2017 May 31^st

Every day we learn a new thing about our new President. Today we discovered that no one is scanning his tweets, not to determine if they are accurate, but even to determine if he is spouting gibberish. Minutes after midnight, (Does that sound like the intro to a mystery story?) Trump tweets, “Despite the negative press covfefe.” That phrase with its non-word, covfefe, stayed up for six hours. Perhaps he posted it before he went to bed and then after waking, decided to remove it. Who knows with the Donald?

Everyone to some degree alters their perception of the world to please themselves. In Trump’s case the alterations become obviously false to fact and borderline pathological.

His inaugural crowds were not larger than President Obama’s; his electoral college majority was not the greatest ever but was in fact rather modest. His loss of the popular vote to Hillary Clinton was not due to aliens illegally voting for her. There are many other examples.

These are all attempts to salve an ego; they are personal and his exaggeration and misunderstanding of them do not put the country at risk. That is not the case in other situations: It seems likely that we will join Syria and Nicaragua in rejecting the Paris Climate Accords. Trump does not believe that greenhouse gases have anything to do with climate change. Many of his cabinet appointees agree with him. Secretary of Agriculture Perdue strongly rejects man made climate change. EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt sued the EPA he now heads over its regulation before he became its chief. Do you believe he will actively enforce those regulations now? Former Texas governor Perry is Secretary of Energy. Remember the debate in which Perry said as president there were three cabinet positions he would abolish and then the poor man could only remember two of the three, well, the Department of Energy that he now heads was the third.

More recently, Trump has declared his overseas trip a great success. Many of his White House employees have said so too. He said nothing when he was in Saudi Arabia about their support for Wahhabism; in fact, he was specific about claiming that he hadn’t come to lecture anyone. He can’t have it both ways; Wahhabism is responsible for much of the terrorism we face and Trump was so enamored by his red carpet welcome and the sword dancers that he chose to ignore the Saudi’s support for the very evil he rails against.

Then in Europe, he shoves the Premier of Montenegro out of his way without a word of apology. He personified the ugly American as he was on his way to a front row photo-op. The only adjustment he made was to his suit jacket. It was important to him that it hang just right.

Not a word did he utter about the agreement that an attack on one of the NATO nations is an attack on all. His comments were in fact themselves an attack on NATO nations because he believes “they aren’t paying their share.” We didn’t seem to care about that when they sent troops to support us when we went into Afghanistan after 9/11. My, how our national priorities have changed. But to hear Trump tell it his overseas trip was a great success. The awful part is that he believes it.

2017 May 30^th

We have some of our high-level intelligence types commenting on Jared Kushner’s ham-handed attempt to establish a back channel to Putin through Russian diplomatic communication        routes. This was attempted, apparently not successfully, in December after the election.

Nothing about this presidency should surprise anyone who has followed Trump’s road to the office. There were Trump’s verbal assaults on the press, the press that he penned up during his rallies while he encouraged his followers to physically assault them as they left the buildings. Then on his trip to Europe he hand wrestled with the new Premier of France. I think that was a draw with Macron ahead on points. Who is surprised that favorite advisor Jared Kushner consults Russian Ambassador Kislyak about a private channel of communication to the Kremlin?

Some of the high-level intelligence people were surprised and some were not. Who falls into which category is interesting: General H.R. McMaster is Trump’s national security advisor and he has made curious defenses of Trump and of his policies. When Trump gave the Russians intelligence we got from Israel on the use of laptop computers to smuggle bombs aboard airplanes. McMasters said that was nothing untoward and no big deal. Now he says that Jared Kushner’s back channel efforts are no big deal either, back channel communications happen all the time. They do indeed, but between low-level staffers trying to prearrange agendas before the big boys get together. This back channel is completely different. General McMaster has a sterling reputation of standing up to power. What happened?

General John Kelly who says the Kushner back channel efforts “are no big issue” joins McMaster’s evaluation of Kushner’s efforts. General Kelly is Secretary of Homeland Security. It seems that some senior White House officials want to diminish the importance of Kushner’s back channel attempt as much as they can even if their own reputations are wrecked in the process. Why are these previously honorable people willing to sacrifice themselves to protect the reputations of people who don’t deserve their efforts.

Former CIA chief John Brennan points out that Kushner is under investigation by the CIA for his Russian contacts. Do Kelly or McMaster believe the CIA is interested in an investigation of Kushner because his attempts to connect with Russian senior officials and a Russian bank are all very innocent; not likely.

General Michael Hayden whose intelligence credentials  are substantial: United States Air Force four-star general and former Director of the National Security Agency, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. So what does General Hayden say about this? He does not pass it off as of no consequence: "This was probably as off-putting to Kislyak as it is for you and me. This is off the map. I know of no other experience like this in our history, and certainly not within my life experience."

"What manner of ignorance, hubris, suspicion, and contempt [for the previous administration] would you have to have to think doing this with the Russian ambassador would be a good or appropriate idea?" Hayden added.

Kushner, who did not disclose the meeting on his security clearance form, is now under investigation. 

I’ll bet Donald Trump is too.

2017 May 29^th

Here it is, Memorial Day, and we have a Commander-in-Chief who has never served in the military scheduled to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. President Trump had several draft deferments during the Vietnam War.  There were student deferments and then he got a medical deferment because of heel spurs. These eventually cleared up all by themselves but too late for him to be drafted; besides he had a very high draft number so it is unlikely he would have been called up anyway.

Other presidents have avoided the draft: President Clinton notable among them. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed that he “had other plans.” President Bush (43) served but was able to spend his time as a fighter pilot stateside guarding Texas from any invasion from Oklahoma.

At the Democratic National Convention a Gold Star family whose son, Captain Humayun Khan was killed in Iraq saving his men from a mine explosion, waved a copy of the Constitution asking if Trump had ever read it and wondering what Trump had given to his country. Trump as is his nature felt it necessary to belittle the husband Khazir Khan and his wife Ghazala Khan.  Ghazala Khan did not speak, so of course Trump claimed that as a Moslem woman she was prohibited from speaking in public.

Later in an interview with George Stephanopoulos Trump claimed that he had given a great deal to his country. He had worked very hard building many buildings and creating many jobs. This, he seems to believe, is equivalent to having a son killed in Iraq. No one is surprised by his comments.

Trump did not come off too well in this exchange so who comes to his defense but Breitbart News. They have determined that Khazir Khan places Sharia Law above the constitution. At the end of their piece many of their readers claimed that Khan should be deported. Breitbart had done an excellent job of distorting Khan’s position just enough to bring the bigots out in force. Their comments are a sampling from the 36 percent or so of the Americans who still support Trump and would continue to support him even if he wanted to make the United States a member of the Russian Federation.

An interesting division is upon us; It is that the vast majority, about 65 percent of active military members voted for Donald Trump compared to about 25 percent for Hillary Clinton. This is a very different ratio than that maintained for the civilian vote where Clinton won the popular vote handily.

