The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705
Sunday
May192019
The Commentariat -- May 20, 2019
Afternoon Update:
Rachel Bade, et al., of the Washington Post: "The White House on Monday blocked former counsel Donald McGahn from testifying to Congress, the latest act of defiance in the ongoing war between House Democrats and President Trump. McGahn, who Democrats hoped would become a star witness in their investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice, was subpoenaed to testify Tuesday morning. 'The Department of Justice has provided a legal opinion stating that, based on long-standing, bipartisan, and constitutional precedent, the former counsel to the president cannot be forced to give such testimony, and Mr. McGahn has been directed to act accordingly,' said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders in a statement.... The 15-page legal opinion written by Assistant Attorney General Steven A. Engel argues McGahn cannot be compelled to testify before the committee, based on past Justice Department legal opinions regarding the president's close advisers. The memo says McGahn's immunity from congressional testimony is separate and broader than a claim of executive privilege."
~~~~~~~~~~
The Trump Scandals, Ctd.
Even Computers Can Tell Trump & Kushner Might Be Crooks. David Enrich of the New York Times: "Anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog. The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump's now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes. But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees' advice. The reports were never filed with the government.... Former Deutsche Bank employees said the decision not to report the Trump and Kushner transactions reflected the bank's generally lax approach to money laundering laws. The employees ... said it was part of a pattern of the bank's executives rejecting valid reports to protect relationships with lucrative clients." ...
... digby: "If it were anyone else I'd say they couldn't have been so stupid and arrogant as to do those kinds of shenanigans in 2016 and 2017. Obviously, with Trump and Kushner that's not operative. They are that stupid and arrogant."
Trump's (Alleged) Sex Assault Club Met Again Last Week. Maggie Haberman & Annie Karni of the New York Times: "President Trump has generally bucked the #MeToo movement, siding instead with the men who deny accusations of sexual assault or misconduct. Now, the Republican National Committee appears to be following his lead. Steve Wynn, the billionaire former casino mogul who resigned as chairman of Wynn Resorts and as finance chairman of the R.N.C. last year after The Wall Street Journal revealed allegations of sexual assault and harassment spanning decades, has recently donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the committee. On Thursday, he was spotted by television cameras arriving at a high-dollar fund-raising dinner for Mr. Trump and the committee.... Politico reported last week that Mr. Wynn gave $248,500 to the Republican National Committee and an additional $150,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in April."
New York Times Editors: "... Donald Trump has found ways to wield or dangle the pardon power in a manner that departs from any established practice and even calls into question the principles of justice that undergird it.... [His two latest full pardons demonstrate his penchant for granting] mercy for lawbreakers in the mold of disgraced politicians, media personalities and political allies who have flattered, defended or curried favor with the president. Then came news that the president may mark this Memorial Day with pardons for ... war criminals.... This month, Mr. Trump already pardoned Michael Behenna, a former Army lieutenant who was court-martialed and convicted of killing a detained Iraqi man whom he was interrogating. The American Civil Liberties Union said the pardon represented 'a presidential endorsement of murder.'... One bill before Congress, introduced by the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Adam Schiff, aims to discourage the misuse of pardons by shedding sunlight on how they are procured and processed. Pro-democracy advocates support the legislation." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: John Gramlich & Kristen Bialik of Pew Research wrote in January 2017, "Barack Obama ended his presidency having granted clemency to more people convicted of federal crimes than any chief executive in 64 years. But he also received far more requests for clemency than any U.S. president on record, largely as a result of an initiative set up by his administration to shorten prison terms for nonviolent federal inmates convicted of drug crimes." The recipients of these grants were through a rigorous DOJ vetting process. These were not Friends of Barack, & there is no reason to think Obama hoped to gain political advantage by granting clemency; indeed, Obama used his pardon power most aggressively in his second term. Obama's pardons & grants of clemency stand in sharp contrast to those Trump has offered & dangled. ...
