more there, but it's late at night and I'm just thinking about how that 74 year old wealthy dude is going to sit in jail thinking about stuff until next Monday. 

And I can't help but chuckle.

TWGB: No Moneyman Can Win My Love

 

So: Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Org have been indicted with multiple counts in a 15 year tax avoidance scheme where many company officers received "fringe benefits" that were not reported for tax purposes. This is a good start. It probably should involve more years but there's statutes and whatnot. Anyway, bags of cash in the form of rent, tuition, and other nifty expensive shit kept top bosses happy so they didn't have to pay tax on their full compensation and went about their jobs (and I dunno, I'm not a lawyer, let alone a mob lawyer, but when folks in your employ are paid extra--it's because you expect extra--like keeping shtum about things that might otherwise be very interesting.)

Trump and his kids aren't named in the indictment--but I feel like we will get to that at some point in this investigation. I find it hard to believe randos not named "Trump" got special compensation and people actually named "Trump" working for that company did not. Have you seen these large adult children? 

Anyway, the charges here definitely imply lots of IRS tax fraud, and I would like to hope DOJ follows up on that part, because cha-ching. 

Anyway, Weisselberg is pleading "not guilty" because he is very loyal and has been comfortable for a long time and is totally stalling and maybe he thinks Trump still has some pull to help a brother out. I don't know about that, and I definitely suspect someone else is already diming out every bit of what Weisselberg could already offer, except for a few pieces. It might not matter whether Weisselberg "flips"  (All Trump scandals presume Trump is guilty and the only question is whether associated parties talk--you ever notice that?)

TWGB: If It Walks Like a Duck

So, the news that the NYT got hold of about 20 years of Trump's tax return information follows a story about how a bankrupt Donald Trump tried to hijack his father's estate in desperation, which follows on Mary Trump's suit against the Trump family for what she as her father's heir should have received, which comes after news that Eric Trump will definitely have to sit for a deposition regarding Trump Org business, and that New York state is definitely looking at a tax fraud investigation against Trump.

This adds to our understanding that Donald Trump isn't so much a self-made man as his father's well-funded failure, and that he's been keeping himself going by various forms of grift, such as using his charity as a slush fund and starting schemes like Trump University. But this week has, among other things, hammered home that the trouble with Trump's finances are also a White House issue, in that he's staying in the taxpayer-funded housing on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave to avoid having to stay in less luxurious taxpayer funded housing. He's grifting taxpayer dollars all the time. And his kids are probably not just following in his footsteps, but are also liable as hell.

Trump never was the amazing businessman he ran on for the presidency, he just played that guy on tv. 

If Trump were not elected to the presidency, this kind of financial scenario would make it impossible for him to be given a security clearance because he's basically wearing his leverage on his sleeve. (And he has been! Everyone knows this!) He had to demand Ivanka and Jared Kushner get their security clearances despite what where most likely business-related red flags (of which theirs were the tip of the iceberg to his) as it was.

But the big picture also has Trump scrambling to hold on to the office of the presidency not because he thinks he can do a great job with his second term (he can actually barely articulate what he even plans to do in a second term, which given all he has not accomplished in his first is seriously telling), but because he thinks he is shielded from having to face the music. Someone will shield him from the consequences. The taxpayers, or other interested parties, surely would....

Do what? And that's the problem we've got, yes? Trump needs someone to come to the rescue over his overleveraged ass and he's holding the whole damn US at stake. Winning the White House in 2016 convinced him that that Article 2 gave him special protection and that he owed whoever helped him win in 2016. So it's all very well and good that he says "America First", now (if for the low special customer price of $750 a year) but what exactly is he supposed to say when his notes are due?

(Spasibo i dobroy nochi?)

Anyways, at his press conference where he took very few questions and definitely wanted to talk about SCOTUS, he said the press should compare his financial statements, which he has released, to the tax information, but I think that's why New York State is actually after him in the first place.

(And not to leave this unsaid, my thoughts are with the family of Brad Parscale, who on this Sunday of all Sundays had some kind of bad patch, and I genuinely don't want people associated with Trump needlessly harmed or self-harming. And I also have Michael Caputo and his family in mind regarding his recent cancer diagnosis, which can spin anyone off their axis a bit. I'm the kind of g who prays for folks so they can testify someday. I'm not without a heart.)