When the active military have opinions that deviate considerably from the civilian population they are sworn to defend we have a serious problem.

2017 May 28^th

Senator Lindsey Graham was asked what he thought about Jared Kushner’s attempt to arrange for a “back channel” communication to the Kremlin through the Russian embassy. Senator Graham, ever the loyal Republican politician said that he didn’t believe a word of it. That was the easy way out and no one is surprised that Senator Graham took it.

On Chuck Todd’s “Meet the Press,” we had the fascinating picture of Kimberly Strassel of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal try desperately to claim that Obama had also done a back channel arrangement with Iran to persuade them that his administration would be easier to deal with. Iran was holding some of our citizens so this made sense. There do seem to be some differences here that Strassel has not mentioned: A few days after making the backchannel inquiry, Kushner, apparently at Kislyak’s request, met with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian intelligence officer turned banker with close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin. . Reuters adds both that the FBI is looking into whether Russians suggested to Kushner or other Trump aides that relaxing economic sanctions would allow Russian banks to offer financing to people with ties to Trump. Kimberly Strassel seems to believe that this parallels Obama’s conversations with the Iranians. Please!

The Trump team, now back from what they claim was a triumphal visit overseas, will not discuss Mr. Kushner’s adventures. Trump has been without a “twitter fix” for over a week so we can expect him to crank it up; he has done exactly that. A number of twitters have emerged from him in the last 36 hours and all of them rant about “fake-news.” Fake news is any information, particularly about him, that he finds unpleasant and whose source is kept confidential by the news agency publishing it. Trump does not understand that reporters depend on information from sources that must remain anonymous if they are to continue as effective sources. This is just one of the many things that Trump does not understand.

Officially classified information is occasionally leaked and that is illegal, but Trump does the same thing. In his case, as president, he can declassify anything he wants to declassify even if it was done just to impress his foreign friends…although he only seems interested in impressing his foreign Russian friends.

His first trip abroad is over so how did he do? His greatest goof was in Saudi Arabia. He has no idea that the origin for most of the terrorism comes from the Saudi sponsored Wahhabi schools. They produced bin Laden and 15 of the 19 terrorists who flew into the twin towers.  Trump believes terrorists all come from Iran; that’s silly. Iran is certainly a disrupter but the primary motivator of Islamic terrorists is the Saudi Kingdom. So we are treated to images of Trump grinning from ear to ear as the Saudis flatter him outrageously while he berates our NATO allies, even shoving the Montenegro head of state out of his way for a photo op.

How long will this last? Any bets?

2017 May 27^th

The big story now, and for the last day or so, isn’t Donald Trump, but his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Jared seems to have been very interested in developing a back channel to the Kremlin. To do this he approached Ambassador Kislyak at the Russian embassy in Washington and proposed that a secure Russian communication route be established. Kushner believed that such a method of communication would not be subject to eavesdropping by the various American government spy chasers.

We knew Jared was naïve but we didn’t know he was that naïve. It is very unlikely that Kislyak has any means of communicating, short of a courier or a carrier pigeon that American spy catchers aren’t aware of. In any event, Jared is now the principle topic of every news channel in the country. The question: what was he so desperately eager to communicate to the Kremlin, and so desperate to keep confidential? Wouldn’t Kushner be a splendid asset for the Russian intel people to have. We know that at least one of his apartment developments is in need of a major cash infusion; seems like a perfect set-up for the Russian FSB.

Trump’s advisers seem to have many Russian connections. This extends to some members of his cabinet as well. His attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has recused himself from any dealing with Trump/Russian matters because he forgot (?) to mention contacts with Ambassador Kislyak.

His Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos has a brother, Eric Prince, founder of a private army, Blackwater, who lives in the Seychelles. This gentleman has arranged private meetings between himself and Russians to consider how Russia could reduce its support for Iran and Syria. A lifting of some sanctions by this country might be a fair trade. Understand that Eric Prince has no official role in this administration even though he is a strong admirer and financial contributor to Donald Trump. He is much too toxic to be officially associated with the Trump administration. (He seems to have left this country for the Seychelles to minimize certain tax and other legal obligations.)

 Another member of this Russian clique is Carter Page: on paper, Page looks like the ideal addition to a Trump team woefully short on anyone with international credentials. Edward Cox, Richard Nixon’s son in law recommends looking at Carter Page. Page is an Annapolis graduate with a doctorate from the London School of Economics and is a principal in a prominent energy company. Who wants more than that?

But then no one looks at his extensive Russian connections, or the content of the paid speeches he gave in Russia in which he savaged the policies of this country thus endearing himself to his Russian buddies. The Trump people didn’t bother to find out about that, or maybe they didn’t care about it.

Now the White House is devoting a “war room” not to foreign conflicts but to putting out conflagrations right here in their own back yard.

2017 May 26^th

This morning’s paper has a column by Michael Barone who writes for the “Washington Examiner.” Barone’s forte of late has been the vigorous defense of President Trump. Today’s column was no exception; he titled it “A competent president abroad.”

Barone cites a few of the glitches Trump has faced at home, almost all of his own making. He even mentions a “Brainy and quirky conservative columnist, Ross Douthat, who argued that the Trump cabinet should remove him from office under the 25^th amendment.” It is clear that Trump’s boo boos have affected even some of his conservative supporters right here.  Ah, but Barone assures us that Trump is far more competent once he gets overseas.

He then speaks very specifically of Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia where Trump is welcomed as if he were a descendant of the Prophet himself. There was sword dancing and Secretary of State Tillerson’s proficiency at it was so remarkable that he was asked to explain why. Tillerson said that he had done the dance many times before; it does make sense as Tillerson was a former Exxon-Mobil CEO.

Barone tells us that Trump, “...before an assemblage of leaders from about 50 Muslim majority nations, …denounced in no uncertain terms Islamic extremism and Islamic terror groups…” Oh, dear me! That was a major blunder. Using the word "Islamic," a reference to their religion, in the same breath as "terrorism" could be seen by Muslims as an affront to their faith and actually play into the terrorists' "clash of civilizations" narrative. This is the reason why President Barack Obama avoided that combination during his presidency. On the other hand, "Islamist," refers to political movements that seek to implement Islamic law and theology, making it less objectionable to Muslims when paired with "terrorism." Yes I know that is a very picky point but if it risks insulting a 1.4 billion member religion, it is worth knowing. Back at the White House apologies were quickly made for Trump’s gaff; it was blamed on the President’s fatigue from a long flight. Barone hasn’t given us his excuse but he’s sure Trump is a competent president…at least when he’s overseas.

Trump’s refused to comment on any of the Saudi’s human rights abuses, or on their treatment of women. At least he didn’t attend any of the routine Sunday beheadings in Riyadh’s main square.

