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.