UPDATE: This is also the best place to drop that Rosenstein was probably responsible for reining in the Mueller investigation to avoid info on Trump's finances  (Oh was that link deficient--here) due to it being Trump's red line for blowing up the investigation altogether. But Trump might as well have been saying "Yes, this is where the whole problem is please look at my finances" so?!?!?!?!?)

UPDATE: Trump has about 3400 conflicts of interest, which are about 3400 more conflicts of interest than any candidate for office should have, let alone a person who is already an incumbent.

TWGB: No, I Mean, Everybody is in the Loop

This second video shows indicted Rudy Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman with President Trump and RNC chief Ronna McDaniel at Mar a Lago in April 2018. Trump and Parnas take pics. McDaniels hugs Fruman and says she's glad he is attending. https://t.co/ty87AAWTI1

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) January 30, 2020

"In the loop" is such a funny term. In the part of my brain that is perpetually five years old, I think "Froot Loops" when I think about loops. When I think of people being "out of the loop" politically, I think about George H. W. Bush. He didn't actually seem to really be out of the loop. Regarding the Ukrainian shakedown, Ambassador Gordon Sondland (who is still! after all this! Ambassador to the EU! Which is kind of amazeballs, right?) said "Everyone was in the loop." And friends--

That shit just keeps seeming truer and truer. It seems like a lot of (Republican) people should know better about all of this stuff, well and truly including US Senators who just recently decided they really did not want to see new documents, and they really, really, did not want to hear from more people, regarding the impeachment (which is forever) and the removal (which will happen by law or by entropy) of President Trump from the White House.

After all, some of the folks who cast votes this Friday to hear no more evil, see no more evil, and try like hell to say no more about it, were right there when the Obama Administration tried to leverage out Ukraine's dodgy prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. Those senators still were paying attention when Trump held up that aid, like Senator Portman. Senator Ron Johnson is in this loop. Lev Parnas claims that Trump's over-eager Renfield Senator Lindsey Graham is very in the loop, and that a letter was delivered to Graham from Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, looking for sanctions against Ukraine officials. There are US Senators who have been well-briefed that the CrowdStrike theory that Trump wanted investigated was also a lie.

Not a "Liberal" nor a "Democrat", Anyway

Trump and MBS are meeting on a high floor of the Imperial Hotel in Osaka right now. Trump calls the Saudi crown prince “a friend of mine” and says it’s an “honor” to be with him. pic.twitter.com/4EMhkS4Mqj

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 28, 2019

This stupid weekend, Donald Trump met with Putin and joked about getting rid of journalists and meddling in elections, wholeheartedly endorsed Prince MBS by claiming no one "pointed a finger" at him for killing Jamal Khashoggi (well, except for the UN and the CIA), made a pointless photo-op trip to meet Kim in North Korea that highlights how little has been achieved with all his friendly palaver (and, because what is a Trump stunt without a Big Lie, also falsely claimed other presidents begged for such an opportunity), and revealed his ignorance of more or less recent desegregation history and the concept of western liberalism, by considering "busing" as being about transportation choice and liberalism as boiling down to a Bob Hope California "fruits, flakes and nuts" type punchline. WE can at least rest assured that he is not a liberal in the western sense, or even a small "d" democrat, because he doesn't even know what those things are.

And yet he represents the US abroad.

He's unfit in so many, many ways, but they've been normalized. Any part of this shitshow should have been cause for days-long raking over the coals, and yet he will endure the entirety of this bare-ass display without due whipping. But what really astonishes me is the assholes are going to try to make Daddy-Minder and patent-collector Ivanka normal, too:

Ivanka Trump appears to be trying to get involved in a talk among Macron, May, Trudeau and Lagarde (IMF head).
The video is released by French Presidential palace. pic.twitter.com/TJ0LULCzyQ

— Parham Ghobadi (@ParhamGhobadi) June 29, 2019

That not everyone will put up with another generation of ineptitude is....something. But a bit more than side-eye would be nice.

What's Good?