Trump was all smiles at the adoring welcome he got from the Saudis. He put on a very different face when he left Air Force 1 in Europe. He met with the heads of state of NATO members and to watch him jockey for position in that group was a blast. Trump believed that it was important for him to be in the front row for the photo-op and it probably was. The doesn’t mean he should shove the premier of Montenegro out of his way as he moved to the front row. He never said a word to the man, “no excuse me,” nothing; he just shoved him aside. Maybe he is there to reinforce the ugly American image. Needless to say, his boorishness was noticed, but not by Barone.

Then he spent time haranguing the NATO country heads about the importance of paying their 2 percent contribution. He’s right of course but this might not be the best way to get what he wants. There was no mention of article 5 in the charter which says that an attack on one is an  attack on all. Maybe he should have pointed out that they get something for this 2 percent contribution to their own welfare, He will learn eventually that browbeating heads of state rarely gets you anything but enemies…or sometimes gets you laughed at. See some of the footage of the premiers snickering at the NATO meeting while Trump is haranguing them about the 2 percent solution.

2017 May 25^th

It isn’t that there is nothing political to write about; there is more than enough, what with Republican candidates, Trump style, beating up journalists. That situation will only get more interesting by tomorrow when Montana’s votes are counted. Today I have a couple of other issues, tomorrow I’ll do politics. Here is a piece from “More of the Same;” I hope you enjoy it.

Bling Bling

Bling is a recent addition to the dictionary; it comes from the hip-hop culture and it means an ostentatious display of wealth, usually jewelry. Shiny stuff has always had an attraction for people, and not just hip-hop artists. It’s even had an attraction for so-called primitive people. You may remember the purchase of Manhattan Island from the Indians for twenty-four dollars worth of beads and trinkets. Shiny glass beads have often had value to people we consider primitive. We civilized folks are more attracted to pieces of carbon called diamonds. They are much shinier, especially when they are cut with the proper number of facets. I doubt that there is much call for uncut diamond rings. There would be very little sparkle in them…and we do love our sparkle. Ordinary wrist watches, now encrusted with cut diamonds, are expensive enough to be advertised as heirlooms, but are no better at telling time for all their bling. There are even diamond stud ear posts too—his and hers.

It seems to me that humankind finds much merit in shiny things I believe it is built into our genetic history. You can buy polished chrome plated wheels for your new car, or indeed for your old car if you choose to “dress it up.” This could cost you hundreds of dollars depending on the plating process you want. A new Buick with chrome plated wheels adds six hundred and fifty dollars to your tab. The stock wheels are just as round. Some vehicles come with chrome plated radiator grills. These may now be more common than chrome plated bumpers. The old hot rods had engine parts that were heavily chromed. The owners were so proud of the bling that they often removed the car’s hood to make the engine visible. Of course none of this can be allowed to get dirty. Car washes everywhere are prosperous. A car must be gleaming all over…and all the time.

I am surprised that no one has thought to add chrome plating to houses. A nicely plated front door and window trim would add an interesting touch. Inside the house gleaming stainless steel is the vogue; the refrigerator, the stove, the sink, and all the appliances are stainless steel. Tall buildings are curtained in glass and stainless steel. They are said to be more energy efficient; they are certainly shiny.

Maybe this has something to do with cleanliness, which, as we all know, is next to godliness, and consequently a very good thing. It is the clean car that shines, the clean silverware that sparkles, as do our teeth, recently cleaned at no little expense by our dentist. It is certainly true that dusty, dirty, things do not reflect light very well and that brightness, or reflection, is what bling is all about. But is it possible that we have these things backwards? Maybe we value cleanliness because clean things gleam and shine rather than valuing gleaming things because they are clean.

Our vocabulary reflects our values. Employers want to hire bright college graduates. When did bright become a synonym for intelligent? It has. Why are the less intelligent described as dullards? We favor people with bright, sunny, dispositions. We avoid people with dark, gloomy outlooks. Our craving for bling even affects how we describe people and how we describe the weather.

The desire for shiny stuff seems universal among humans. Is there any evidence that it has value in the animal kingdom? Yes indeed.  Other primates and raccoons are strongly attracted to shiny objects. If you want to attract jays, crows or ravens, scatter shiny safety pins and bits of broken mirror about. One story, for which there is photographic evidence, describes starlings stealing quarters from a car-wash. The car wash owner was missing money and had accused the installer of giving the key to the cash box to an employee. A camera was set up to catch the thief. It was a starling, actually several starlings, which went into the coin box and were shown exiting with as many as three quarters in their mouths. The coins were traced to the roof of the wash where there were starling nests. The shiny coins attracted the male starlings’ attention and they retrieved them from the coin box to court female starlings. I’m sure some astute reader will see a parallel here. For myself, I have invested in several pairs of polarizing sunglasses.

2017 May 24^th

The detritus today will really be detritus, and trivial detritus at that. First, we have two instances of potential marital discord between POTUS an FLOTUS. (If I had more time and enthusiasm, a limerick might be in order here,) Two instances were filmed where POTUS reached for the hand of FLOTUS and she abruptly pulled it away from him…and this in full view of many, many cameras. Was this accidental? Almost certainly it was. FLOTUS has far more effective ways of showing her displeasure with POTUS than refusing to take his hand in public.

There has been another more interesting development; it is a difference in the attention to protocol: The Trump women, both first daughter Ivanka and third wife Melania appeared veiled and in long sleeved black dresses for their audience with the Pope. This is the expected attire for females receiving an audience with His Holiness; it is not required however. Camilla, Duchess of Cambridge, was received recently wearing a pink dress. Note that no such concern for protocol was shown when the Trump women appeared publicly in Saudi Arabia. They were brazenly uncovered and had they been Saudi women their punishment for such effrontery would have been severe.

The Trump women did exactly what Michele Obama did when she visited Saudi Arabia with her husband. She also appeared without the expected head covering. When Michelle Obama did the same thing Donald J. Trump was quick to criticize her for flouting the conventional dress. This is just another example of Trump’s numerous 180s.

Trump’s idyll away from Washington will end soon. He has already sent home Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. No one knows why but the Trump people claim the plan was to send these two home at this point in the trip. No reason has been given for their exit and they appeared to serve no function when they were present.

It has been speculated that the administration’s troubles are deepening at home and that is why Priebus and Bannon have been sent back. Nowhere is it explained what Priebus and Bannon can do about the problem. The most recent difficulty is with the heads of two more intelligence agencies, Dan Coates, Director of National Intelligence and Admiral Mike Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, they each claim they had been requested to make inappropriate statements. Trump asked them to deny publicly that there was any evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia. They both refused the request. Again, unfortunately for Trump, the fact that the request was made was leaked to the press.

Trump makes much of the potential for disaster if we have national security leaks. The problem for Trump is that most of these leaks bear more on the security of Donald J. Trump than on the security of the United States.

2017 May 23^rd

Now we find that our intelligence service warned the Israelis’ Mossad about sharing their sensitive intelligence with us until we could be sure that Trump was not a conduit for sending it directly to the Russians. If it got to the Russians it would then be available to their friends the Iranians. The Iranians are the sworn enemies of Israel and the Iranians would remove whatever source the Israelis had used to get their information.

