Trump Week 20. White House dysfunction and Russian obstruction…
Every year on June 1st, the National Hurricane Center declares the opening of hurricane season. From June 1st to November 1st, citizens of the Caribbean basin, South East U.S., the west coast of Mexico, and the Hawaiian Island of Muslim Loving Judges look towards the sea, waiting for the havoc to be wreaked upon their lives by one of nature’s meteorological wrecking balls…a named hurricane.
It is during this season that one governmental agency rises to annual prominence. You guessed correctly, its the Federal Emergency Management Agency, (FEMA). FEMA is who gets called when things go completely to shit, and the federal government gets called in to provide vital live saving support to those victimized by disaster. Every season, FEMA gets called upon to provide food, shelter, financial aid, and recovery support for communities savaged by natural disasters. George Bush had Mike Brown to blame when New Orleans and Mississippi victims of hurricane Katrina were left hanging for 10 days.
We are now five months into the Trump presidency and there is no “Brownie” on whom Trump may call. The NHC has declared a more active than usual forecast for the Caribbean and Atlantic basins, predicting between 11–17 named storms, and FEMA does not have anyone in charge.
Welcome to week 20.
The Director of FEMA is but one of over 553 federal appointee positions requiring senate approval. Of that, only 24 have been nominated and approved. Five of twenty three appointees in the Pentagon have been approved. The remainder await presidential nomination. The numbers are worse at Foggy Bottom where Rex Tillerson has but three assistants upon whom he can turn for advice and assistance. There are a lot of empty desks, which might be saving the U.S. a ton of money. It’s fair to remember that these desks are normally filled by experts that do mundane stuff like brief the Sec State on local customs, like not waving at the Saudis with your left hand, and Chinese/North Korean history…the kind of information that your president needs to keep from stepping on his dick internationally.
Mr. Trump began the week tweet whining about democratic obstruction in approving his nominees. The simple fact is, congress cannot hold hearings on nominees that are not presented. Ninety three federal prosecutor positions stand open, because Trump and Sessions fired all of the Obama era prosecutors, and have yet to replace any of them. The staffing situation is critical, from the WH on down the chain through every executive department. According to an unnamed source, they’re not behind the power curve, they’re just being deliberate.
If the selection of the FBI director is any indication, the process is also being hindered by one simple fact: NO ONE of any substance wants to work for the Orange Apprentice President and his cabinet of billionaire robber barons.
So, it isn’t your imagination. Nothing is happening on Trump’s watch because he doesn’t know how to staff his government with the right people to get things done legislatively. It’s fundamental incompetence on a massive scale.
We all know that Trump cozies up to autocrats like the Saudi royal family. Still aglow from the sword dance and orb rituals, Trump woke up and tweeted his support of an Arab league boycott of Qatar for enabling the funding of terrorist organizations, like Al Queda…which is largely supported by Saudi money…but they have a glowing orb and pictures of the Donald on a big hotel wall. To top it off, they gave some dude 1,000 lashes for committing adultery with his vacuum cleaner.
The WH has put forth a gloriously inconsistent message though, helping to foment a bit confusion, if not in Qatar, certainly in DC. Sec State Tillerson began the day by calling for an end to the GCC blockade of Doha. This was assisted by Turkey pledging to support Qatar with military and humanitarian aide. Tillerson’s comments were followed closely by Trump doubling down on his support of the GCC blockade and declaration of Qatar being a supporter of terrorism, thereby negating Tillerson and Turkey. We’d have a more coherent foreign policy if it were decided by hammer wielding monkeys.
My guess is that the WH staff has a shot every time they’re contradicted publicly by the Oval Office. You can bet that the EU and NATO leaders are paying close attention to the chaos within our national security apparatus, because it isn’t comforting.
45 happened to open his can of twitter whoop ass on the country that hosts the largest U.S. air base in the middle east, Al Udeid. Over 10,000 airmen and women are located at Al Udeid, providing basically ALL of the support for the air war against ISIL and the Taliban in Afghanistan. If you look closely, you’ll see four B-52s, a few dozen KC-135 air tankers, and some significant national intelligence assets used to monitor the Middle East. Al Udeid is also the Combined Air Operations Center for all of SW Asia. Apparently, he didn’t know we have a large and strategically vital presence in country.
Trump and his DOJ are taking the Muslim Travel Ban executive order to the SCOTUS. Meanwhile, Trump keeps tweeting his displeasure with watered down Travel Ban plan B, stating that they should have held fast with the original executive order…you know, the one that was unmistakably unconstitutional. Trump’s tweets on the matter will likely be the Michael Corleone kiss of death to the Trump Travel Ban, even if the SCOTUS agrees to hear the case. He’s seriously not smart enough to figure that out that his own words are being used against him and the miniature Grand Wizard AG who more than likely regrets ever meeting Trump.
Appearing on Sean Hannity, first son and Biff Tannen clone Eric Trump declared that obstructionist democrats “are not real people”. I’m not surprised at all that he feels that way, I’m just happy to hear him say it so we don’t have to feel guilty about fucking with him.
Sneering Eric scored additional points this week when Forbes reported that the Eric Trump charity that supports St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital funneled over $1.2M into the Trump Org. coffers in a pretty blatant tax dodge/money laundering scheme. Here’s how it worked:
- Eric hosted charity golf tournaments at family owned golf courses, stating that course access was “free”.