AOC is Pretty Good:

But his WhatsApp https://t.co/kLO3ZHvdbO

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 22, 2019

And this reply to her is also Pretty Good:

Tell me about it.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 22, 2019

And yes, this is and has been a Pretty Big Damn Deal:

What do Jared, Ivanka, Reince, Bannon, Gary Cohn, Stephen Miller, K.T. McFarland and Hillary Clinton all have in common? https://t.co/BYDSAjXg7s

— Philip Bump (@pbump) March 21, 2019

We've been treated to three years or so of "Lock her up!" regarding Mrs. Clinton's email server, which she had set up for sheer convenience. If what she had done was bad enough, even though it was not illegal and no ill intent could have ever been proven, what the hell are we supposed to think about the use of private email and an untraceable comms service like Whatsapp? Especially given the circumstantial details we do have about how this program is being used? And the very knuckle-headed possibility that such communications are being screenshot (on private devices?) and then sent through the properly retained (assumedly) White House server, with the information (screencaps) still stored on the possibly unsecure device (which can be retrieved under warrant, sort of making the use of WhatsApp just pointless but nonetheless still shady). Especially when some of that info had to do with nuclear deals with KSA. And look who all was in this nebulous and intel-insecure mix.

If National Security heads on the right don't come down on this like a ton of bricks with a "lock them up" attitude, I think we can safely say the case against Hillary Clinton was always made of sheer fuckery. And even if they do come down on this like a ton of bricks, let's just reflect that it even at a glance looks to be a way more intentional and audacious flouting of any electronics use guidelines than Clinton would have been dinged for.

Worth it?

EXCLUSIVE: The White House chief of staff at the time, John Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” by the president to give Jared Kushner the top-secret clearance. w/@maggieNYT @adamgoldmanNYT @anniekarni https://t.co/cDkJjvVzgh

— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) February 28, 2019

Cutting corners regarding national security clearances seems dumb enough, but I can look at the issue a little sideways and see where if there was an experienced hand with a lot of knowledge and good relationships with crucial allies....

But this is just Trump's jackass son-in-law. That's his whole slate of credentials. He married Ivanka.

(Although in TrumpWorld, cluelessness could be considered a plus, I suspect. The Trump Administration appears to critically undervalue expertise. And Kushner is not the only dodgy instance, just one of the more egregious.)

This is A Law and Order TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

 One of the most compelling stories about the 2016 election was the epic story of hubris wrought from the media bards about the hero, Hillary, who would have been President, but for her emails.  Her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, who won the electoral vote (albeit, it must be pointed out, not the popular vote) was a known scumbag. He was a dodgy, several-times bankrupt businessman, a more or less open racist, a conspiracy theorist, and a probable sex pest.  But, we were supposed to understand, the utter wretchedness of setting up a private server, even if no wrongdoing concerning it could be established, was entirely enough to dog her candidacy. Because using private email, even if it was done by previous Secretaries of State, was made a retroactively radioactive thing, and it should follow, therefore, that subsequent practitioners of the art of politics of the White House and environs should, obviously, practice extraordinary scruples regarding their email activity.

Or, well no, of course, the "smart one: Ivanka Trump, would not be fully compliant with email regs because no one in the Trump Administration was expected to. The laws pertaining to transparency, retention, etc., were for Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State ex post facto, but not going forward for people who were Team Trump. Or so Trump would care to allege, maintaining that Ivanka deleted nothing, even if she withheld rather a lot of her email output and influx.

One might wonder, what with all this Ivanka email-business, what Trump's Acting AG might have to say about it--and if this were about Hillary Clinton, Matt Whitaker would obviously be down with prosecution.  Which seems so convenient, because Donald Trump would have actually very much wanted someone to head his Justice Department who wanted to prosecute Hillary Clinton, and actually, while we're at it, James Comey. Of course, intelligent legal folks like Don McGahn drew up reasons why this would be probably obstruction of justice and seriously impeachable.

Which is no reason to believe Trump thought these advisors were right in that he might be liable. After all, as I've mentioned before, in Trump's mind, he isn't a public servant himself, and other public servants should serve himself as being the sort of CEO of America Inc. He's never really grasped that the oath of office he took was more than a formality, or that acting in pure self-interest was in any way a conflict with his greater duty towards the Constitution and the nation for which it stands.

But his man, Whitaker, does seem to be some kind of conflicted--in that he was the sole employee of a PAC funded by dark money, that paid him really big bucks for what I have to assume was the political equivalent of wet work. Basically, he was a central casting "leg breaker sent from Back East"--a guy who could be counted on to do political assassinations.

I can see why this guy appeals to Trump. He gets the dynamic. But I don't think he sees where the naked, throbbing, political boner for his enemies of it all, is probably not on his side, legally. Because this is still all of a piece with his obstruction of justice bullshit.  Because he likes to talk about "law and order!", but he does not know what that even is.

