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.