- Trump Sr. billed Eric Trump for resort access, green fees, etc. and billed the charity extravagantly.
- Trump Sr. contributed $$$ to the Eric Trump foundation (charity write off) to offset the Trump Org. billing.
- Eric Trump then used the charitable contributions, including Trump Sr’s contribution to pay the Trump Org. bill.
Pretty slick, dad gets paid with his own money and gets a tax write off to boot. BTW, golf charity experts consider the expenses billed by the Trump Organization to be ridiculously excessive for a one day tournament. Biff denies that the Trump family profited from the charitable events, but it’s pretty difficult to deny that $1.2M, including $100K of daddy’s cash made it into the Trump’s bank accounts.
In the attention vacuum created by Vladimir Putin and his WH agents, the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, are using Senate Rule 14 to push through the TrumpCare Act without a public hearing…because that is the way a republican version of democracy works. Unless Senator McCaskill’s rant gains traction, TrumpCare will bypass committee hearings, floor debate, and will be presented for vote before the August recess. This is essentially the House bill, with scheduling delays built into the elimination of Medicaid expansion. In other words, these people will probably get re-elected in 2018 before your insurance expires in 2020.
If you’re having an evening beer, put it down before you spew a mouthful of IPA and wreck your keyboard. On the eve of the Comey hearings, Trump finally found a willing Russian surrogate to head the FBI. Yes indeed, Mr. Trump nominated a partner in the law firm that represents the Russian oil companies Gazprom and Rosneft to be the new FBI Director. It truly begs belief. When people are turning over rocks looking for connection between you and Vladimir Putin, you might as well cut out the suspense and hire Putin’s lawyer.
Mr. Wray is a partner at King and Spaulding, and we can only imagine the fees that his firm receives in payment for legal services in support of the Russians. I cannot for the life of me imagine how Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are going to spin this overt conflict of interest.
Compared to Marc Kasowitz, Chris Wray is an extremely competent attorney. Famous for representing New Jersey governor Chris Christie during his “Bridgegate” trial, he gained him an acquittal. Left lying under the NJ transit bus were Christie’s underlings, who escaped with mere 18 month and 2 year sentences. All of this for causing a monumental traffic jam in order to punish a democratic mayor who wouldn’t endorse their boss.
If you’ve been at sea, Rosneft was rumored to have offered Trump a 19% share of the company in exchange for relieving of the Crimea related Russia sanctions. I’m wondering which lawyer might have drawn up that deal. Is there ANYONE in the WH not connected to Vladimir Fucking Putin?
The long anticipated testimony of former FBI director happened on Thursday. There are a few highlights:
Basically it boils down to Trump demanding loyalty from Comey in the form of Comey keeping his job if the Russia investigation were to take a different turn…like back towards Hillary’s emails. Trump wanted the investigation stopped, and when it didn’t happen, he fired Comey. The end. Bob Mueller has the job of proving obstruction and collusion, and as Malcolm Nance said yesterday afternoon, “of ALL of the allegations in the Steele dossier…I’d cop to the Russian hookers.”
If Comey made a mistake, it was wanting his job a bit too much and compromising himself to keep it. It’s understandable. If your life is law enforcement, FBI Director is pretty much the best job that we can offer someone.
45 might have remained silent during Comey’s stint on the dais, but shortly after the hearings concluded, he sent his personal attorney Marc Kasowitz out to release a statement claiming that Comey’s testimony vindicates “Predisent” Trump on all counts.
Except that it doesn’t, especially considering that Dir. Comey intentionally took contemporaneous notes specifically because he suspected that Trump would lie about the content of their meetings; and that Trump had attempted to subvert the FBI investigation.
Stating that he would be happy to testify to his recollection of events under oath, Trump demonstrated why he’s had a hell of a time hiring a competent personal attorney. As Michael Miller said this afternoon, “Charging headlong into a perjury charge against an FBI Director with a contemporaneous transcript is an interesting strategy.”
Trumps defense will hinge on the interpretation of the word “hope”, as in “I hope you can find a way to let this investigation go.” That’s like Tony Soprano saying “I hope I don’t have to ask you twice.”
Republican apologists were stampeding one another to get to the microphone in order to spin Comey’s testimony to be more favorable to their orange Overlord. Paul Ryan probably established a new standard for obsequious bullshit by declaring that “Trump is new at this and is just learning how government works.”
If Trump were a democrat, he’d already be on the SCOTUS impeachment docket, and yet we’d still be stuck staring at Ryan’s smug face.
Finally, I have a love/hate relationship with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace. On one hand, she’s a local woman that has done very well, and I admire her for that. On the other hand, she did very well by being a republican shill for Shrub and McCain/Palin which gives my nether tonsils a Charley Horse. Nicolle couldn’t stay quiet when Junior Trump went on a twitter rampage yesterday in lieu of his father who was apparently incapacitated via zip ties behind the Resolute desk.
Junior stepped into his father’s size 5 shoes to defend him against Comey’s testimony, calling into question former Director Comey’s character. Ms Wallace had a bit of a response:
“For a guy who kills baby elephants for kicks to be giving James Comey a lesson in character and strength of character is rich at best and pathetic at worst,” she said.
To the Trumps, that is what a real person looks like.
I think that’s a good place to end the week.
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