Speaking of which, he made an abundantly dumb and sort of self-revealing statement about KSA's rogue Prince KSA and the likely murder and mutilation of the journalist Khashoggi.  "It is what it is." It's a nasty world, anyway. Isn't the Saudi government paying already to be absolved for these things because of figures Trump has entirely made up?

It looks like Trump believes in Law and Order for people he doesn't find politically useful, and maybe there is leeway for people he does find politically useful.

He has no moral center. He could very well be selling out all sides.

But Their Emails!

I guess it's bad enough that Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner, seems to have done government business on private email.  (OMG! He's new at this people--are we supposed to believe he knew this was even a thing he shouldn't do...like as if there was a whole Presidential campaign where the biggest slight against one of the candidates was, um, private email use, or something?) And wouldn't you know it? It turns out a handful of other Trump Administration folks, some gone, like Steven Bannon and Reince Priebus, and some still there, like Stephen Miller and Gary Cohn, definitely seem to have used private email for government business too.

That's outstanding. (I'm leaving Ivanka Trump off the hook for her private email use for what might be considered WH business because she wasn't in the job yet, and I don't know that she recognized this as being a part of her job, even--but she probably did have a transition-team email at this point.)

What makes this email use a little more suspect to me, anyway, is that this was done with a very particular knowledge that use of private email would be considered suspect (again, that whole 2016 election thing) and that, because of little things like some Trump campaign and White House staff having had Russian connections that were revealed after they did things like not mention them in confirmation hearings or on security clearance applications...eh, that might look like they were going off state-comms for reasons.

The "for reasons" part being the same exact thing that exculpated Hillary Clinton from her long email debacle (except for the bit where it got opened up again in October of 2016). We just can't be as sure that Kushner and all them aren't using private emails for specific "reasons" (cough--Russia--cough).  As it is, the Trump Administration is playing a game of "follow the leader" in being too fond of their personal devices, and not nearly as careful of digital security as they ought to be. Combine that with the tendency of the Trump Admin to fail to fill key roles in security positions, and you have a recipe for a potential Trump Administration hacking crisis.

It looks bad, as I have been saying, because it is bad. They need to create some kind of on-the-job information technology security and ethics training for executive department use, if they haven't one already, or something. Because after all the news about emails--they really ought to, at the very least, know better.  Or at least, make like they do.

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag is Disruptive

When a member of Duma is so comfortable with the notion of Russia having stolen the US presidential election that he says it aloud, the joke really has gone too far. Whether it's just a kind of boast about Russian capabilities, or a troll about US intelligence lack of capability, it's not actually funny.

It's especially not funny when it's clear that Russia has been very active in trying to influence events here through social media, even using Facebook to arrange anti-refugee and anti-immigration rallies right in the US, that Russian-backed "news" outlets RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik had been part of a propaganda campaign, and that it's possible that UN facilities in New York had been used for some of the operation. 

This is quite a lot of activity going on, with one apparently goal--influence in favor of Trump. There's evidence of Russian meddling in elections in Europe as well, so why not the US as well?

This is why it frustrates me that Rep. Devin Nunes and friends are trying to undercut the Steele Dossier and disrupt the investigation into the Russian hack of the DNC (and really, the election) by trying to discredit it. It just doesn't seem like a good-faith supposition that the real problem with the oppo research dug up in the dossier makes Trump look bad and could have been seeded with disinfo by the Russians for that very effect. The point of oppo is to get factual, damaging information, and this dossier has enough of it. There's not really any reason to believe Trump was not Putin's preference.

After all, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have been a continuation of Obama's foreign policy, at best. But with Trump, they could count on a disruption--and possibly even plan a reset of US/Russian relations. Trump, after all, having been able to elide, omit, deny, anything to do with Russia at all publically, however fallaciously, would easily be able to ignore the enormity of the electoral interference on the most obvious of biases--

It benefited him, so it didn't matter. See? Disruption in action.

The problem with disruption though, is sometimes it is not actually...legal. This is a problem for the Trump campaign, because the evidence is piling up that unauthorized people associated were engaging in effecting foreign policy. (Those adoptions? Those sanctions.) And one person who seems particularly in the midst of this dealing was Jared Kushner, who Trump lawyers rather wanted out of the White House, by now.

But he remains, despite several uncomfortable disclosures.  I feel like this is probably something that will end up...disrupted...at some juncture, not without a number of "Please, Daddy"'s on Ivanka's part.

No Chaos in this TrumpWorld Grab-Bag!

Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages raising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2017

Before I get down to the news of a busy news day, I just want to ruminate on the above Tweet--do you ever, in the midst of saying glowing things about your various blessings, really feel the need to say something like, "and by the way, my job is totally secure" or "and my marriage is stronger than ever" if there wasn't an inkling something was wrong? That's how I'm reading the above Tweet--"Things are going so great: Ignore the mess!" It's almost as if Trump is either certain enough of his own hoodwinking prowess to believe he can Jedi Mind-Trick the appearance of chaos away by merely saying so, or has finally begun to accept "Hey, maybe this does look kind of bad" into his outlook.

But as I said some time ago: It looks bad because it is bad. Trump's problems are revealed through bad news, not "fake news". That news might be coming out because of leaks, but those leaks attest to something about the nature of his administration, that his staff feels the need to try and shape the narrative by letting bad news out, even if it might be damaging to the president or other members of his circle. That is pretty extraordinary, but not a problem of "spin". It's a problem of actual deficiencies in leadership and competency in staffing. It's the girders, not the paint.

Take the departure of Anthony Scaramucci, bombastic almost-Communications Director, as a case in point. He was named to the position 10 or 11 days ago depending upon your take, but -15 days from when he was officially to take office. In that time, he prompted the resignation of Press Secretary Sean Spicer, forced (one could believe) the firing of COS Reince Priebus, and launched a tirade of unique and memorable scatological importance. (One of the things that fascinates me about the infamous call to Ryan Lizza is that, despite having said many things on the record that anyone else abiding by the idea that a communications professional might have prefaces with "off the record", actually did ask for something he said to be off the record during the exchange, from what I understand. How the hell bad was that part, given all the other parts!?) But my question is--how did he get there and why?

The answer might be Javanka and specifically to target Priebus. That's some manipulative stuff. This is the kind of thing one could hope will be managed by appointing a more discipline-oriented character in the form of John Kelly to Chief of Staff.  This is especially true if he actually is given freedom to manage. But I still suspect at least some members of Team Trump are going to rankle at stern step-dad Kelly coming in and trying to be the boss of them. (Just a theory. In other news, Priebus seems to have been undermined by micro-management at the top. Just sayin'.)

Sometimes Even TrumpWorld Grab-Bags Have the Blues

Focusing on Donald Jr. as a contact-point between Russian operatives and the Trump campaign has certainly kicked up a lot of defenses of Donald Trump Sr's baby boy. Or should I say, middle-aged baby boy. It bothers the hell out of me when a grown man, something like mere days younger than the leader of France, and old enough to be president himself according to the US Constitution, and certainly old enough to run (supposedly without his father's input) the Trump family's international company--and yet, some people think this "kid" should get soft treatment for not knowing that dealing with representatives (or people purporting to be representatives) of a foreign power is not actually normal campaign behavior for a political campaign, and having intel shopped in front of you kind of is mighty collusion-ish (conspiracy to interfere with an election--maybe a promise to facilitate espionage, depending? It's really dumb, what the Trump "kid" is supposed to have done, but I dunno. I think many adults would have known to refrain from what he did.)

What I think is amazing, though, is that the Trump 2020 campaign is already ponying up yon Trump the Younger's lawyer bills, since before the news of his stupid collusive Trump Tower meeting with who even knows how many Russians even broke to the world. As if the Trump Campaign is openly now accepting that whatever Trump the moral baby did is reflecting back on Trump the perpetual candidate, who is having a hard time being loved with all this talk of collusion and shit about! 

Aw hell. Isn't a little recoil to be expected, when even an administration's AG is gangster about his disclosure of assorted contacts, to the point of basically showing a photo of his own extended middle finger?

It strikes me as proof of a problem, though. The pattern of a problem is real. Kellyanne Conway just a minute ago suggested that the goal posts have been moved to "evidence of a systemic, sustained, furtive collusion". What she doesn't seem to see is that she is the one moving the goal posts--but we do have a systemic and sustained coverup in the form of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump not reporting their full financial and other foreign contacts. We have Flynn and Manafort acting as campaign surrogates, while also being paid by foreign governments. They aren't in the mix at the moment, but Kushner and Trump Jr did as badly in their willingness to trade the US cow for the magic beans of dirt on Hillary Clinton, as those other campaign reps had done, and at least Kushner and Ivanka should not still be having security clearances. 