The Russians played Trump very effectively and got just what they wanted. We have no idea about what they did with the information Trump gave them; we do know that Mossad, a source for it, is not happy that the Russians got it. H.R. McMasters, Trump’s National Security Advisor, claims Trump gave the Russians nothing they didn’t already have. Then McMaster claims that Trump didn’t know that this Intelligence came from Israel. Trump may not have known that because his intelligence briefers have been cautioned to give him no more than three pieces of information at a time. His attention span is too short to handle more.

There is a 1997 film titled “Being There” about a mentally challenged, out of work, gardener played by Peter Sellers. He becomes an advisor to powerful people and then is tapped as a presidential candidate. The parallels to Trump’s ascendancy are remarkable and frightening. The movie is now considered a classic. I wonder if it will eventually be banned.

Tomorrow Trump is off to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis. Pope Francis is a Franciscan and as far removed from Trump’s excesses of wealth as it is possible to get.

Pope Francis refuses to live in the ornate and luxurious quarters reserved for Popes and instead lives in much more humble quarters. Trump’s residence, before he was elected president, was in an enormous Manhattan tower with his name prominently displayed on it. Inside the tower Trump claimed to own a three floor 33,000 square foot apartment. He doesn’t of course. His apartment is about 11,000 square feet. Well, never mind; many of the fixtures are gold plated and that counts for a lot with the Donald.

Pope Francis has a long record of having been concerned about the poor. So is Donald Trump. For Trump the concern is with the poor taxpayers; that is literally how his budget director Mick Mulvaney described his budget proposal. Mulvaney claimed that the cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Social Security and school lunches are all to provide poor taxpayers with a break. It does too, taxpayers earning a million a year will find a 50,000 dollar a year lower tax bill. Mulvaney keeps saying that he just can’t face taxpayers and ask them to keep funding these medical programs for poor people. I’ll bet the Pope could do that.

Even staunch Republicans say this budget is dead on arrival. This includes such stalwarts as Senator John McCain and Texas Senator Cronyn who are unhappy because the increased amount for defense is too low and Senator Dean Heller of Nevada and Senator Bob Portman of Ohio who are unhappy with cuts to other programs. Portman is unhappy with the cuts to funds to preserve the Great Lakes.

On balance, it looks like it’s back to the drawing boards for the Donald…between golf games of course.

2017 May 22^nd

Trump’s budget appears tomorrow; unofficially we already know a good deal about it. There will be cuts in food stamps, there will be cuts in Medicaid, federal workers will have cuts to their pensions, there will be cuts to farm subsidies. Of course, all these cuts in spending will result is enough savings to allow for some cuts in everyone’s taxes. The largest cuts will go to the wealthiest taxpayers. Cutting expenditures to allow for the tax cuts is the whole purpose of cutting these expenditures in the first place.

Trump’s budget is just suggestive; congress has to make the cuts. Trump will not be there to make phone calls and massage a reluctant congress to cooperate with his plan. Now that his approval rating is below 40 percent, he doesn’t have all that much clout. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has even less influence; his approval rating is just under 30 percent.

To add to Trump’s budgetary whoas (sic) General Flynn has declined to honor a subpoena to testify before a senate committee. The General is “taking the fifth.” Flynn was Trump’s National Security Advisor until February when Trump fired him; it was obvious that Trump didn’t want to fire Flynn but felt he had to; after all Flynn had lied to Pence, Trump’s vice president. To add to the mess, Flynn was unpopular with Rex Tillerson, Trump’s  secretary of state and he had previously been fired by General Mattis, Trump’s secretary of defense….No matter, Trump liked him and was reluctant to get rid of him. Now, just three months after Flynn was fired he refuses to testify before a congressional committee and takes invokes his fifth amendment privilege against incriminating himself. Hey, can Trump pick ‘em or what?

Trump has finished his visit to the Saudis. Today he is having another love fest with Netanyahu in Israel. Trump’s talks to the Saudis nowhere mentioned “radical Islamic terrorists.” This is peculiar because Trump pilloried Obama for refusing to use that phrase. In fact, Trump thought Obama should resign because of that refusal.

The affection Netanyahu and Trump have for each other does not extend to their intelligence services. Trump, in a curious meeting at the White House with some Russian senior officials, provided his Russian friends with some intelligence on the use of laptop computers to smuggle bombs aboard airplanes. Trump did not mention that this information originated at least partially with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, but he didn’t need to because the Russians could reverse engineer the information to find its source.

While Netanyahu will not complain to Trump about this, Mossad, his intelligence service is seriously considering refusing to share certain intelligence items with us. French and English intel services are also aware of this blunder and they are considering the same thing.

Trump is next off to the Vatican for an audience with Pope Francis. I assume he will get there at about the same time as our new ambassador to the Holy See, Calista Gingrich. Mrs. Gingrich’s six-year affair with her then married husband Newt ended, and their marriage became possible only after Speaker Gingrich’s previous 19-year marriage was officially annulled. The grounds for that annulment were that his second wife was previously married… and so it goes.

2017 May 21^st

A few minutes ago I happened upon Chris Wallace of Fox News interviewing Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. I expected to hear more of the typical Fox News slant about how wonderful it is to have a president like Donald Trump who makes nice with the Saudis and is really, really hostile to Iran.

Well friends, I heard nothing of the sort. Wallace spent his interview giving Tillerson a very uncomfortable time. It was a very un-Fox News sort of interview, Right out of the box came a question about the content of Trump’s big speech, to wit, why was there not a word in that speech about human rights, or about women’s rights? If Tillerson was taken aback by this question he showed no sign of it. He passed it off by saying that if terrorism could not be squelched then there could be no human rights. That is nonsense of course. What does having elections, or allowing women to drive, have to do with permitting terrorism? Wallace never brought up Wahhabism, a source of terror the Saudi’s themselves are happy to export and Trump never mentioned. Even so, it was surprising to see a Fox News anchor push Tillerson as far as he did…and it didn’t stop there.

Next up Wallace asked Tillerson about his boss’s remark to the Russians about his firing of FBI director Comey. Tillerson was in the room and Tillerson heard Trump tell the Russians, both Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Kislyak, the ambassador, that “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job, I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”  Wallace asked Tillerson if that little Trump speech didn’t sound like he was relieved that he no longer had to cover up his Russian activities.

Oh no, Tillerson said, “That’s not what I heard at all.” What Tillerson heard was that Trump could work with the Russians without having to worry about an investigator looking over his shoulder. That’s very slick and that’s why Tillerson is a multimillionaire; the man is unflappable.

The Saudi red carpet treatment of the Trump entourage continues; to make things with the Trump family even cosier, the Saudi government and the United Arab Emirates will donate 100 million dollars to a women’s charity supervised by Ivanka Trump. If money can buy allegiance, and it certainly can, the Trump administration and the Saudi Kingdom are even mpre tightly bound.

Now we’ll see how things go when Trump gets to Israel. If Netanyahu and Trump have a disagreement I’d bet on Netanyahu to come out ahead. If there is a disagreement between these two, I doubt that we will hear much about it. A discussion of it would help neither of them.

