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?