2017 Feb 20^th

The enemies’ list is quite real. A few days ago I pointed out that Ben Carson, the new HUD secretary was not allowed his chosen assistant because his choice had said uncomplimentary things about Trump during the primaries. Now we have Trump’s Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, also denied his preferred assistant, Elliott Abrams, for the same reason. Maybe Trump should put out a list of his supporters and tell all new cabinet people to draw assistants only from that list.

John Bolton looks like a possibility but Senator Rand Paul has said that he will squelch that choice. Poor Trump, maybe he’ll have to start lobbying for his choices instead of doing golf dates with his supporters. Reince Priebus recently took Chuck Todd to task for failing to mention Trump’s many serious accomplishments to wit, signing the authorization for the Keystone Pipeline. Counting the time Trump held up the signed document in the Oval Office for all to see, his work on that issue consumed about six minutes of his time.

Tillerson, for all of the hoopla made over his appointment, has been kept out of the loop. When Prime Minister Abe of Japan was here, Tillerson was nowhere to be found. The same was true when the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau visited. The Secretary of State’s job of reassuring our European allies that NATO is still important to us has fallen on Mike Pence, the Vice President. He is trying to reassure the Europeans, but words coming from Pence are not words coming from Trump and the Europeans have said so.

Trump has repeatedly said that he has no business ties with Russia, that he has no investments there. That might be true and the FBI will find out if it is. In the meanwhile asking about his investments in Russia is asking the wrong question: He should be asked about Russian oligarch’s investments in his projects. When the Soviet Union broke apart a number of its parts were sold off at pennies on the dollar to Kremlin favorites. This produced some insanely rich, but very nervous, Russians They would remain rich just as long as they could remain favorites of the political powerful. The insurance they needed was to get some of that money out of Russia and invested elsewhere.

Trump’s various projects were having trouble finding investors; many bankruptcies and many lawsuits against the principal will not normally encourage the typical investor but these weren’t typical investors and the money rolled in. Toronto is a case in point: The Trump International Hotel and Tower attracted investors although Trump’s connection with it was just to agree to manage the place once it was constructed, and to allow his name to be on the building. That project is now facing bankruptcy. The building is literally falling apart and has not been occupied. The investors, in this case many Koreans, were attracted by the Trump name. His name also brings in investors in his other projects, golf courses in Dubai and hotels elsewhere. Making nice with the Russian political leaders helps keep the money spigot open and Trump is not stupid enough to turn that off.

Trump now asserts that the press is “the enemy of the people; he even quotes Thomas Jefferson who was furious with the press for outing his sexual activity with his slave Sally Hemmings, his dead wife’s half-sister. (Those southern aristocrats had an interesting sexual ethic.) Subsequently Jefferson said he preferred a free press to a free government but Trump left out that part.

John Meacham, commenting on Trump at his Melbourne rally said that he had, “Raised self-pity to a performance art.”  I can’t top that gem.