                                                                                                                                 

2017 May 20^th

Fox News analysts are giddy with delight at the splendid red carpet treatment the Saudis are giving the visiting Trump entourage. There was a red carpet, literally. When they deplaned. There were jet fighters spewing red, white and blue smoke screaming overhead. There were horsemen mounted on fine Arabian steeds escorting the Trump limo. The Fox folks were quick to contrast this circus-like welcome with the snub given President Obama on his last trip; the mayor of Riyadh and a few of his friends met him and that was it.

The Fox folks haven’t stopped to consider that the Saudis know how to manipulate their targets. Donald Trump is delighted by this treatment, massage his ego this way and he becomes quite malleable; the same treatment would not have impressed President Obama and the Saudi’s surely knew that. Deliberately insulting President Obama may have been gratifying for the Saudis; it was also stupid.

Fox made much of Trump’s expectation that the Saudis will help fight terrorism. Neither Trump nor Fox seem to understand that the Saudis export Wahhabism, an extreme offshoot of moderate Sunni Islam practiced by most Muslims. Wahhabis believe all those not practicing this version of their faith deserve to be killed and that includes all moderate Sunnis. The Saudis support Madrassas, schools that teach this extreme version of Islam. These schools produced Osama Bin Laden and they are responsible for the 9/11 terrorists who killed thousands of Americans. Remember that 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in that attack were Saudis. The Fox narrators don’t mention that. These schools have expanded and are now here in the United States and they are still funded by the Saudis. (The only exception is Karl Rove who appeared briefly on Fox and he did remind the others of the Saudis support for Wahhabi terrorism. His comment didn’t fit well with the Fox agenda so it was ignored.)

Trump is delighted that the Saudis are buying just over a hundred billion dollars of arms from us. Of course President Obama sold them 60 billion dollars back in 2010 but no one seems to remember that. There is some curiosity about why the Saudis then needed 5,000 anti-tank missiles. None of their adversaries had massive tank armies…but some of their allies faced potential enemies that did. Once we sell arms to another country, it is very improper for that country to pass those arms along to anyone else. Does Trump or anyone else ask about what happened to those anti-tank missiles? Again, these questions don’t fit with the Fox agenda so they don’t get asked.

Tomorrow morning President Trump will deliver a speech to an assembly of Muslims from all over the world. This will be a trifle awkward for him because this is the same Trump who said, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a complete shutdown on all Muslims entering the United States until we find out what the hell is going on.”

Tomorrow’s speech will be at least partly written by Stephen Miller, the same Stephen Miller who authored the ban on Muslims that the courts threw out. The ban on Muslim coming to this country applied to only those coming from certain predominately Muslim countries. It didn’t apply to those countries where Trump had business interests, Turkey and Egypt for example. Hey, Trump is not a complete idiot.

2017 May 19^th

Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host and sometime guest on “Morning Joe” tells us of his conversation with Jonah Goldberg. Mr. Goldberg is the senior editor of “The National Review.” His political leanings resemble Anne Coulter’s although he has not her literary fecundity.

 Goldberg seems unhappy with FBI Director Comey’s propensity to take notes after challenging conversations such as his recent tete-a-tete with President Trump. As the story goes, and this part of the story is not contradicted by the president, Trump dismissed his courtiers leaving himself and Director Comey alone for a private conversation. At this point, the recollections diverge. Comey recalls that Trump asked him if he, Trump, was a direct target of any investigation and he asked Comey for a pledge of loyalty. Trump recalls nothing of the sort…although Trump is vague about why there was a need for a private meeting and the content of that discussion. Comey is assumed to have taken notes on this meeting and Trump says that if Comey speaks of its content he should hope that Trump does not have tapes of it.

Comey is known for taking copious notes on most conversations and this one is surely a likely candidate. Jonah Goldberg tells us that he has an informant, unnamed of course, who has told him that Comey’s note taking was confined to conversations with President Trump, few if any notes were taken on conversations with President Obama.

But how often did President Obama get Comey alone to ask him if he was the target of an investigation? Would President Obama want Comey to declare his allegiance to him?  The difference in paranoia between these two presidents is probably not comprehensible to Jonah Goldberg who has speculated that Comey just wanted these notes so he could attack President Trump. Paranoia is apparently infectious.

Trump is now winging his way to Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile back here at the ranch we have some news. Trump told the Russian ambassador to the United States that his abrupt firing of FBI director James Comey was going to remove a “great pressure” on his ability to do his job.

“I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump said, according to official meeting notes that were read aloud to the New York Times by an administration source. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off,” the president reportedly said.

This comment makes it hard to pretend that Comey’s firing was not designed to disrupt the investigation of the Trump administration’s ties to Russia. Comey’s firing will disrupt nothing; the investigation of this administration’s ties to Russia will, if anything, now be more vigorous.

Many FBI agents are very upset about the manner in which Comey was fired. He found out about it on television. If there is anything on Trump the FBI agents will find it.

2017 May 18^th

Freshman Congressman Jim Banks of Indiana appeared on a show this morning to comment on recent events. He prefaced nearly every comment with, “If true, this is very serious.” On two different interviews, Banks declared that he thought Comey’s firing by Trump was entirely justified. He didn’t say why he thought it was justified, whether it was because of Comey’s treatment of Huma Abedin’s emails to her husband, that Comey belatedly admitted contained nothing he had not already seen; or perhaps his refusal to pledge his loyalty to President Trump when requested. Unfortunately, the interlocutor never asked Banks to explain why he thought the firing was justified.

The world and Donald J, Trump are still recovering from the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel. There is near unanimous agreement that Mr. Mueller is a splendid choice. He has the approval of both political parties, his probity is unquestioned, and there is virtually nothing else besides this appointment on which both parties agree.

There is an exception: President Trump is, once again, not a happy camper. This unhappiness seems to be chronic; perhaps it is partially a function of age. President Trump has tweeted regarding the special counsel, “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.” Thus, President Trump reveals in only thirteen words, that he is ignorant of American history and that he is a whiney pants. The whiney pants designation is hardly new. At his graduation address to the Coast Guard Academy, he said that no politician in history had been treated more unfairly than he had been. What was that bit, “If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.” We can only hope.

Bret Baier asked Vice President Pence, in an interview on Fox News, what he thought of General Flynn’s registering with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent. Flynn was making more than $500,000 as a lobbyist, essentially for Turkey. Baier asked, “Your reaction to that… Mister Vice President, that even if he didn’t lie to you about what the Russian ambassador said or didn’t say, that you would have had to fire him anyway?”

“Well, let me say,” Pence responded, “hearing that story today was the first I’d heard of it. And I fully support the decision that President Trump made to ask for General Flynn’s resignation.”