... ** The War Crimes President*. Chas Danner of New York: "President Trump may pardon several U.S. service members who have been accused or convicted of serious war crimes, including the mass murder of civilians, the New York Times reported Saturday.... Trump is (or has been) convinced that these men are victims of injustice, rather than perpetrators of it. And it's not hard to imagine how war criminals could seem like war heroes to a president who fetishizes strength and power over the powerless.... It should also be emphasized that all of the victims of these war crimes lived in Muslim-majority countries.... The potential pardons must also be seen in the context of President Trump's rarely veiled Islamophobia and how well that has played with his base.... The pardons would also go against core principles that form the foundation of the armed services, as well as military justice.... Pardoning a series of war criminals would set a precedent for what is and is not acceptable behavior on the battlefield..., all thanks to a draft dodger who attacked a prisoner of war and a gold-star family on his way to becoming president." ...
... As Akhilleus noted in yesterday's Comments thread, Trump thinks it's A-OK to torture & kill Muslims.
Justin Wise of the Hill: "President Trump on Sunday ripped Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) for saying that the president had reached the 'threshold for impeachment.'... 'Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy,' Trump said on Twitter.... 'He would see that it was nevertheless strong on NO COLLUSION and, ultimately, NO OBSTRUCTION,' Trump said. 'Anyway, how do you Obstruct when there is no crime and, in fact, the crimes were committed by the other side? Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents hands!'" ...
... Senator Mitt Mealy-Mouth. David Beavers of Politico: "Sen Mitt Romney on Sunday called a GOP congressman's call for impeaching ... Donald Trump 'a courageous statement' while maintaining that impeachment is not warranted based on the special counsel's report. Speaking to CNN's Jake Tapper on 'State of the Union,' Romney said, 'My own view is that Justin Amash has reached a different conclusion than I have. I respect him. I think it's a courageous statement,' the Utah Republican continued. 'But I believe that to make a case for obstruction of justice, you just don't have the elements that are evidenced in this document.'" As the headline writer at New York mag put it, "A profile in recognizing courage rather than displaying it." (No link.)
As Marcy Wheeler reminded Chris Hayes on Friday, "NO one gets that in the summer of 2017 at the same time that Trump had just met for the first time with Vladimir Putin in this crazy meeting in the G-20, he went to [Corey] Lewandowski and dictated to him [according to the Mueller] report and made him write it down and he said, '[Trump] never dictated anything to me before.' He makes him write it down and in that paper, he said go tell [Jeff] Sessions to shut down the investigation into the Russians who hacked us in 2016. He can investigate what's going to happen in 2018 and 2020, but not in 2016. That's crazy. No one knows that Trump tried to shut down the entire investigation, not just his side, but the Russian side as well." Emphasis added. Transcribed by Karoli Kuns of Crooks&Liars.
** Daniel Okrent, in a Washington Post op-ed: Jared “Kushner's new immigration plan, aimed at reducing immigration from specific nations through the virtual elimination of what he and others have disparaged as 'chain migration,' and the simultaneous valorization of the highly educated, is simply a version of a blatantly discriminatory effort [the aristocratic senator Henry Cabot] Lodge initiated more than a century ago.... The widening streams of emigres pouring out of the impoverished lands between the Baltic and the Mediterranean had broadened to flood stage, and Lodge determined that the best way to keep them out was to make them submit to a literacy test.... Lodge's literacy test bill passed with ease. But on President Grover Cleveland's very last day in office, he struck it down with a veto, and there were not enough votes in the Senate to override.... Only with anti-European fervor spiking on the brink of World War I, and new theories of 'racial eugenics' shaping public debate, was it finally enacted over President Woodrow Wilson's second veto, in 1917.... Jared Kushner -- and Stephen Miller and President Trump -- likely know very little about Henry Cabot Lodge. But he would be proud of them." ...
... Seung Min Kim of the Washington Post: "President Trump said in an interview airing Sunday [on Fox 'News'] that he has concerns about a verification system that checks whether someone can work in the United States legally -- a tool that his namesake business began using company-wide earlier this year.... The president's comments about E-Verify draw attention back to the hiring practices of the Trump Organization, which has employed undocumented immigrants as waiters, groundskeepers and housekeepers even as Trump made battling undocumented immigration a signature issue. Trump said during his presidential campaign that his company used E-Verify and he called for it to be made mandatory.... But the Trump Organization did not begin using the system at all of its properties until January, after The Washington Post reported that about a dozen undocumented workers from Latin America had been employed at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, N.Y., but were abruptly fired that month."