All this gives me the blues. I would surely think more GOP-ers's would find this scenario bent and precarious from a national security pov. They should wonder if Trump is really a prone Russian patsy. I would be ashamed if I thought (and I kind of do) that a POTUS could be so open to blackmail and financial and social leverage. 

OMFG, This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

It was about this time last week that I posted a "TrumpWorld Grab-Bag" that contained the tidbit that Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, was the likely "senior WH Adviser close to the President" who was an FBI probe "person of interest", and this week it was well and truly confirmed. Kushner has been found to have had additional contacts with Russian representatives that he did not mention in his security clearance paperwork, and he and former NSA Michael Flynn had met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak to discuss setting up a backchannel using Russian facilities for secure communications, per them to work out a plan for Syria.

Right--Syria. If that's what it was all about, there's no particular reason why they needed to keep this that far on the down low, right? A new Administration sets foreign policy, and keeping the IC out of the loop doesn't even seem smart--who is looking out for US interests and making sure what they're trying to do diplomatically isn't a double-cross? While I'm trying to be sympathetic (no, a little!) to the idea that maybe Kushner is a newbie to these things and thought that was cool--if Flynn was there, he has no such excuse. In the framing of the known possibility or probability that there already was an active investigation into the GRU DNC hack and possible interference by Russia into our elections (they had to know this, right?) and atmosphere of chatter regarding Trump being "Putin's puppet"--how in the hell did any of that seem like shit they were supposed to be doing? Like they didn't know the story was coming out and would look super bad? (And we know there was already somebody working on a backchannel with Putin in the Seychelles anyway, not as close to the near-Trump orbit.)

Even if it wasn't looking like straight-up treason, there is a still a part of me that cringes at the bonehead simple incompetence of it all. And Ivanka's baby daddy, who the President trusts as a senior adviser for some reason with all kinds of things, is looking like a huge patsy--except don't call him "stupid", just yet. After all, he was guy with the campaign analytics (which turned out to work so complimentarily with the leaked stolen data that it seems so...coordinated, like a science). And keep in mind that at least he tried to throw off the investigation, by pushing for Jim Comey's firing, even if it was one day after Eric and Don Jr. were called into an emergency meeting with the FBI to discuss a possible hacking attempt on the Trump Organization that the alleged "nut job" finally got the axe.

Blood is thicker than...you know?

But as for former FBI Director Comey, a little weird news--he made his wrap-up press conference not at all showboatingly about the end of the Clinton email investigation in part because of a fake email that he knew was fake, that implied AG Loretta Lynch was clearing Hillary Clinton for partisan reasons.

I'm going to actually be more sympathetic to Comey over this one, even if some Clinton-backers are feeling a rage and kind of think that should have given him predicate to spill the tea over the Russian investigation and break that whole thing open instead of what he did do--but I get what his options were, and I think I have a good handle on "Clinton Derangement Syndrome" by now. The possibility that leaked email info-dumps could contain retroactively faked and placed info has always been mixed up in this. The problem with fake news is, once it is out there, no matter how dumb and discredited it is, there is going to be some people who for their own emotional needs will believe an utter lie and pass it on just because.  It's the logic behind catfishing emails from Nigerian hackers setting up relationships with lonely middle-aged sad sacks who give them money--the mark defends the con because they have a sunk-cost interest. They want to believe because believing upholds their own idea of themselves as rational, clever, on-top-of-it, party to secret information and not a mere rube or sheeple.

This thinking is what kept Obama off of bringing the Russia hack/Trump benefit line of inquiry to light as well. He knew all too well that whatever he said, would create an equal and opposite reaction among his critics. We live in a world where people literally complained that Michelle Obama was the kind of monster that wanted kids to eat their vegetables. I know I grew up in a "finish your veggies or no dessert" world. The changing factor had to be that some people disliked the Obamas so much that they suddenly needed to pretend that kids eating junk food and not vegetables was FINE! and she needed to STEP BACK! Because cafeteria liberal fascism, obvs.

So, Comey had to consider whether he looked like a Republican hack who closed the Clinton email thing but was pissed about it because of things, or like he was being used by the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, and was also probably smuggling children that were kept in the basement of a pizza place that didn't even have a basement. Now, I really feel like I have context to his admission that he felt sick if what he did affected the election--maybe there was no way he wasn't going to. He did his best not to feed the monsters, but here there were monsters everywhere. And if that was my position, I know I'd feel sick, too. I get it. We aren't living in a rational world where truth serves everybody. Sometimes even the truth is a little hinky. But it still has to be its own reward.