This makes it clear that Pence is either a liar or he is bone stupid or perhaps he is both. Pence was in charge of the Trump administration’s transition to the presidency. In the process the transition team was notified of Flynn’s employment by the Turkish government by Flynn himself. Mr. Flynn’s disclosure, on Jan. 4, was first made to the transition team’s chief lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, who is now the White House counsel. That conversation, and another one two days later between Mr. Flynn’s lawyer and transition lawyers, shows that the Trump team knew about the investigation of Mr. Flynn far earlier than has been previously reported. Now Pence tells us that Pence’s Turkish connection was news to him.

There were other sources for this information as well. Representative Elijah Cummings sent a letter to the transition team on Non 18, 2016 advising them of Flynn’s Turkish employment. It apparently made no difference to them and Flynn was employed  by Trump until he was fired weeks later.

Now Pence pleads ignorance of this information about Flynn…give me a break!

2017 May 17^th

President Trump is not a happy camper. He addressed the Coast Guard Academy graduating class and his message was to urge them to fight, fight, fight just as he had done. The address was remarkable because it reeked of self-pity. He claimed that no president had ever been treated so unfairly as he had been treated.

Of course no previous president has ever said that he could grab a woman’s privates and that she would not object because he was rich. What, exactly, is the “unfair” response to someone who says that? This is the same someone who refused to marry the mother of his now adult daughter until several months after the daughter’s birth. No wonder he has such appeal to part of out society.

To whom has Donald Trump ever been fair? I can wait…

He has recently had to deal with the fall out of providing the Russians with some very sensitive intelligence we got from Israel. The top intelligence classification goes only by a code word as this intelligence did. No matter, Trump still gave it to the Russians. This intelligence was provided to us with the understanding that we would share it with no one without Israel’s permission. Trump couldn’t be bothered with such trivia; he wanted to show off his little prize and impress the Russian buddies he had invited to the Oval Office, so that’s what he did.

Naturally there were yelps from the intel community but Trump was not deterred.  (Have you ever seen Trump deterred?) He claimed that he was the chief intel de-classifier and that he could do as he pleased with any intelligence. He’s right, he can. He could even continue to give copies of his daily intelligence briefings to General Flynn if he wanted to,

The Israeli response to this was interesting: Netanyahu the politician saw no problem. Bibi obviously doesn’t want to make waves when he thinks has a good thing going. Does he really believe Trump giving Israeli secrets to the Russians is a good thing? The Israeli intel people are not happy and there is a move afoot to disinvite Trump to Israel. Trump’s comment that the West Wall is on the West Bank and not on Israeli territory has sent shock waves through that country.

The big issue is that Comey has made notes on his conversation with Trump, a conversation arranged by Trump specifically to exclude witnesses. In this conversation, Trump focused his attention on what a great guy General Flynn was and that he hoped Comey’s FBI investigation could, “Let this go.” He was asking Come to scuttle the Flynn investigation. This was a bombshell and the Trump White House quickly denied it. Still, it is hard to understand Trump’s need to talk to Comey alone unless he wanted to say something to him that he wanted no one else to hear. What else could that have been?

It seems likely that Trump will not be able to pursue any legislative agenda until this mess is cleared up. Others apparently feel this way too because the heretofore stable to rising stock market swooned over 370 Dow points today.

Just hours ago Robert Mueller, former FBI head, was appointed special counsel of the Russia Trump campaign investigation. If Trump was an unhappy camper earlier, imagine how he feels now.

2017 May 16^th

Today we have a change from the din of disaster that is any chronicle of the Trump administration… so we revisit Dr Guru from “And Yet Again…” He is smart enough to be apolitical. I hope you enjoy the change; it’s temporary.

                                       Dr Guru   

Interviewer:  Dr Guru, I’m having trouble with the expression, “The glass is half full.” Isn’t the glass both half-full and half empty?

Two men buy the same stock; it goes up fifty percent and they each sell half of their holdings to insure some profit. The next week the stock continues its climb. One man is disgusted that he sold any of his holdings; the other is delighted with the increased profit on the shares he still owns.

 Of course the glass is both half full and half empty; all glasses are. Fortunately, each of us can choose the way we see the glass and that has little to do with how much is in it.

.

Interviewer:  Do you think that humans will eventually become extinct?

Dr Guru:  “Eventually” is quite a long time. If they don’t become extinct they will be unusual indeed. Of all species that have ever lived on earth 99.9% have become extinct. Humans seem to be doing their best not to be an exception. In spite of the fact that we are the smartest species that ever existed, we may still become extinct as a result of our own stupidity.

Interviewer:  Speaking of stupidity, why do we sometimes have trouble retrieving memories?  This seems to get worse with age.

Dr Guru:  If you look at a picture of the brain you’ll see it has great long ridges and creases on its surface. The ridges are called gyri and the creases sulci. As you get older the sulci deepen and the little memories, when you try to retrieve them, fall off the gyri where they are stored and plunge into the sulci. Once they get down in those crevasses they are very difficult to retrieve. Sometimes, if you don’t try to retrieve them, they will climb out on their own and be available to you. Or, you might try to remember something similar and since memories are chained together, the similar memory may pull the absent memory up out of the crevasse.

It may help to be aware that you don’t remember the event you think you remember. You really remember the memory of that event from the last time you remembered it. That’s one reason why memories change over time. Each time you remember something, it is not the memory of original event at all.

Interviewer:  Dr Guru, are you sure about all this?

Dr Guru:  Of course not!

Interviewer:  Dr Guru, what do you think of travel?

Dr Guru:  I’m all in favor of it as long as I don’t have to leave home.

Interviewer:  How can you travel without leaving home?

Dr Guru:  If you live at the equator, you are traveling a thousand miles an hour due to the earth’s rotational speed. People at the equator have to hang on to trees to keep from being hurled off into space. Many would prefer to live at the North Pole where one simply rotates once a day to stay in the same place…much less stressful. Of course the earth not only rotates on its axis, it also travels about sixty-seven thousand miles an hour going around the sun. I like that because I love speed…especially when I don’t risk a speeding ticket! There is a problem though.

Interviewer:  What’s that?

Dr Guru: If we hit anything while going sixty-seven thousand miles an hour there would be hell to pay. Seat belts wouldn’t help.

Interviewer:  Sir, you don’t seem to take anything seriously. You really don’t, it’s scandalous!

Dr Guru:  You’re wrong about that. I take thermodynamics very seriously; I take the Maxwell equations very seriously. Let’s face it, entropy is no laughing matter; nor is the equation for gravitational attraction; nor the ubiquity of the inverse square law. None of these are occasions for humor. Well, maybe entropy is worth a giggle but that’s as far as I’ll go.

Interviewer:  Dr Guru, don’t you find it curious that we have months with different numbers of days? Oh yes, and why a seven day week?

Dr Guru:  The seven day week derives from the Judaic-Christian Bible which claims God made the earth and everything in it in six days and rested on the seventh. Of course no one believes that was six twenty-four hour days so there is some dispute about just how long God was occupied with this task. I think it’s interesting that in spite of cultures that are hardly Christian and others that hate Jews all to pieces, a few of those still use the Biblical week and a calendar developed by a Catholic Pope.