Have Saber, Will Rattle. Chas Danner of New York: "President Trump, who may be the only thing standing between the Trump administration and an elective war with Iran, threatened to 'end' the country in a tweet on Sunday.... The president's return to bluster was [likely] prompted, as most of his weekend tweets typically are, by a Fox News segment he was watching (about the escalating tensions). 'If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran,' Trump responded. 'Never threaten the United States again!'" ...
... Mustafa Salim & Tamer El-Ghobashy of the Washington Post: "A rocket landed inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, which houses the sprawling U.S. Embassy, Iraqi security officials said Sunday, in an apparent warning shot to the United States amid escalating tensions with Iran. The rocket landed less than a mile from the U.S. Embassy near Iraq's parliament building and caused no injuries or serious damage, a security official said. But the timing of the launch has increased worries in Iraq that it will be drawn into a conflict between two of its closest allies, the United States and Iran."
Bo Emerson of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Billionaire Robert F. Smith, who received an honorary doctorate at Morehouse College's Sunday morning graduation exercises, had already announced a $1.5 million gift to the school. But during his remarks in front of the nearly 400 graduating seniors, the billionaire technology investor and philanthropist surprised some by announcing that his family was providing a grant to eliminate the student debt of the entire Class of 2019. 'This is my class,' he said, 'and I know my class will pay this forward.' The announcement elicited the biggest cheers of the morning." Mrs. McC: Yeah, I guess so. ...
... MEANWHILE. Gillian Edevane of Newsweek: "As Vice President Mike Pence gave the Saturday morning commencement address at Taylor University -- a Christian school in Pence's home state of Indiana -- dozens of graduating seniors and faculty walked out in protest. The small demonstration came after Taylor students and members of the surrounding Upland, Indiana, community started an online petition to bar Pence from giving the address, citing concerns that it could be construed as an endorsement of ... Donald Trump's policies. Many of those who remained at the ceremony but objected to Pence's presence sported buttons that declared, 'I am Taylor Too,' which intended to show that the university houses a multitude of viewpoints in contrast to those held by the administration.... The demonstration marked a rare instance in which a member of the Trump administration was rebuffed in what many considered to be friendly territory."
Presidential Race 2020
Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "In a televised Fox News Channel town hall event Sunday, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg defended his decision to appear on the network, days after a competitor, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), spurned Fox as a 'hate-for-profit racket.' During an hour-long conversation with moderator Chris Wallace, Buttigieg ... called out Tucker Carlson, for saying that immigrants made the United States 'dirtier,' as well as Laura Ingraham, who once compared detention centers for migrant children to summer camps. 'There is a reason why anybody has to swallow hard and think twice before participating in this media ecosystem,' Buttigieg said.... Buttigieg also took several opportunities to criticize President Trump, who earlier in the evening had tweeted his displeasure that his preferred news network was 'wasting airtime on Mayor Pete.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: As you recall, Trump also chastised Fox for hosting Bernie Sanders at a townhall in April. The messages I infer are that Trump thinks (1) that he is the program director at Trump TV; or (2) more ominously (and more likely), that democratic elections are a "waste of time" & that Fox should coronate him for at least a second term, if not more. ...
... Mayor Pete Gets a Standing O at Fox. Maureen Groppe of USA Today: "Pete Buttigieg got an enthusiastic reception at a Fox News town hall Sunday where he explained the importance of restoring moral authority to the office of president and appointing judges that back reproductive rights. He also criticized ... Donald Trump over reports that he's considering pardoning service members accused of war crimes. But the response that generated one of the biggest rounds of applause was his dismissal of Trump's signature form of communication. 'The tweets are -- I don't care,' the Democratic presidential hopeful said when asked how he would deal with Trump's tweets and insults if he wins the nomination. Calling Trump's tweets a distraction from the real issues, Buttigieg said he gets that 'It's the nature of grotesque things that you can't look away.'... 'Wow, a standing ovation," [host Chris] Wallace said as the audience rose after the hour-long discussion with the South Bend, Indiana, mayor."