Interviewer:  You must have a solution to all this.

Dr Guru:  In the words of one of our new immortals, “you betcha.”

Interviewer:  I can’t wait.

Dr Guru:  Of course you can!... I’d keep the Gregorian outline. After all, it’s accurate to about eleven seconds a year, not bad for an old Pope. Inside the year I’d play around. I’d eliminate the months; they serve no purpose except to force school children to memorize their order and the number of days in each of them, a scandalous waste of play time. We’ll just number the days of the year instead. 

As far as the seven-day week is concerned, there’s nothing sacred about it. (OK, my bad.) I’d go for seventy-three five-day weeks. Of course these would no longer be weeks. A week is defined as a seven-day period. I shall call these five-day periods pents, derived from the Greek word for five. This has the advantage that we will have seventy-three pentends instead of just fifty-two weekends. Moreover we’ll have only a three-day work pent. We’ll name the work days, Beginwork, Midwork, and Endwork. The pentend days will be Fundayone  and Fundaytwo. What do you think of that?

Interviewer:  I think you’ve sipped a cog somewhere. If we have only a three-day work pent what happens to the gross domestic product?

Dr Guru:  You sound like an economist, gross domestic product indeed! It’s clear why Thomas Carlyle called economics the dismal science. Why is no one ever concerned with the gross domestic happiness? That’s much more important!

                                                                           

2017 May 15^th

What is up with Donald J. Trump? If we believe the leaks from the White House, Trump is reduced to screaming at his television sets and comes across to observers as unhinged. We are told that he is increasingly isolated, planning to replace nearly all of his staff. (Except for his relatives of course.) Most of this information comes from MSNBC, none of it arrives from Fox News… and none of that is surprising. Our primary avenue toward the truth is simply what we see ourselves.

We have seen television of Russian officials yukking it up in the oval office. No one on either side of the political fence suggests those pictures are faked, and no one denies that they were taken by Russian television because Trump would not allow American television into the oval office to record the event. Trump’s hostility toward the press is not debated by anyone; the debate is about whether or not the press deserves his hostility. He does describe as “fake news” any description of his activities that are not complimentary. If the news is reported accurately, there will be quite a lot of fake news.

Trump is scheduled to leave Friday for an eight-day tour primarily of the Middle East; he will be accompanied by Jared Kushner, H.R. McMaster, Dina Powell and others. He will visit the Holy Sites of all three major religions, including a meeting with Pope Francis. Given the enormity of his effect on news in this country his absence is bound to have a profoundly calming effect…assuming, of course, that his minders can keep him away from any major gaffes while he is away. Trump thrives on publicity so keeping him away from headlines for eight days will be a challenge.

Meanwhile, back at the White House, there are unlikely to be any staff changes. We know the Republican talking points: Primary among them was the view that no special investigating committees are needed. The ones now at work are doing just fine. Only this is not at all what the American public believes; about 78 percent of Americans believe we need a special prosecutor or some special investigative organization. Less than 20 percent believe that the congress is up to the job.

If you believe that will encourage anyone in government to appoint an apolitical investigating group you are mistaken. No Republican in his or her right mind will relinquish control of this investigation to an independent investigator. Just think of the consequences of an unfettered investigation!

News flash! Now there is information that Trump bragged to his Russian friends when they were at the White House about some special foreign intelligence he had just received. The same thing a seven year old might do by saying to a little buddy, “Look at this neat new toy grandpa bought me.” It looks like this could be a very big deal. The information was classified and Trump did reveal it…and while H.R. McMaster is trying desperately to put lipstick on it, the fact remains that Trump leaked classified material to the Russians. That’s not disputed…yet.

2017 May 14^th

Secretary of State Tillerson was interviewed by Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press“ this morning. It was obvious that Tillerson had no enthusiasm for slapping the fingers of the Russians for playing games with our electoral process. He didn’t deny that the Russians were involved, he simply said that it was but one of many things to consider. This was code for saying I don’t plan to make an issue of this interference, so “fugetaboutit.” That’s not comforting, particularly since it plays directly into the scenario of Tillerson’s undeniable past coziness with the Russian government. He wears the highest decoration that the Russian government can award to foreigners. I doubt that he’ll give it back.

This Tillerson interview comes immediately following a unique visit by Ambassador Kislyak and Foreign Minister Lavrov to the Oval Office where they all made nice and chuckled at length with President Trump. The pictures of this Kumbaya were only available because Russian TV recorded the event; our evil press and their cameras were not allowed in the room. The possibility of fake news from the mainstream media is ever-present in Trump’s mind.

Interviews with candidates to head the FBI proceed rapidly. Senator Graham gave his opinion that the new FBI head should have no political connection and should come from within the bureau. That is a great idea and, given the political realities, has little chance of happening. One of the prime candidates is Senator John Cornyn of Texas. Senator Cornyn has already decided that there is nothing to this Russian interference in our election and that the primary evil is revealing the names of prominent Republicans caught talking to Russians. He also went after Sally Yates hammer and tongs when she testified before his senate committee until she quite sweetly handed him his head, as she also did with the other Texas senator, Senator Cruz. That meeting was not good for the reputation of Texas senators.

It seems that there will shortly be a shake-up among Trump’s sycophants. We might have seen the end of Sean Spicer and perhaps Mrs. Huckabee Sanders, and maybe others as well. Poor Spicer has been the target of some hilarious Saturday Night Live skits. Last night saw him hiding in the bushes instead of serving in the Naval Reserve. The problem here is that Trump takes these parodies as personal attacks against him. If he appoints a substitute for Spicer the parodies won’t stop; his response will probably be to stop the press conferences altogether, anything to keep him from being laughed at.

Trump is circling the wagons and his circle is getting smaller and smaller. Before long it will be only Ivanka and Jared. He really cannot administer the country this way.

2017 May 13^th

President Trump will speak at Liberty University’s commencement today. He will have an enthusiastic welcome at Liberty but he doesn’t get an enthusiastic welcome everywhere. He had thought to talk to the FBI foot-soldiers to explain the necessity of his harsh removal of their chief but he was advised against it. He is not universally popular with the FBI guys and gals. Trump doesn’t like to appear where doesn’t get a rousing welcome. His skin does not thicken with age.

 In an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, Trump claimed that Comey asked to have dinner with him and at that dinner announced that he, Trump, was not himself a target of any FBI investigation. He also, according to Trump, asked about his job security.

Trump’s version of this conversation is at odds with the sort of conversation that might be expected of an FBI agent. Comey’s intimates say Trump, not Comey asked for the dinner meeting. That certainly makes sense. Who calls the President of the United States and asks if they can have dinner at his house---particularly if he’s the boss. Then there is the oddity of Comey confiding in Trump that he was not under investigation. None of this holds together.

Then we have Trump’s unhappiness that Comey’s version of this dinner does not agree with his version. Trump says that if Comey produces a version of the meeting at odds with his he had better hope that there were no recording devices present. Now, hearing the phrase recording devices, we return to yesteryear and Tricky Dick Nixon. Given that Trump is paranoia personified it should surprise no one if he records every conversation he has. I would guess he carries a live recording device with him at all times and would as soon be without it as he would be without his gun.

If Trump does produce a “tape” of his conversations with Comey how would anyone know it hadn’t been altered? Altering a voice recording can’t be difficult if you have the technical expertise available that is surely available to Donald Trump. Trump’s reputation for veracity cannot get much lower so who would trust any voice recording he produces.

Trump recognizes the discrepancies between his pronouncements and those of his flacks and his vice president. He just moves so fast you see. This difficulty surfaced when his people claimed that the Rob Rosenstein memo was the stimulus Trump needed to fire Comey. You may remember the badly overused phrase that, “President Trump took strong and decisive action.” That was uttered by Pence (several times) then by Sanders and by Spicer. Then, a day later with his NBC interview he cut the ground from under all of them by declaring unequivocally that  Rosenstein’s memo was irrelevant because months earlier he had already decided to fire Comey.

The blowback from that has now encouraged him to declare that he, as president, just moves so fast that his poor staff can’t keep up with him and it isn’t fair to expect them to do that. In a Fox News interview Trump speculated that he might stop having daily briefings altogether because his schedule is just too busy for his staff to keep up.

Of course it’s not that at all; Trump simply doesn’t know what he will do from one day to the next, so how can the people supposed to inform the public keep the public informed?  The result is that they all look as if they don’t know what they’re doing…and that’s exactly right, they don’t, and it’s not their fault.

This morning we have a columnist, Michael Barone, giving us a work titled, “James Comey is the latest victim of the Clintons.” Barone is a pundit for the “Washington Examiner,” a weekly Washington D.C. paper leaning very rightward. He has paid attention to President Trump’s rationale as stated by his flacks for firing Comey.

High on this list was an analysis of Comey’s shortcomings requested of, and provided by, Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General. Barone recounts the sterling credentials of Rosenstein, he tells us of Rosenstein’s rise to power, of his crime fighting successes, of his approval by several stalwart Maryland Democratic senators.

Barone finishes this fulsome praise by claiming, “This makes mincemeat of Democrat’s cries that Trump fired Comey to kill any investigation of Russian collusion in the presidential election.” Well, maybe not; as Sarah Huckabee Sanders tossed off as she was leaving her last press briefing, “Maybe this (the firing of Comey) will help bring the Russian-Trump election controversy to a decisive conclusion.”

Unfortunately for Barone, Trump’s interview with NBC’s Lester Holt makes it quite clear that the Rosenstein memo had nothing to do with Comey’s firing, and therefore his firing had little to do with the Clintons. Trump claimed in that interview that he had planned to fire Comey for some time. He claimed that Comey was a “showboat.” He insisted that Comey had wanted to have dinner with him, perhaps to convince Trump to save his job. Then Trump insists that Comey assured him that he, Trump, was personally not under investigation by the FBI. Virtually every word of this flies in the face of standard FBI procedure and is disputed by those close to Comey who insisted that it was Trump, Comey’s superior, who demanded the dinner meeting and that Comey was reluctant to attend it.

Now the issue is whether tapes of this meeting exist. Trump’s people aren’t saying but Trump very bluntly says that Comey should hope there are no tapes. The issue is whether or not Comey told Trump he was, or was not, the target of an investigation. For Comey to comment about the bureau’s investigation is unlikely to say the least and it is an enormous breech of protocol.

Trump complains that Comey has lost the support of the rank and file FBI people but the new acting director, Andrew McCabe, when asked about that directly has said it simply isn’t so. I guess it is just another Trump lie…then we discover that Trump has cancelled his little make nice speech to the FBI because he was informed that his presence would not be well received.

Barone’s final foolishness was to write, “So does the… Phoenix airport meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch…that meeting was surely meant to be secret…” Is this man serious? Two very large airplanes with famous people and their retinues meet on the tarmac of a public airport and this meeting was meant to be secret? Either Clinton or Lynch, or perhaps both must have suddenly have developed some degenerative mental disease. Ridiculous!

Barone is just another casualty of Trump’s torturous mental gymnastics. Barone should have known that Trump could change his mind and make him look foolish before his column could be set in type. Now he joins Trump’s flacks and his vice president in assuming, incorrectly, that Trump means what he says and will stand by it for at least 48 hours.

2017 May 11^th

Trump’s firing of FBI director Comey continues to reverberate. An interview with President Trump, conducted by Lester Holt, will play tonight on NBC. Trump claims that he fired Comey because “he wasn’t doing a good job” and that he would appoint a successor who would restore the bureau’s morale. By most reports those in the bureau deeply resent the firing; they are either angered at the high-handed way it was done or they are now worried about their own jobs.

The Trumpian theme of, “He wasn’t doing a good job” boils down to, “He wasn’t investigating what I wanted the bureau to investigate” so I fired him. Trump seems to believe that the FBI is his personal investigative organization. He would like the FBI to stop investigating the Russian connections to his political campaign and to get on with an investigation of the embarrassing leaks about him to the press. That isn’t likely to happen and his firing of Comey reduces the odds even farther because Trump is even less the favorite person of bureau employees.

Andrew McCabe, the acting FBI director, flatly contradicted President Trump’s claim that the rank-and-file FBI agents had low morale and were dissatisfied with Comey’s leadership. Trump’s supporters are pushing for the support of Democrats here; Representative Maxine Waters from California has maintained that should Hilary Clinton have been elected she should have fired Comey immediately. This Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s substitute flack, maintains, just shows the Democrat’s hypocrisy because the Democrats are now upset by Comey’s firing.

Representative Waters is not a paragon of carefully considered comment. These are two totally different things. The Clinton fiasco produced by Comey had to do with his appalling judgment about commenting on the Weiner emails before he had bothered to look at them. Then, later, admitting that he had found nothing new in them.

When Trump fired Comey, there was a well-founded suspicion that Comey, like Preet Bahara and Sally Yates, were closing in on Trump’s Russian connections. That possibility Trump could not permit and firing Comey was the result of his mistaken notion that he could stop that investigation. He couldn’t and now he knows that. He’ll try something else, but this bit of pique has cost him some support and other support from his core is wavering. He is back down to a 36 percent approval rating. There are Republicans who, seeing the angry faces at town meetings, will peel away from supporting him to save their 174 thousand dollar a year congressional jobs.

Then today Trump hosted the Russian Ambassador Kislyak and the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in the Oval Office. This meeting came at the express request of Premier Putin. It was the first such meeting since 2013 when we decided to indicate our displeasure with various Russian shenanigans.

The American press and their cameras were excluded from this event but we are allowed to view the friendly interaction between Trump and his Russian friends through the curtesy of Russian television. Our press, the enemy of the people, were excluded from the meeting so we watch the event curtesy of Russian television. Down the rabbit hole we go once again.