Laurie Penny in the New Republic (May 17): Anti-abortion "laws are not about whether a fetus is a person. They are about enshrining maximalist control over the sexual autonomy of women as a foundational principle of conservative rule. They are about owning women. They are about women as things.... The question of whether a fetus is a person is conveniently unanswerable. The question of whether a woman is a person, however, is not up for debate -- and it is female personhood, not fetal personhood, that should decide the issue of basic bodily autonomy.... The Trump regime was given the keys to the nation's capital by white evangelicals mostly on the basis of a promise to criminalize abortion. Now Republicans across the country are gleefully delivering on that promise, because they like power and want to keep it, and because it makes them feel big and tough to confiscate basic human rights from pregnant people.... The anti-choice Republican feeding frenzy comes from a deep conservative greed for social control. That's why Tony Tinderholt, the Republican Texas state representative who is sponsoring a bill to make abortion an actual capital crime -- again, so much for the 'pro-life' position -- says that the great social virtue of his proposal is to 'force' women to be 'more personally responsible' in their sexual lives.... The eventual aim here is to put women's bodies under strict and brutal state surveillance across the whole of America.... It's a race thing, too, of course, and it always has been."
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BREED MARES
FACT: U.S. birthrate fell for the fourth straight year–-lowest number of births in 32 years.
Chris Hedges, as he has always done, gives us a deeper look into this abortion morass –-it's much more complicated than I thought. I learned something here and have a clearer picture.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/americas-reproductive-slaves/
"Ignore the religious rhetoric and moral pandering about abortion. This debate is not about the sanctity of life. It is about corporate capitalists who desperately need more bodies and intend to coerce women to produce them."
P.S. Have always had to smile at the word "woman"––the "W and O" tacked on to "man"––our wombs have been in front of men from the get-go, at least in English.
Robert Smith––a REAL pay forward move on his part. One of those moments that are like sudden bright sun rays after a gloomy day.
@PD Pepe: Yes, I appreciate Smith's generosity on behalf of these particular students. They are the lucky duckies, aren't they? But two things trouble me: (1) that a student has to win the billionaire's lottery to get the same break I did (I got out of college with a total debt of $750); & (2) that a person can make so much money as a low-tax hedge-fund operator that he can afford to pay off millions of dollars in student debt.
Smith did a good thing yesterday, to be sure, but a system that allows such a disparity in incomes & requires such generosity on the part of the chosen few just plain sucks. It's better than Oprah giving away free cars to the undeserving because she can, of course, but nearly of a kind.
P.S. Unless Congress passes & Trump signs a fix for the "kiddie tax," you can bet these new grads will have to pay hefty income taxes on Smith's gifts. That's cash out-of-pocket many may not have. I'm no tax expert, but I think that even if the kiddie tax gets fixed, any grads who get gifts greater than $15,000 will have to pay gift taxes. One student said he had $70K in college debt, so I'm think quite a few of the grads will be paying gift taxes. Again, our educational system sucks.
@Marie: I hear you–– isn't that what Warren and Bernie have been, in part, yummering about for years? and if you read Hedges he disparages our capital system even when connected to the abortion issue. The largesse of an Oprah or a Robert Smith just exposes the needy and greedy that much more. When someone like Munuchin's daddy can pay millions for an arty=farty Coon's bunny and millions can't even pay for groceries or a decent education –-well, then...
Re: Henry Cabot Lodge ye olde pome:
Here's to dear old Boston
The land of the bean and the cod
Where Lowells speak only to Cabots
And Cabots speak only to God.
@Maxwells Demon: Thanks for reprising that old chestnut.
Here's to dear old Gotham,
The city of money and books,
Where Kushners speak only to Trumps
And Trump speaks only to crooks.
The Trumping of America
I noticed over the weekend that King Donald pulled back funding for the California high speed rail project whining that it was over budget and poorly managed. That money will promptly be deposited into some Trump pocket somewhere.
The real problem? It was managed just like a Trump project. It was treated just like any other government project: a way to scarf money.
An article on Digby's site today makes the connection between the mania for replacing in-house expertise on government projects with enormously expensive consultants who are wedded not to the success of the project, but to raking in a bundle on consultants' fees.
It's true that not every government project will begin with people in-house who have the expertise to manage or oversee large projects, but in a state like California, this should be the case. But it's not. Know where else it should be case? The federal government. But decades of Fox lies and Republican shenanigans have cleaned out much of the in-house talent. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Government sucks. Government can't do anything." So get rid of the experience and expertise. Then it CAN'T do anything. Hire cheaper, younger employees just out of college, or better yet, don't hire anyone. Pay a private sector consultancy firm to come in and run the show. Many times, into the ground. (Even better, hire acting department heads, that way no one but you has any say in how things are done. No advice, no consent.)
I know how this works. In my field, I've seen people with decades of experience replaced with kids just out of school who don't know jack about anything. It's cheaper, right? Saves the company money, right? Or bring kids in as contract employees. Save even more money. Only now, Gizmo A breaks down. What do we do? Either you get yourself a maintenance contract or you pay for each issue as it comes up. This isn't terrible until it becomes clear that the people you're paying to address these issues are not losing sleep over whether or not your problem gets fixed on time, or at all. You can't go somewhere else either. You're stuck. Except that the guy you let go two months ago could come in and fix it all in a matter of hours. But now he's gone. And you're screwed. But hey, the stockholders are happy.
But the dark side of all of this involves how this mindset is morphed into the Trump Way.
Just as California, and many other state, municipal, and public entities have discovered, too many consultants are primarily concerned with getting as much as they can out of you before the project is scrapped and they can move on to the next victim.
It's not unlike Mitt Romney's vulture capitalists who ride into town and promise to save the day. They buy up the business, fire all the employees, tell them there's no retirement funds left, break up the company, sell off the pieces and pat each other on the back because they can all buy that third vacation home now. Meanwhile, a business that could have been saved, and the employees and their pensions along with it, are all gone. The money is vacuumed up by the Mitt Romneys of the world. Former employees are broke and dazed, another business is deep-sixed, and Mitt buys himself a mansion on the beach with a fucking elevator in the garage.
Trump has introduced that model into the federal government. Rather than keep on career people invested in the work who know what needs to be done and know how to do it, he brings in DeVos and Ross and Zinke and Mnuchin and Carson and Perdue. People who don't give a shit about the jobs they've been tapped for. Don't know. Don't care. What they do care about is being able to clean the joint out before they move on. You get rid of the anyone in-house with expertise and integrity, then you bring in your cronies and you go to work. You can do whatever you want.
It's not at all unlike the mob. In Scorsese's film "Goodfellas", mobster Henry Hill explains how it's done. A restaurant owner needs some help. He wants to save and grow his business. So in comes the mob. Like Trump's people, they don't give a shit about the business. They care about what they can make off it before they kill it:
"Now the guy's got Paulie as a partner...[and now] Paulie could do anything. Especially run up bills on the joint's credit. And why not? Nobody's gonna pay for it anyway. And as soon as the deliveries are made in the front door, you move the stuff out the back and sell it at a discount. You take a two hundred dollar case of booze and you sell it for a hundred. It doesn't matter. It's all profit. And then finally, when there's nothing left, when you can't borrow another buck from the bank or buy another case of booze, you bust the joint out. You light a match."
The Trump Way. For the Trumpies, there is no history, there is no Constitution, there is no democracy, there is no honesty, no ethics, no morality, no duty, no honor.
There's only money.
And power.
Power to do what you want. Power to fuck those you hate. Power to grant reprieves to war criminals. Power to cozy up to dictators. Power to help your cronies to government handouts. Power to ignore the rules, laugh at the law, and make yourself rich as Croesus while pissing on everyone else.
The Trumping of America continues.
And Democrats wonder what to do.
The largesse shown to the Morehouse College seniors is lovely, but it's just more of what Republicans have been working toward for decades. Let private individuals handle it. Government shouldn't be involved. Ever.
That computer program that flagged illegal doings by Trump and Kushner? It's just like a warning light on your dashboard. The oil light goes on, you can ignore it if you want. Sure, it could just be a short, but much more likely, you're leaking oil and your engine is about to seize. In the middle of the night, on a bad road, with no cell service.
Ignoring these warnings, like Deutsche Bank (just to appease high visibility crooks like Trump and Kushner), can be chalked up to the DB way of doing business, but it DOESN'T mean there's not something very bad going on under the hood.
Is anyone else concerned that the Secretary of Defense (acting, natch), has zero experience with the military outside of his stint as a salesman for Boeing? Especially since his Deputy Secretary of Defense (also acting) has zero experience with the military outside of adding up numbers, and even more especially because their boss (so-called) who has far less experience than either of them with the military, when asked about whether we might be going to war with Iran, replied "Hope not".
Hope not? That's the best you got? Hope not? WTF!
Of course, if another Fox moron got on the idiot box and shouted that someone in Iran gave a picture of Trump the finger, we might be talking all out war before the next news cycle.
All of this would be funny in a dark comic novel. In the real world it is far more scary than these things have any business being. Do Republicans care? Not as long as they get their Evangelical Nazi judges confirmed at the rate of 20 a day.
War, schmor. Who cares?
Words matter. Verbal expressions provide insight into the mindset of those using them. We all have default expressions we might use when we're thinking of seven other things or in moments of surprise.
But for most thoughtful people, word choice is important, especially when required to address important situations.
So when you hear the president of the United States crafting his response to a serious message by another elected official (from his own party!) as "Not a fan", you have to wonder (but not for long).
So he's "not a fan" of Justin Amash. Does he have to be a fan of someone in order to take what they say seriously? What's that about? It sounds like he's talking about an actor or a band. "Duran Duran? Sorry, not a fan." "Keanu Reeves? I dunno. I'm not really a fan."
It's all some kind of game show for Trump. In his world "not a fan" is tantamount to "not a real person, or anyone I have to be concerned about". His thought processes and expressions arising from those bare bones processes are so elemental as to be down near the human equivalent of machine language.
I'm guessing that makes him a huge fan of people like Rodrigo Duterte and Vladimir Putin. Of war criminals. Of crooks and gangsters and sleazy bankers and money launderers.
Constitution? Not a fan. United States of America? Clearly not a fan.
But don't worry. He is really, really, really smaht. And he has the best words. "Fan", "not", and "a" are three of them.
Well, I'm relieved.
The Trumpy EPA has a problem. Trump wants to kill all Obama era regulations, and largely de-fang older regulations, designed to maintain, and improve, air and water safety and keep thousands of Americans from dying.
What to do?
Oh, hey! I know, just change the laws of mathematics.
"The new methodology would assume there is little or no health benefit to making the air any cleaner than what the law requires. On paper, that would translate into far fewer premature deaths from air pollution, even if it increased. The problem is, scientists say, in the real world there are no safe levels of fine particulate pollution in the air.
'Particulate matter is extremely harmful and it leads to a large number of premature deaths,' said Richard L. Revesz, an expert in environmental law at New York University. He called the expected change a “monumental departure” from the approach both Republican and Democratic E.P.A. leaders have used over the past several decades and predicted that it would lay the groundwork for weakening more environmental regulations."
"Pshaw" sez Trump. "I'm the king. I can do anything I want. Why, you oughta see what I do with the numbers I send to the banks. I can make it look like I'm a multi-billionaire, or like I'm collecting cans to make ends meet."
The idea is that they're going to claim that environmental protections don't amount to anything. THEREFORE--presto-chango!--there can't be any additional dead people if we remove those protections. Hot-diggity!
There's political manipulation and there's massaging of the message, and then there's Trump. In a class of lying, murdering vermin all by himself.
Rules for me, but not for thee...
So the Little King has decided that Mueller's star witness, Don McGahn, who gave it up about Trump's plethora of obstruction of justice instances, cannot testify before congress. His reason?
Hang on, this is a hoot...
The reason is McGahn testifying would be problematic because of the separation of powers.
SEPARATION OF POWERS!!!! TRUMP!?!!?!
This is like a murderer claiming that evidence simply cannot not be brought to prove his dirty deeds because it would be unseemly to talk about murder in open court and would egregiously impact the sensitive nature of jurors.
The Trump crime family, the most anti-separation of powers administration in the history of the nation, now wants to shield the Obstructor-and-Traitor-in-Chief from his criminal acts by claiming that the rule they regularly piss on must be effected in full force to protect the Dear Leader.
And here's the problem. It's possible (note, I didn't say likely, because by the time this comes before a judge, most of them may be card carrying Trumpist Nazis who wouldn't cite Trump for a criminal act if he were to run over Nancy Pelosi on Massachusetts Ave. at high noon in front of dozens of video cameras, then order his driver to back up and run over her again) that by the time this sees the light of a courtroom, Trump will already have been re-elected by a combination of election stealing, Russian interference, Fox lies, and Democratic Party incompetence and, having by then granted himself immense, unquestioned power, will destroy all evidence of his perfidy, as he's trying to do even now.